Stupid Parents say Stupid Things

By:  Mia L. Hazlett

4/27/2012

Unfortunately kids don’t come with directions and you don’t have to have a license to have one.  A stupid person can go ahead and have a baby.  In fact, two stupid people can conceive a child or two or three or….  When I say stupid, I mean they lack all good common sense.  They even lack common sense when they say things aloud.  I put that in there, because I have a tendency to hear myself say something aloud, and quickly retract because it is the most asinine thought once I hear myself say it.  Granted there are a whole bunch of books out there you can use as guides, but that’s not the same as being in my house on the daily and dealing with my kids.  No one guide can blanket every scenario parenthood is going to place on your doorstep.  Sometimes you’re just going to have to wing it and hope for the best.

Because the role of a parent is the equivalent of a being a cop, jury, and judge.  You have defined rules for how your household is run.  It is your job to keep the peace and ensure these rules are obeyed at all times.  Now if these rules are broken, you snatch up the offender, make an arrest, and it’s up to you to review the evidence for a guilty or innocent verdict.  Then ultimately you determine the penalty if the verdict comes back guilty.  Or maybe you’re an experienced judge who knows how to pick your battles and you throw the case out altogether. Almost eleven years in, I’ve learned to do this many of times.

These are some of the things I’ve heard that I find to be stupid.  Agree, disagree, I don’t care.  In my opinion they’re stupid things said by stupid parents or maybe just lazy parents.

1. Kids that have no bedtime – “They just won’t go to bed.”  “Every time I put them down, they get right back up.”  “They’re a night owl, just like me.”  “They don’t need a lot of sleep.”  Stupid!

2. Kids that say “no” when told to do something by their parent – “Fine I’ll do it myself.”  “Wait until your father gets home.”  “You are so fresh.” “Will you do it, if Mommy helps you?”   Stupid!

3. Kids who get to eat crap all the time – “They’re such a picky eater.”  “I don’t think they’ll eat that.”  “I don’t eat that so I don’t buy it.”  “That’s what they like.”  Uuummm…Stupid!

4. Kids who listen to explicit music “I don’t know where they heard that song.”  “I wish they would listen to something else.”  “That music is so derogatory.” STUPID!!!

These are just a few of the things I heard over the past two weeks, whether being on the train, work or in the stores.  They’ve been on my mind so I had to put the STUPID parents out there.

#1. I get that kids don’t want to go to bed when they don’t perceive that they are tired.  The point is, you give your kid a bedtime to instill routine.  I doubt they are going to be tired every night come bedtime, but the body is a machine.  It must be programmed to get tired.  At least for my kids, inconsistency and taking them out of routine, produces a malfunctioning machine.  If they stay up past their bedtime for at least two nights in a row, it can take days to fix before they are back to normal.  But I blame stupid parents that don’t want to enforce a bedtime because they are too damn lazy.  I’m not saying your kid should be snoring before you go to bed, but they need to be IN THE BED.  That is your job!

#2.  I’m walking back to my car in the parking lot of Target.  The mother is pushing a cart with a one or two-year old sitting in the front of the carriage and a ten or eleven year old texting or something on his cell phone is walking next to her.  She tells the older boy to dig the keys out of her purse and unlock the car.  He says no and continues to text without even looking at her and walks to the passenger’s door.  “Fine I’ll do it myself.”  She begins digging through her purse and the toddler starts crying, because it was a bit chilly.  “Moooommm, hurry up.  It’s cold.”  “Well that’s why I told you to get the keys out of my purse.”  WHAT IN THE DAMN!!??  I can’t even ask if she was kidding me because she wasn’t.

#3.  Look my kids are picky eaters, but we’ve been living in different households so for the most part it’s difficult to always choose the meals we enjoy the most.  But my kids have been introduced to all food groups and are basically healthy eaters.  I hate fruit.  Hate it.  But I know its healthy and good for them, so I introduced them to it and they love it.  I basically cook chicken and seafood.  I’m not real big on red meat.  I’ve seen people who won’t continue to introduce food to their toddlers once the toddler has said no. I find that crazy.

#4.  Kids listen to what ever they want to if you let them.  If there is cursing in the music and you don’t change the station, they interpret that as being okay to listen to.  These two mothers were talking about their sons on the train the other day.  One was talking about how her son got an iTunes card for his birthday and proceeded to download his music.  He was apparently in his room listening to the songs on his iPod, which was set to speakers so she could hear the music.  “I mean the whole song was just swearing and you could barely understand what they were saying. I told him to shut his door because I didn’t want to hear it.”  The friend responded, “I know, Greg listens to that crap all the time.  I can’t stand it.  I make him put his headphones on.” Now maybe the kids were older, no ages were stated.  But I’m assuming they were too young (in my opinion) to be listening to explicit lyrics.  I say this because Greg’s mother then discussed how she didn’t know whether to have his birthday at Chuck-E-Cheese or Dave and Busters.  I mean I don’t have teenagers and maybe that is the cool thing with them right now, but I’m thinking not.  Either way, what happened to “as long as you live under my roof, you have to live by my rules.”  Where did that go?

Look, I’m not the perfect mom by any means.  My kids get away with stuff all the time.  Sometimes there’s a battle, sometimes I let things slide.  But I can let things slide because I have built the foundation on solid ground with my kids understanding I have the final say in all things.  I will listen to their side, but they will not convince me at the ages of 10 and 6 (that’s right, my little on had her birthday) they don’t need a bedtime, can say no if they feel like it when told to do something, not eat a healthy balanced dinner, and listen to music that drops the F-bomb every other word.  I can’t afford to be stupid.  I have two children that will suffer if I allow my common sense to go to the wayside.