Kids of My Own

I remember my mom always telling me that my kids would get me back tenfold for all the gray hairs I gave her. While I know that if this were true, the generations would get exponentially worse and I don't think that she meant it literally. When I was a kid, I had no idea how hard I could make things for my parents. As a kid you do a lot of things that seem like a good idea at the time. Now that I have kids, I realize how easy it is for them to do the same. It is not their actions that are the root of what my mom was saying. Rather it is the fact that I know I did some of the very same things. So while I may have only felt slightly bad at the time (if at all), I now feel ten times as bad when I have to react the same way my parents did. I now understand what they went through. I can grasp the full scope of the situation. Nothing can prepare you for starting your own family. Whether that first pregnancy was planned or not does not make a difference. The scope of what you’ve gotten yourself into doesn’t necessarily materialize until you are elbow deep in diapers. Many people have told me they will “never be like their parents”. The truth is that by simply becoming a parent we are just like our parents. Just like them we are as inexperienced as they were when they first started. While I may not be the same father that my dad was, I still have used what I learned from his parenting methods. My father grew up in a different age. His role models of what a man was supposed to be and do, varies greatly from my role models not to mention my grandfather's role models. Each generation has a unique set of problems to contend with when dealing with their kids. I hope that my kids will learn as much from me as I learned from my parents when they have kids. My children will build upon the knowledge gleaned from my wife and me the way we did from our parents (as much as we might not like to admit it, or hear about it sometimes). Like my parents I will spoil my grandchildren rotten. Using the same excuse, “I don't have to live with them.”