The Art of Irritation
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| The Art of Hiding Behind the Menu |
At first it is the constant crying, then comes the homework and tears over long division. Next thing you know it is the irksome snide remarks, fighting and uncontrollable addiction to their smart-devices.
Did you voluntarily participate in the creation of life so that your very own offspring would turnaround and annoy the heck out of you? It is a question that humankind has been grappling with since cave-toddlers went amok throwing stones at each other and cave-teens purposely messed up the drawings on the walls with bizarre and lewd sketches of themselves, meant to irritate their cave-parents and confuse archaeologists from the 21st century.
In exasperation, sometimes you hold your head in your hands and cry out, What Have I Done?!
Then you think back to those quiet moments you had, when it was just you and your spouse and how you dreamt and longed for a family of your own - especially each time you saw another happy family with children walking by, hand in hand, maybe even with a stroller and a little baby inside. And you wanted to be just like them (but you didn't hear all the yelling that just happened in their car).
As parents, we have to accept it all - the joys, the pains, the quiet moments as they sleep, the screams when they don't get along (or get their teeth extracted). It's all part of the job, a tough and sometimes irritating job.