It Befuckles Me...

...when I read blogs about child rearing.

Yeah, Yeah, your kids are not your friends. Throw down the gauntlet and show them whose boss and what the parameters are. Yada, Yada.

I was, unfortunately, only around my kids, on a full-time basis, for six years. After that it was peace meal. When I was with them full time, I took care of their needs, bathed and fed them, played with them and interacted with them. Was it as a friend or a parent. Both, in my book. I could pull the parent thing if they were acting up, but I never did it with the thought of authority in mind.

The ex never had any parenting boundaries. As long as she had Elle and Cosmopolitan to read when she got home, as she was sipping her wine, as I had bathed, played with and fed the kids then they were fine. I wasn't, once they went to bed. I had one too many beers and was shit for a father. So it goes.

Turns out, after all these years, that they are, in fact, fairly good men. Will they always be that way? Of course not. There are no guarantees. We've all seen examples of it. If you are a parent in my age group then you know that life happens in stages. Don't beat yourself up. You could do great raising them during one stage and fail miserably during another. It's probably genetic anyways. Give yourself some credit for what you've done to date, but don't think you've won the race. Think back on your own life when you were 20 and 30. See any changes? Point made.