CSotD: The Futility of Parenting
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There was never a time when I didn't enjoy my boys or wished they had stayed young or wished they would get over a particular stage.
But today's Dog Eats Doug brings back what may be my favorite parenting period: When they were old enough to sit up in the grocery cart and take notice, but still young enough that I could explain that we bought some things and not others without sparking a debate.
At least with our eldest. By the time his little brother came along, we'd moved and were in the same town as their maternal grandparents, so keeping him ignorant of the possibilities was off the table.
The flip side being that I still didn't get a lot of pushback because he knew he could just head over to Grandma's and knock himself out on whatever captured his fancy.
And the flip side of that being that the one who began life with whole-food purity is the junk food junkie while the one who had unfettered access to sugared cereals and Oreos from birth is the nutrition freak and, no, it's not reaction to those factors, because they lived in the same household and are only four years apart.
It's more the principle that kids grow up to be who they are despite what we do and not because of it.
Well, beyond the obvious. I was in the grocery store yesterday and suddenly heard someone bellow, "Sit down!" and then again and I knew what was happening but swore if he yelled it again I was going to sit on the floor myself and pretend I didn't know he was screaming at a two-year-old.
I don't know if a sudden round of laughter from the crowd would make him think, but I've been around enough to know that getting up in his face wasn't going to work, and that it comes down to whether he figures it out, whether his kid grows up thinking that's how parenting works or whether his kid figures it out on his own.
Anyway, it wasn't "abuse" so much as crappy parenting and god knows there's plenty of that going around.
And then there's Wanda and Darryl in Baby Blues, an example of good parents beating themselves up anyway, because only the good parents do that.
We used to laugh about our missteps, our standard line being, "That's gonna come out on the couch in 20 years." The funny thing being that — major blowups and meltdowns aside — the things you most regret, they don't remember, while the things that left a mark are odd moments you didn't think had any significance.
Specific to this strip, I think it's a good thing that today's nature documentaries show nature. I grew up watching Disney shows where no carnivore ever got a meal, and let's not forget that Disney is responsible for the myth of the lemmings.
Which means I probably shouldn't badmouth him in front of this crowd, since, if he hadn't had his people throwing those little guys off the cliff, a lot of cartoonists would lose a good portion of their gags.
But, yes, lions sometimes succeed, despite the plucky little gazelles who win all the chases in Disney's world, and my kids, by contrast, grew up with Wild Discovery shows that showed the whole process.
If it traumatized them, they've never mentioned it.
I don't know how much you can shelter kids from the real world, or should. The shows I watched never had a carnivore get a meal, but, then, if I was playing outside and found a snake, my very next step was to go find a frog.
Which means that, while I learned about life in jest, the frog taught in earnest.
Kids will figure it out. Perhaps better for the frogs if it happens on TV.
And speaking of things they'll learn on their own if you don't bother to teach them, Soup to Nutz brings up another parenting moment, and if Disney was evasive about how lions maintained life, TV in my youth was even more skittish about the birds and the bees, a factor that had certainly changed by the time my kids were old enough to sit up and flip the channels.
I honestly don't remember having "the talk" with them, but I remember when my dad gave me the lowdown, because the topic came up due to the strange delicacy of TV in the late 50s.
We were all watching some science special and they were talking about inherited traits, so I turned to my folks and said, "I get it about dominant genes and recessive genes, but how do the father's genes get in there in the first place?"
When a kid has to ask that question, TV is being far too demure about the mechanics. I think my boys knew how it got there before they knew what it was.
As for hot dogs, I referred to both hot dogs and luncheon meats as "pig noses," so as to teach my children that they were appalling, disgusting things.
Which only worked until they were old enough to go over to their friends' houses for lunch, at which point they began asking "Can we get some pig noses?"
Oh well. We did what we could.
Meanwhile, a good number of Millennials are perhaps not ready for the parenting part of adulting, since they're openly mystified by the idea that Dole would partner with Disney to put Star Wars characters on vegetable packaging.
I saw one Facebook comment that asked " Is seeing a Jedi on a package of lettuce supposed to make kids want to eat healthy??"
I suppose a cynic would suggest that we shouldn't expect fish to be able to expound on what it's like to be wet, but, yes, Virginia, there is something of a history of endorsements selling products.
Now get off my lawn.
Unless you plan to nibble it with a nice Paul Newmantm dressing.
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