I’m too tired to discipline today.
This is how I feel quite a lot of the time. Also discipline is really haaaaaaaard *adopts whiny voice*. The Child is such a little imp, anytime I try to do my stern voice he amps up the cute or starts pulling funny faces – he thinks he’s hilarious – this usually completely cracks my serious mum-face within seconds. Damn him.
Ten bad things I let my son do for the sake of an easy life:
1. SHOUTING!!!!
So much shouting… In an effort to reframe the situation, I try to picture the shouting as a kind of auditory head massage – this does not really work.
2. Taking food from other people
IF they’re willing to give it to him obviously though really by the time he’s spotted the snack they don’t stand a chance of holding on to it. “Just please give him the scone,” I think. “It’s easier this way,” I explain as I take my friend’s snack and hand it over to the adorable but tyrannical two-year-old.
3. Bang cutlery on the table at brunch
I know I’m an assh*le for bringing the child to brunch at all, but we’re here now, what’s done is done. The couple beside us would like to kill us I suspect, but this is the payoff for eating my huevos rancheros in peace (it’s a peace of sorts). I’m tempted to advise them to practise reframing by imagining the banging as an auditory head massage, but I’m afraid to make eye contact with them.
4. Play with my phone
It has to be done. Don’t judge. Don’t write an open letter entitled To The Woman Who Gives Her Child Her Phone because I don’t wanna hear it.
5. Eat raisins… And ONLY raisins
The Child is really, REALLY not into eating. Sometimes the raisins are the only thing he will allow past his stubborn little lips. If he’s eating ANYTHING, I tend to just go with it… even if it’s raisins (Oh and by raisins I do mean crisps).
6. Eat dinner in the bathtub
Did you see the thing about the raisins??? If I can get any bit of nutrition into him with whatever scheming, conniving means necessary them Imma gonna do it.
7. Trash the gaff
Sure what else would I be doing with my time other than tidying up after the pint-sized force of nature that is my loin fruit? Seriously, though, the gaff’s f*cked.
8. Play with my belly rolls… in company
Sometimes I just have to weigh up what’s going to be less appealing for my companion: a child hellbent on getting at what I’m attempting to withhold (in this case the belly flab) with increasing shouts of frustration or the sight of my belly flab. Usually, I just go with the latter especially when I’m tired (which is always).
9. Eat all the food in the shopping trolley
Okay, full disclosure it’s me who eats all the food in the shopping trolley, but it’s so so convenient to blame the child. I just get to the checkout, hand over all the empty packets of yoghurt-covered rice cakes, indicating The Child and give a kind of helpless shrug.
10. Call all the shots when it comes to bed time, bath time and sleeping arrangements
Who am I fooling? He is the absolute boss of me. He is completely in charge I’m just there to open things for him, retrieve out of reach items and wipe his arse.
