Another Inconvenient Truth

1. causing trouble, difficulties, or discomfort.

 

I never thought the decision to stop yelling would have such an effect on me.

Up until 10 days ago when I decided I was done yelling, I wouldn’t say I was out-of-control in the yelling department.

It wasn’t an all-day thing.

It wasn’t even and every day thing.

If you asked my kids to describe me, they wouldn’t say…

She yells a lot.

But I yelled enough.

Enough to not like the way I felt whenever I would let it happen.

Enough to see that I was teaching my kids it was an okay thing to do.

And enough to feel like I was not in control of my emotions.

I really didn’t like that last feeling.

This decision to not yell has forced me to really pay attention to the things that trigger me to lose my temper.

I wrote about some of them here.

But there is a really big one that I’ve realized lately.

And it’s another thing that people don’t tell you about when you are childless.

When you are thinking about starting a family.

They tell you about the cost of kids, and the exhaustion, and the usual stuff.

But no one really ever describes it this way.

At least they didn’t explain it this way to me.

And this doesn’t mean that you don’t love your kids more than anything in the world.

That given the chance to do it all over again, you wouldn’t change a thing.

But still, maybe it would help you to be a little more prepared…

You know how you will drive to the store to go grocery shopping and realize once you have gotten there that you forgot to bring the list you made?

Or how you go to the gym and once you are there you realize you left your headphones at home?

Or how you make plans to do something with a friend and then remember that the cable guy is going to come between 1 and 4 that day and so you can’t go?

Or how you are so tired at the end of the day, and you have gotten into your pajamas and taken your bra off and gotten a drink and you sit down on the couch to watch the show you DVR’d? The one you’ve been looking forward to all day?

Or week?

And then you turn on the DVR and press play on the remote, and the show starts, and then stops because it only recorded the first minute???

And you are frustrated and annoyed and maybe even completely pissed off?

Well, that’s what having kids is like.

Except that stuff happens all day long.

Every single day.

We lose our patience with the kids because kids are inconvenient.

Big time.

They cause trouble, difficulties, and discomfort.

Often.

Sometimes even constantly.

It is inconvenient to have to get up in the middle of the night.

It is inconvenient to lug every imaginable thing you could ever possibly need in case of an emergency with you every single place you go.

For five years straight.

It is inconvenient to be 7 minutes into a road trip only to hear the words,

I have to pee.

It is inconvenient to be 5 seconds from an orgasm and hear your three-year-old crying at the top of his lungs.

Or worse, knocking on your door.

Talk about a buzz kill.

It is inconvenient to clean food off the floor when 30 minutes earlier you just scrubbed the crap out of it.

It is inconvenient to see this to your left every time you are trying to go to the bathroom:

For 8 consecutive years.

You probably have more privacy taking a crap in prison than you do when you have children under the age of ten.

It is inconvenient to go out to dinner with your husband for the first time in months,

or years,

only to get a call from the babysitter ten minutes after you have been seated at your table.

It is inconvenient to clean poop and puke and blood and boogers and dirt and dozens of other indeterminable substances off of every visible surface in your house.

Every day.

It is inconvenient to sit down on the couch only to hear MOOOOOOMMMMMM!!! 2 seconds after your butt hits the cushion.

It is inconvenient to have planned something for yourself one morning only to get the call from school that one of your kids is sick and needs to be picked up.

Immediately.

It is inconvenient to have to lock yourself in the bathroom so that you can eat that cookie or candy bar without one of the kids seeing it and asking,

Can I have a bite?

It is inconvenient when you have to leave a party when you are really having fun because it is past the kids’ bedtime.

It is inconvenient to leave a restaurant before you are done eating because your child is having a meltdown of epic proportions.

It is inconvenient to pee your pants every time you cough, sneeze, hiccup or laugh.

It is inconvenient to spend 48% of your day driving your kids all over town.

It is inconvenient to fold about fourteen loads of laundry, not put them away immediately, and then have your two-year-old do this to every single pile:

It is inconvenient to unclog toilets and put on sunscreen and referee arguments and put fingers into gloves and buy poster board at 9 p.m. the night before a project is due.

And all these inconveniences become even more frustrating because now we live in a world where everything has become convenient.

You can get in touch with anyone at anytime.

You don’t have to call repeatedly until there isn’t a busy signal.

Do kids even know what a busy signal is?

Do those even exist anymore?

It doesn’t matter.

If you can’t get someone to answer their phone, you can email. Or text.

You don’t have to wait until that one day in December to watch Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

You can watch anything at anytime anywhere on any device.

If you don’t know something, you can Google it and have the answer instantly.

You don’t have to wait a week or even 24 hours to get your pictures developed.

You can look at them immediately.

And not only can you get things instantaneously,

you don’t even have to move to get them.

You can go through a drive through to get money, food, prescriptions. Even alcohol.

And now you can even bypass the drive through.

You can just press a button on your phone, and bam!

Money is deposited.

So all of these inconveniences that come along with having children are magnified in this day and age where there is an app or a website or a button or a drive through to make everything convenient.

Because there is no make my kid do the right fucking thing for once app.

Or drive through.

The only way to make it through those inconveniences and (hopefully) raise a responsible, kind, and compassionate human being is to do things the old school way.

Take your time.

Be patient.

Be consistent.

And remember that these inconveniences are just that.

Annoyances.

Some more annoying than others.

No need to lose your cool.

They suck, but they are part of the job we signed up for.

And as inconvenient as they are, we wouldn’t have it any other way.

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