I am not ready to be a mom…

I had an interesting day and came to a totally honest revelation on my way home. I am not ready to be a mom. Which kinda sucks ass, because I have a 5 year old son to raise. But I have decided, I am not ready to be a mom.

I had a decent day with him but he is in a weird, whining about everything temper tantrum, baby/big boy stage. Which makes me want to strangle him on a frequent basis. But heaven forbid I raise my voice to him or anything in public. I might be called a bad mom.  But then, he did it. He did the one thing that horrifies me to the point I am ready to find a hole and hide and never come out. I yelled at him to “Get over here RIGHT NOW” and as he approached me, he cowered down. Like he thought I was going to beat him soundly. And my son gets spanked so rarely I almost died. As a large group of people stood staring, hands ready to call Child Protective Services on me, I froze. And decided, I am not ready to be a mom.

Emotionally, I do not think I am cut out to be a parent. I go from loving him with every fiber of my being so hard it hurts, to being so horrified or disappointed when he makes a mistake, in under 3 seconds. Being a parent is enough to make anyone understand what it is like to be bi-polar. You can be happy as hell one minute and sad as hell the next. Every single day he comes home with a report about being too much in class. Too loud, too wiggly, too talkative. And it drives me INSANE. Because he has it in him to be a good…no GREAT kid. So maybe the issue is not him. It’s me. Because I am not ready to be a mom.

I went over this with a friend of mine. Bless her and hand her the wine, because she has FIVE boys. FIVE. Ages 14 down to 2. And the best news I heard all day, was her telling me… she is not ready to be a mom either. I have another friend, I call her my Martha Stewart friend. Because everything in her life has gone perfectly and planned. (Only no jail time for her, LOL) But even she was not ready. Being a parent SUCKS. Honestly it does. Anyone who thinks it does not is full of it. It also is AWESOME. It is heartache and headaches and love and intensity and chaos and happiness and love and hate. It is amazing. It is awful. But heaven forbid you EVER mention the awful. Because when you do…you prove…you are not ready to be a mom.

I am not ready to raise someone and turn them into an amazing human being. I have not even figured out what the hell I want for and from myself.
I am not ready for the struggles of parenthood. The hugs and heartaches. The tears. Being torn between tough love and wanting to wrap up and protect.
I am not ready for the nights without sleep when night terrors rock his little body, and the pain that comes from knowing there is NOTHING I can do to make it better.
I am not ready for being looked at and made to feel like a failure as a parent because he can not stay in control in school.
I am not ready to face he might have an issue like a learning disability, ADD, or other special needs.
I am not ready to face any of it.

But then again, I have found strength for him I have not ever shown for myself. I spent YEARS with my own health struggles and never ever fought for my doctors to really hear me or look at me.  Then he got sick. And sicker. And I fought tooth and nail for them to hear me. Something was NOT right with my son. Finally, after 2 years, someone listened. Turns out this mommy was not crazy. He was not textbook but he DID have a problem. (Severe GERD which he still has now at age 5)  Because I knew something was wrong. He was being bullied by a kid in our neighborhood. I helped him learn to stand up for himself. He got the bloody lip to prove it. But now the other kids do not pick on him. I taught him to take care of his friends, and when a bully was pushing around a friend he thinks of as his little brother, he came to his defense. He struggles to be brave, while still being so little. But he is getting more and more confident each day. He is well spoken, and intelligent and full of energy and enthusiasm. So maybe, just maybe I have it it me.

I do it my own way. My mom, my family, none of them get it. But he has been doing ok. So maybe I am not ready. But I think I have it in me to keep trying. Because, lets me honest. Even if you have 5 kids or 15, you are never really ready.

Is TV really the root of all evil?

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I will have to get back to you, I am watching TV……
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OK sorry… lets chat while there’s a commercial …I get this question all the time from fellow mommies and daddies. Why do “experts” insist TV is so bad for our kids? Limit the time every day? Well if I do that….OH LOOK Press Dough! I should buy that for him for his birthday, then we can spend some time together and make cool cookies!….Sorry where was I? Ok, so I need to limit my sons TV time each day. I can sort of understand how the “experts” feel. But at the same time…Nick Jr is “like Pre-School on TV” and it totally buys me time to…..OH….check that out! I did not even know they made Snuggies that have sports teams on them. Maybe I can buy my husband one of them for his birthday….. Ooops sorry… hang on while I turn the volume up so he can hear his show…… Back to the TV debate. I get the experts being concerned about the amount of TV we let our kids watch. Kids today do NOT get enough time outdoors. They do not have as much imagination or creativity as they used to. Right? I mean the fact my son watches 2 hours a day is apparently akin to murdering him… OH murder…I almost forgot…I need to program my DVR to record that special on serial killers….

This Box will kill our children….

On to the serious part of this conversation. Look, I totally understand why people may look down on TV and kids.  The above is an almost exact commentary from an ACTUAL conversation I had on the phone with a friend of mine a few nights ago. Between the two of us we were distracted by the shiny box about 30 times. I DO understand the controversy. Here is what it boils down to….

Letting your kids watch TV is not the end of the world. If it were not for the Qubo channel I would NEVER get anything done. EVER. With my husbands work schedule, and mine (I am a working momma) our house would NEVER get clean. EVER.  I can do what needs to be done courtesy of Nick Jr or Qubo. The  thing is, you have to watch what they watch and see what they see. Is it helping or hurting? As I have stated in the past…I do use TV to help me babysit my kids. But at least it is Qubo not FearNet. (and as an FYI to all people with Verizon FiOs, it should be channel 491 for you. You are welcome) 

My son’s newest obsession? Rescue Heroes. And as a result of that show he never ever fights me on using his seat belt. Thanks to that Moose thing in between shows on Nick Jr, he turns off lights and likes to help me sort the recycling. Thanks to Sid the Science Kid he got his last round of shots without a lot of fuss. Because the shows reinforce what values I, as his parent, am trying to teach him. My own mother in law used to get frustrated with TV. THEN she saw what I am letting him watch. And she started to ask him, where did he learn things… “Oh well I talked about it with mommy and daddy after we saw it on Diego.”

He knows all kinds of insane words and has a vocabulary of a 9 year old, at age 5. Why? Because I never ever tolerated baby talk with him, and because of a little show called WORD GIRL. He is learning his letters and life lessons from me. And a little reinforcement from Super Why is not going to hurt a thing. Thanks Alfred the Hedgehog for showing him to “deduce”. We made him a detective kit and went out and collected clues to find his missing Spiderman. I can not begin to thank the Jim Henson company and Children’s Television Workshop enough for a little invention called Sesame Street. It opened the doors to a whole new world of programming. All of which, if you keep an eye and ear on it, is really NOT so bad. Some of it is nothing but mind numbing horror and madness. Pointless drivel. But not all of it.

So this is what I say to the experts:

Dear Experts,

While I appreciate your concerns that my child watches too much TV, I respectfully ask you to shut the hell up. If I see he is not getting enough exercise or starts having behavioral problems I will re-evaluate my parenting skills. But to tell me TV is the cause of all his problems? You are full of shit.

Sincerely,
Mom-troversial

The day after that…

Its always the day after that the real feelings come out. I wish when we were having a fight I could just skip the bullshit and name calling and move right to the part where we actually talk to one another and communicate.  Its always the next day or the day after that when we start to actually talk again. I almost died of shock though. I saved it just because I do not think anyone would believe it. A text message saying “I know. You are right. Lets talk about that tonight” Say WHAT? I saved it. I even forwarded it to my best friend who did not believe I had actually gotten that text. She was there when the fight began. So she figured it would be me to concede. WRONG. I am like a pit-bull. I do not give in. Period. If I did give in I would not have become who I am today…a cynical, sarcastic, twisted individual.

Welcome to my world. I was asked by a good friend of mine to share a little about what makes me “Mom-troversial”. First and foremost, I am a mom, but I am doing it MY way. Which may not be the right way. I get told all the time “You should not talk to a kid that way” “You should not spank” “You should not let him do this or watch that” I seem to start drama and contreversy with every parenting decision I make. Mom-troversial.

But I get told all the time that my kid is a great kid, so I must be doing something right. We recently moved into the neighborhood and every single neighbor has told me I have the smartest kid with the most attitude and funniest personality in the whole ‘hood. And he got to be who he is because I am that mom. The one who takes her kid outside and gets nose to nose and tells the kid to the kids face “you are acting like a shit, you are embarrassing me, and this is going to stop. NOW”  I am that mom who tells my son to get dressed because we are leaving in 5 minutes, and when he decides playing is more important, takes him out of the house, in the cold, in his pajama pants, no shirt, one sock, and no shoes. I am the mom who has friends watching to make sure he is safe, but tells him we are leaving right now, and if you are not in the car I am going without you. Then proceeds to get in my car and pull away. (Only around the block, but I did come back and he did learn his lesson, now when I say I am leaving he gets right into the car)  I am that mom who gets so frustrated I just give up and burst into tears. I am even that mom who told a friend of hers that is a policeman to take me away and tell the kid he  was getting a new mommy since he could not listen to me.  (True story, scared the hell out of him for awhile. Now he tells me when I say no to things to have the cops give him a new mommy who says yes all the time, so that one, kind of bit me in the ass)

I will be sharing lots of randomness here. my TSOTD (true stories of the day) which for the most part will make you laugh or cry. My best advice as a mom and career nanny. (Yes people pay me to raise their kids. I have not screwed any of them up in 15 years, so my own should be a cake walk, right? HA! A lot of the time my posts will make little to no sense because I will fire them out as fast as my brain can let them go. And THAT will be a train wreck. But I am out there now. Time to fly. 🙂