Finally Got My Parenting Report Card Back.

I know you're mad. I honestly tried to piece together the best I could with what I had. What I had inside, what your dad provided, what support I could get from friends and family. No one gets perfect. To me, you deserved perfect, so I tried to give you the best things that would make you smart and independent. I tried to give you tools to eat from the earth, and not junk. To love all kinds of music. To love to wear secondhand clothes, and not get caught up on material things. I tried to teach you to love simplicity, and not need fancy and glittery. To love all types of people. I let you guys dye your hair blue, when other parents freaked out. I taught you manners, so you could walk into any room and know that you belong there. I taught you that you are worth it. You are worth it. You were always worth it. When others told me you weren't, I insisted that you were.

-The most sick thing that you ever did is made us believe that everything we went through was normal. I've lived and stayed with so many other people, I think it's safe to say it was not normal. I'm not okay.-

I don't know anyone who had "normal". When you start talking to them, it starts to come out. Their dad was gay, or an alcoholic, or they were on welfare, or they kept moving to avoid the police, or their mother committed suicide, or their mother wasn't really their mother...
Humans of New York shows us that, too. Normal people walking around, but they all carry this story, of how things weren't normal. Some people have horrible pasts to overcome.

-But even through all that shit, they still managed to give their children the best childhood they could. You did amazing things as a parent and you tried your best, but you would purposely make us feel like shit. You had so much built up anger that you didn't know what to do with it.-

I had my kids and thought as long as I didn't make the mistakes my mom had made, it would be ok. I thought, since I had child development training, and early childhood education, that I could do ok. I read books, and took classes.
And I didn't make the mistakes my mom made. I made all new ones.
But when you're in it, and there's no way out, and everyone around you has different ideas of what needs done to your kids to make them behave, you start to lose your bearings.
But I always got up. Wyle E Coyote. Bill Clinton. Oprah. The little acorn dude in Ice Age. Lady Gaga. Cher. You get back up. You try again. And again.

-You can't hold things that toddlers did against the adults they have become. You should have not had kids if you still had all these issues.-

But you see, you don't even know you still have the issues, lol. You find out five and ten years in. You don't know how you will feel about things, even if you think you do. I always knew if I had a son I'd keep his hair short. I always said that. Til I got a son. And he wanted long hair. Lots of people criticized my parenting then, but I didn't care. If my son wanted long hair, so what?
It's a million little decisions like that every day, with the world- your family, friends, tv, movies, commercials, all telling you what you should do, and it's all different.
Every day, a million choices, a million decisions. When to push, when to let them fall, when to do it yourself, when to make them learn it. Do you push your kids to brush their teeth, or let them get meth mouth?
And you do it on lack of sleep, lack of money, lack of support, lack of love, because the kids will hate you. God, they will hate you, no matter what. They will hate you when you pour your blood out and you are sick, and in the hospital, they will hate you because they had to miss pokemon. If I could do it over, I'd do lots of things differently. But we don't get to do it over. We have to live with the mistakes. That's the curse.

"You know, come to think of it. You really don't have to be a good parent, so long as you teach your kids forgiveness."  ~Rich Wellner