It's a phrase Daxton uses from time to time. I think he really believes it. It's not like he tells us we're the "worst parents ever" when he's mad at us, and then tells us later that we're the best parents ever. All we ever get is, "You're the WORST parents EVER!"
Grady's picked up on this, and has said it a few times as well.
Tonight Daxton actually said, "My friends are SO lucky! They have nice parents." This was after he had dumped the remnants of his spaghetti dinner on the floor. You see, he was "attempting" to get it in the garbage can, but was so concerned with not getting spaghetti on the Wii remote he was holding, that he dumped it on the floor. Naturally, I made him clean up the mess. The WORST parent EVER! Can you believe my audacity?
Usually Brandon and I just ignore him, but tonight Brandon told Daxton that someday he'd realize we weren't so bad after all. This reminded me of a story from my childhood. It's a story that gets told often when my family is around. I think you'll enjoy it.
I was probably about 10 or 11 years old. It was probably a Saturday. What I remember is that my dad had decided us kids would weed the "garden" that day. It wasn't much of a garden. It was mostly a dirt plot that he had tilled months ago, with plans to plant a garden. When the garden didn't get planted, the weeds grew instead. It was our job to rid the dirt of the pesky weeds. Well, this was not my idea of a good time. I'm not sure what I was threatened with, but it must have been something that got me out there in the heat to pull those blasted weeds. I was out there pullin' them, but I was NOT happy about it, and I made sure the whole neighborhood knew it. Each weed I heaved out of the ground brought with it a hateful, "I HATE YOU!" Yes, it's true. I was screaming how much I hated my dad OVER and OVER again. I'm pretty sure this went on for at least 10 minutes. When I came inside, I remember saying to my parents that I wished I had different parents. They told me, very calmly, that they were willing to bet I wouldn't be happy if I were to go live with a friend and had different parents. I had a friend whose parents weren't nearly as diligent about discipline as mine were, and those were the parents I had chosen to go live with. That's about all of my memories of that day, but I remembered that "talk" MANY different times after that... mostly when I realized I had the BEST PARENTS EVER.
Hopefully Daxton will learn to love us for our strict rules before he hates us for life. Sigh...
3 comments:
I will always remember when I was told "I hate you" for the first time. It was followed with the comment, "I want GRANDMA to be my new mom!" :)
Eek, I dread the day of the word "hate" coming from my sweet boys' lips...I totally had a similar yardwork experience when I was young and my dad would make us do terrible things like pull thousands of weeds and organize the garage. It took all Saturday to do. I hated him so much for it. Now I am my Dad. I swore the only reason my Dad wanted kids was for free slave labor. But I still partly believe this to be true. ;)
My little Emily is 3 now (you met her when she was a baby). The other day she said, "Mommy, I hate you! I like Tyfani...I'm going there." She already knows that Tyf rocks!
The other thing is you know you're a GOOD parent when the kids don't like you anymore! That's when lessons are being learned. Good luck with the "hate" stage - I hope it doesn't last too long!
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