You like me, you really don’t like me
- John DeSantis
- Feb 25, 2020
- 3 min read
Just because you have kids and you love your kids doesn't mean you have to like kids. That may seem a bit harsh and oxymoronic (mostly moronic), but of course you like your kids, you have to, they're half you (whether by biology or happenstance). So if you don't that just means you hate yourself, and that's no way to go about raising someone. I'm talking about kids in general. Think about all the things that your own kids do on a daily basis that make you want to take all their toys and burn them in the yard while they watch in agony.
Generally this doesn’t apply in the honeymoon phase that I estimate lasts the first 18-24 months. Once your kids develop a sense of free will and the physical ability to act on it, things start to happen. First of all, it’s a beautiful moment in their development and you take it in with the wonderment of their first time sleeping through the night, their first babbling attempts at communication, first rolls over, crawling, walking, etc.
Soon after their wants and personalities start to emerge and parents don’t always agree with that, whether it’s not wanting to eat anything other than cookies or turning your walls into a young artist’s canvas. You still love your kids, in part because you're stuck with them for the remaining years of your life in some form or another. And you love them because of the endless magic they‘ve brought unlike anything else in your life. But think about complete strangers and their offspring; you have no emotional ties or reason to care for such people, so you don't have to pretend to. Parents have this silent understanding while silently supporting the resilience of those doing the same job in their own world.
The only people who love all kids all the time, or at least project that notion are most likely people who don't have kids. They have the luxury of experiencing these little wonders in small, controlled doses, getting out of there before things start happening. Think about the zoo for example. Who doesn't love the zoo? But you like it when you go for a few hours, you see the cute spider monkeys swinging around trees, the lions and tigers looking majestic and magical, the zebras prancing around freely. No one wants to be in the zoo after the sun goes down, when the spider monkeys are playing dodgeball with their turds, the lions and tigers are gnawing on huge hunks of raw meat, and the zebras are humping each other like it's the Summer of Love.
Similar logic is applied to children, unless they're your own (or those of your close family and friends), you can take them in doses, and are best to leave them while you're both still happy. We always love our kids, but sometimes we don’t like them, so why should we expect other people to like them?
Take this example. if you’re at a playground with your kid and another random kid pushes them or cuts them on the line to the slide, your kid is likely to forget all of this by the time you leave the park. You, on the other hand will eye this random kid down in his brief childlike momentary lapse of reason, judging him like the delinquent future gas station stickup artist you believe him to be. That could just have easily been your kid in the other’s shoes, being judged spontaneously by another neurotic parent and you wouldn’t blame them, because it’s your kid not theirs.
As long as other people don't generally hate your kids in the small doses they have experienced, then you're doing a good job. It’s expected because no one loves kids all the time, sometimes they can act like little assholes, and that's okay. Adults don't like all adults either, frankly because some of us can act like big assholes, so this is just a natural progression. If we're nothing else we're consistent!
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