March 2 2017

We Messed Up Our Kids

We are good parents for the most part. Our kids might even agree. However, in the process of raising them to be the wonderful productive members of society that they are today, we may have seriously messed them up.

First we had a rule that they could only cry when they got “hurt” if there was blood involved. Next if they kept whining about some painful thing, we would tell them, “Don’t worry honey. If it still hurts tomorrow, we will just cut it off.” You know what? NOTHING ever hurt tomorrow! Now that seriously cut down on the whining around our house. We also wouldn’t let them use a band-aid unless they were actively bleeding. Don’t judge! Those cute cartoon band-aids were not cheap! I like to think we were teaching them to deal with the things life throws at them in a mature way.

I might need to preface this next one with the fact that I was going to school to get an elementary education degree when the kids were preschoolers, so I may or may not have used them as Guinna pigs to test out educational theories. So whenever we were having M&Ms or Skittles as treats, the kids would have to pour them all out of them bag and count them to see who had more and who had less. Ok, that may be why they grew up to be competitive. Then, once they figured out who was the winner, I mean who had more candies, I would take the extra from the kid who got more, just to even them out of course. Then we would sort the candies by color and line them up like giant bar graphs. There was always lots of conversation revolving around which color had more or less. Or, if we eat 4 green ones how many will be left? How many do you have when you add the red ones and the blue ones together? How many more yellow than brown ones do you have? I can tell, you are judging again. Stop that! They liked it, thought it was fun even. Apparently the brainwashing worked so well that they tell me they still play with their candies like this before eating them.

Another thing we may have done to them was kept a peeled whole carrot in a tall glass of cold water in the refrigerator to give them when they were teething. Our oldest did this a lot. The cold carrot soothed the gums and if his little teeth managed to scrape some off it wouldn’t hurt him a bit. He would be strapped in his high chair just having a good time gumming that carrot. When he was done we would rinse it and put it back in the glass of water to keep it at the ready. Now I’m not saying he wouldn’t love carrots today if we hadn’t done this to him, but you never know.

They also grew up watching those geeky science shows on TV like CSI, Numb3rs and Criminal Minds.

Now lest you judge us as terrible parents, let me tell you about my two college graduates, I mean kids. My oldest, well he grew up loving carrots, got a degree in physics education and became a high school physics teacher. My baby girl grew up loving all sorts of fruits and veggies, got a degree with dual majors in Biology and Forensic Science and dual minors in Chemistry and Criminal Justice. She currently works in a lab by day and serves in a bar on weekends.

So, how did your parents mess you up? How have you messed up your own kids? Please, do tell.