Your Confessions

My family shows well.  Our five-year-old Joe Frank is polite and easy going at school and in the homes of his friends.   Our baby twins Bea and Alfie rarely cry at the super market and their double cuteness charms just about anyone they encounter.  My husband Eric and I generally present ourselves as relaxed, flexible parents who rarely raise our voices to our seemingly obedient and pleasant children.    

However.  Should someone stumble upon our lovely little family at around 9:30 pm during the nightly bedtime routine, or rather fiasco, they would get a glimpse of the harsh but very genuine reality of raising a family.  Hungry, tired, dirty parents trying to feed, clean, and tuck into bed hungry, tired, dirty kids; racing the clock so they will be well rested for the next day and we will be able to crash before midnight.  Welcome to the danger zone: a volatile combination of fatigue, time constraints and repressed emotions.  This is when children push all the buttons at the same time, with seemingly no regard for the beasts their parents are fighting to restrain within themselves.  Pushed to the brink of control, we parents lose the grip on rational, constructive parenting skills and let fly those horrible one-liners that we immediately regret.  You know what I mean:  the words we are sure will land our precious children in therapy.

Each family has its own version of the danger zone.  For many people, the volatile time of day is morning- getting dressed, fed and out the door in time for school.  For others, it’s any time any place. Whatever the time of day, the scenario usually involves the typical factors of fatigue, time constraints and repressed emotions, both for the child and the parent.

As I said, most of my family’s less-than-ideal parenting moments occur at bedtime. 

The other night amidst two screaming babies and a wired five-year-old who just would not listen to my words, I yelled,

“Are you really so stupid that you can’t see I’m about to kill you!?”

Appalled but not altogether surprised by my own horrible expressions, I began fishing for quotes from other parents. Rather than feeling embarrassed about the horrible things they’ve said to their children, most people expressed relief in confessing their parental sins as well as camaraderie in realizing almost all parents harbor an inner beast.   I was so thrilled by the wave of conversation my little project evoked that I am resolved to create a larger forum – perhaps a blog devoted entirely to parental confessions!  After all, we all need to vent that repressed badness we harbor all day long. . . . .

Some of the most memorable quotes went as follows:

“I am going to rip your face off!  I mean, you get a time out”.

“If you throw that in the toilet, I will throw you out the window”.

“What you just did is retarded and you’re stupid”.

"Well, you're the worst little boys in the world!"  (In response to "I hate you!" from one son and "You're the worst mother in the world" from the other (uttered almost simultaneously):

“Yes, we’re almost there! Shut up!” 

"You're sleeping outside tonight".

For many parents, it’s not what you say, so much as how you say it.  Polite requests uttered in demonic voices seemed to be a technique of choice.

Then there are the actions or rather reactions.  A friend of mine who is one of the most patient mothers I know recently shared this story:

I remember one time when my son was probably 3, when I got so frustrated with him as he grabbed all his books off the bookshelves and threw them on the floor (I don't remember if it was just for fun, or if he was having a tantrum) that I came into the room, yelled "let me help you!" and violently shook the bookshelf so that most of the books crashed off onto the floor. What a monster, me! (Is it a coincidence that monster and mother have so many letters in common?).

The vast majority of parents I interviewed admitted saying horrible things to their children, then immediately deleting the words from their memory.  If you cannot recall right now but feel the need to confess in the future, or just wish to reassure yourself that you are a normal parent, stay tuned for a future forum dedicated especially to you: the overstressed, good parent who occasionally vents through words instead of actually killing your children.