Your Kids Will Make You a Liar

It's about now that you begin to realize one thing about your kids. They know how to
make a liar out of you.

First it's in the promises you made that they so quickly undo. You won't let your living
room become a second toy room? Sure, go ahead, see how long that lasts.


You won't let your kids sleep in your bed? Eat candy? Go to school with mismatched
socks? Read children's literature so boring it makes your eyes bleed?

Good luck with that.

It's all happened and then some.

And 6 years in, you'd think I'd learn something about being proven wrong by the sheer
power of a child's will.

Two weeks ago I confessed she was better at soccer than I'll ever be.

This week, she took a page out of her Mom's playbook.

Play with your hair. Play with your shirt. Play with your nose. Play anything, really,
besides the game of soccer.

This is parenting. Realizing that the kid you knew a day ago is another one entirely 24
hours later.

They change that fast.

Our job is even more nebulous. To parent, of course. But to do so from the sidelines,
carefully munching on the words so naively spoken not a few moments ago. You must
chew at least 25 times before swallowing, naturally. No guzzling. And for goodness
sakes, don't do it with your mouth open; you weren't raised in a barn.

Or maybe you were. Because we are, of course, older than dirt, the hills, and Methuselah combined, and we unfurled fully grown from our own mothers with the sole purpose of being THEIR mommies and daddies. There was no time for learning all the social niceties when you had to hit the ground running with the knowledge on everything from how to accurately pinpoint the exact location of the Big Dipper (thank you Google Sky) and appropriately affix a set of cotton candy pink shin guards to a stick thin shin.

Liars we may be, but at this time we are still geniuses, knowers of all that needs to be known,  thinkers of all that needs to be thought. Who has time to think of the repercussions of a certain declaration when there are math problems to be solved and there's macaroni and cheese to be made - by scratch - before bathtime?

I may be a bit of a liar, but I'm making up for it.