Karma is a Bitch

Karma is a goddamn bitch.

You know who I’ve always detested? Those women that claim they know everything about parenting and kids and food and the universe. They begin their sentences with phrases like, “It’s all very simple…”

Listen lady: nothing about children is simple. Nothing about parenting is simple. Nothing about vaccines, parenting styles, food allergies, mommy-guilt or the freaking universe is simple. And it is immensely offensive when someone tries to explain in three words or less what you’re doing wrong with your children. Or at least implying it.

But I became one of these women. On accident, of course.

My oldest child is a girl. People sometimes marvel at her listening skills. They say things like, “Wow, you barely baby proofed?”

Or, “She’ll sit in timeout? How do you do that?”

And I usually reply, only slightly smugly, “It’s all about follow-through.”

But, being the spiteful and humorous bitch that she is, karma gave me a son. He is beautiful, sweet and intelligent. And I have done everything the same with him that I did with his older sister; I began time-outs young, I follow-through when I say I’m going to do something, and I set limits so he knows what is OK and what is not.

And this kid…this kid makes me look a fool.

The first round I didn’t baby proof much; I had one child (translation: I watched her more closely) and she was good about knowing what cupboards were OK to open and that the toilet paper was off limits. She really had very little desire to explore by herself.

My son, however, given the exact same circumstances, ignores every rule. He consistently makes toilet paper piles and he is forever opening cabinets that I tell him not to. I found him in the bathroom last week making a freaking “sandcastle” out of Ajax.

He literally laughs in time-out. I stick him in a corner, I explain quickly the reason he’s in there and I walk away. He sometimes stays, sometimes not. But if he does stay, he smiles the whole time. I saw him playing pat-a-cake with himself in there yesterday.

This kid doesn’t give a shit about pleasing me.

My baby, with those deep hazel eyes and pudgy hands that love to cup my face–is a nightmare. I love him but he’s a disaster. He also has become a biter which is a habit that I cannot seem to break. He knows better than to bite me so he waits until he’s alone with his sister, hidden in a tent or behind a chair, and he sets his teeth into her like a dog with lock-jaw.

Again, I did the same discipline as with my daughter: put him right in time-out. I explain how we don’t bite people. He hugs her afterwards (a 16-month-old’s version of an apology) and at some point in the near future, he does it again. (I’ve thought about biting him back, but I’m not quite there yet.)

“It’s a boy thing,” one of my friends consoled me.

Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. The only thing I feel comfortable taking away from the experience is this: don’t ever be the parent that thinks you have something under control. And don’t mock other parents when it looks like they do not. Because before you know it, you’re going to have the kid who makes a ritual of taking off his diaper at nap time and smearing his own shit all over his bedroom wall.

Believe you me; karma has a dark and dirty sense of humor.