Child Rearing

I think they call it child rearing because raising a child really is a pain in the ass, or rear, sometimes. Not sometimes, OFTEN.

I am a single mom and I gotta tell you, it is incredibly rewarding to help shape and mold another human being, but it is also exhausting and challenging and if you mess the kid up you can’t blame anyone else, like politicians do. You do the best you can with what you know and hope it all comes out in the wash, along with the skidmarks on the kid’s underwear.

My son is 11 going on 50, so most arguments or debates, he wins hands down. If he doesn’t become a lawyer, I will be shocked. I want him to be a computer geek because then he can get rich and buy me a mansion and take care of me. I keep telling him to go get a job, because he is rather brilliant, but he throws those damn child labor laws into my face.

I am lucky that my family is all near-by. They all love my son and vice versa, although some of them refuse to return my calls and texts when I ask them to babysit. What’s up with that? My mom lives around the corner and is really a big part of my son’s life. She spoils him rotten, then tells me not to spoil him rotten. I guess she doesn’t want me stealing her job!

My kid has a chronic illness and a minor disability so we spend a lot of time with him being sick, or at therapy or doctors, but he is a great kid, with a ton of friends, all of whom know a little too much about sex for my liking, as I discovered recently while listening to their conversations over SKYPE.

They all play Minecraft and Halo and Xbox live and it’s hilarious to hear them all talking at once when they are SKYPING. My kid has his own servers, and is such a total brilliant geek with this stuff, I try to stay out of it. But when I hear “penis” and “pedo” and “boobs” I pay attention a little. It’s pretty innocent stuff, but I am at that point where I think the birds and the bees may be hovering outside the window, demanding explanation.

Yay.

I will be writing about my kiddo a lot. He is a huge part of my life. I just hope he doesn’t read these and then tell me how embarrassed he is that I write about him and that I owe him some expensive video games to make up for it.

He will do that. And he will win.