Parenting: Do they sell a handbook for this stuff?

Kids:  God's revenge for every crappy thing you ever did to your parents.   

Kids: Your penance for every sin you committed in college.  (You know you did!) 

Kids:  Amazing creatures who look human but have no actual trace of human logic or common sense. 

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I swear if you think babies are hard try a pre-teen on for size.   Kids have the most unique and disturbing way of driving adults crazy.  

Invisible objects:

It amazes me how the dishwasher and dirty dishers are invisible.   It is a true and known fact in my house that I have the insane abilty to see dishes when nobody else notices them.   I stood there and watched one morning as my kid pulled open the already running dishwasher (on the dry cycle) and added a dirty bowl and spoon from her cereal.   I was shocked, not because she added dirty dishes to the clean but because she actually knew how to open the dishwasher!  

Sudden Child Deafness Syndrom:

It is also amazing to me too that a child can sit in the same room with you and be playing on their phone and you talk to them for 5 entire minutes while they are looking at your face at least part of the time and it takes them until you enter the 6th minute before they pull off their earbuds (disguised cunningly by their hair) and say innocently "What? Are you talking to me?" like suddenly they realize you are in the room.  It takes every bit of whatever God gave you to not say back "No, I randomly walk around the house talking out loud to myself for no reason what-so-ever because it's fun".  

The kid drop and toss: 

If you come to my house on any given night you will find not only a pair of shoes but a book bag and a jacket sitting in the middle of my living room floor.   Not because I keep them there but because they are dropped by the kid on the way to her room to play on her phone and text her friends.   Seriously, it's like my living room floor grows cloths.  When I asked her why she can't just put her bookbag in her room (Otherwise known as the federal disaster area) she says "Because I have to come out to this room to get to the car tomorrow anyway.   Ah, see logic.  Not sound logic but it is logic.   I, after all, leave my purse on the kitchen counter, or my bedroom, or the table but never do I plop it down in the middle of the floor.   Of course, I too take my shoes off and have to go around the house picking them up occassionally.  Again however, mine are in a corner somewhere where half the world isn't tripping over them in the dark, in the middle of the night. 

Human Garbage Disposal:

Also, have you ever noticed how MUCH kids eat?  I mean, I am not growing kids I am growing a bunch of hobbits.   First breakfast, second breakfast followed by snack, lunch and then comes first dinner (what is consumed just like dinner but happens almost right after the book bag is dropped in the middle of my livingroom floor) and second dinner, because that full blown meal at 5pm wasn't enough and kid must eat again before going to bed and turning into a gemlin.   We go through 2 loaves of bread, 3 lbs of turkey, the Lord only knows how much cheese, more if there is swiss every week.   Husband hates turkey.  I never remember to make a sandwich for lunch unless we are going somewhere on the weekend.   I don't know where all the cheese and meat go.   There must be ghosts in my house making sandwiches at weird times of the day and night.

Alarm Clocks: 

Does anyone remember having to set your alarm clock to wake up in the morning as a kid because one of the first things my mom did was show me how to use it and expect me to get myself out of bed and ready to go to school, if I wanted to eat first that is.   Well, the same kids that have cell phones and could probably redirect the government weapons of mass destruction from those phones, can't seem to hit the big button in the middle and say these words "Siri set alarm for ____" because that is too complicated and it is so much easier to make Mom or Step-Mom wake them up.   Easier for who? Clearly they have never delt with a grumpy, tired, sound sleeper who doesn't want to get out of bed in the morning.  It isn't easier for me. 

Because I said so: 

This is my favorite.  You tell them to do something and they spend 15 minutes explaining to you and negotiating with you why you not only don't know what you are talking about, but why they should do things when they want because it is better.   

Parent: Take a bath.

Kid:  I take my bath at 8pm.

Parent:  It is 7:58.  Start walking to the bathroom, it will take you 2 minutes and while you are going past, why don't you take your book bag in the middle of the floor to your room and put your dirty dishes in the dishwasher? 

Kid:  I want to see the end of this show.

Parent: it's a commercial and it's over. 

Kid: It's not 8 yet. 

Parent: go take a bath right now young lady, BECAUSE I SAID SO!

We all swore we wouldn't do it.  We would never pull the "because I said so" card out and yet, they force us into it.   It's some mass conspiracy that spans generations and creates parent-monsters.  We wake up one day and look in the mirror and see our mother/father and we sigh loudly, nod knowingly and get ready for work. 

Motor Mouth:

We share custody so every weekend we are getting kid on Sunday.  The minute she walks in she starts talking and doesn't stop until sometime Tuesday night.   I mean seriously, it is like her Corn Flakes are laced with speed.    God help you if you try to interupt either because the sudden deafness syndrom magically kicks in without earbuds and they can't hear you trying to tell them to slow down and take a breath for GOODNESS SAKE!!!!  I am so tired just thinking of it.  I then go in to parent self preservation mode.  I nod dumbly and say "Uh-huh" while I pretend to listen to why she is upset with her friend of the week. 

Loss of Human Contact: 

You know how everyone says you lose your friends when you have a kid.   It's true and it doesn't matter how old the kid is when you get them.  I can't talk to my single/no-kid friends because, well, first of all they stopped talking to me when I got married.   Second, if I do see them, (who has time for friends with kids sports, school activites, the odd moment of alone with said husband usually doing gardening and cooking and cleaning, and work anyway?) they want to talk about how horrible it is being alone when all I do is countdown to the rare weekend when I have a day off from being responsible for anyone but me.  (Sorry, but being alone, doesn't sound so bad when you haven't heard quiet in 9 months.)

So I turned to my friends that have kids in the desperate hope they will have some good advice.  You know what I get?  "It doesn't get better they just get mouthier as they get into High School."   "It is always going to be easier for them to drop their books on the floor and for you to wake them. "  They don't stop.  They just keep on keeping on.  It won't end until...well they have kid of their own, I guess. 

I am probably blocking out my childhood memories and I have some odd form of revisionist history happening but I just don't recall being so soundly illogical when I was 11, 12, 13.....and so on.   I am sure my mother would disagree however, kids today have way too much distracting them and not enough focus on things that matter, like putting away the stupid bookbag! 

Seriously, why do kids not come with handbooks?  I realize God isn't taking back the defective kids because they are all defective but couldn't they come with an Users manual or something?   Something to save my sanity when I feel like I am failing because there are dirty socks on the family room rug and they have been there for 3 days and I only just now noticed them because I was tripping over the shoes in the middle of the living room when I fell on my face, rolled into the other room past 5 dirty glasses left on the table and smack into the socks.  Of course, nobody hears my scream because you can't hear over the earbuds or the non-stop talking.  

I received so much positve feedback from so many people about this post that it has become one of my favorite posts.   It is definately my favorite this week so I am linking this up with Katherine's Corner Thursday Favorite Things Blog Hop.   If you haven't been to Katherine's Corner and all the lovely ladies who co-host the hop then please check it out.  They are amazing!