Feb. 17: Bad parental behavior

The following thoughts are brought to you by a particularly exasperating hour in my recent past, the letter ‘S’ and a generous grant by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Or maybe not those last two things.

When I was little, I remember thinking that my parents could get along with any of my friends’ parents because parents always get along with other parents. They have their kids in common and they’re grown-ups, so that automatically makes them friends, right?

Then I became a parent.

Victor and I have been lucky; we like most of the other parents we’ve met and can easily endure a couple hours together at birthday parties or school functions. There are some parents we like better than others, for sure, and I admit to subtly nudging my kids in certain directions: “Jack, Blaine is a cool kid—you should be BFF’s with him!” and “Katie, why don’t we invite Sophie’s family over?” But both of our kids are approaching an age where our approval of their friends isn’t necessary. We’re bound to run into some parents that we really dislike, that we really DON’T want to hang with, that make us so uncomfortable, we don’t want our kids going to their houses. Like that one girl, whose dad does the creepy staring-at-the-moms thing? Well, “[the girl] is nice but um… she lives too far away and um… I don’t have her mom’s phone number and um… let’s call Sophie instead!”

A couple years ago there was a helicopter mom I used to have to deal with during class parties and field trips—she was always willing to volunteer, for which I was appreciative, but the woman drove me insane. An example? She brought apples to the Valentine’s Day party “because the kids have enough candy” and then got mad when she had only managed to get rid of a few slices but had cut up, like, 15 whole apples. She told me over and over that she never let her kids have candy at home and they only drank water, never juice or (god forbid!) pop, etc. Every time I had to be around her I wanted to punch her square in the face by the end of the day.

Petty, Jen? Oh, most certainly!

But I never punched that helicopter mom. Really! I never punched her because I’m so mature ‘n stuff. Also, she’s at a different school now so I’ve lost the urge.

I’ve figured out (remember, because I’m so mature ‘n stuff) that our reasons for liking or disliking people as adults aren’t all that different from the reasons we liked or disliked people as kids. “She’s a flake” is the old “she won’t share.” “He never shuts up at meetings” was once “he brings weird stuff in his lunch.” “She’s a glory-seeker” used to be “her backpack smells like cats.”

I think the biggest difference is that, as adults, we’re supposed to hide our dislike for (or frustration with) other parents as much as we can. COUGH COUGH, right? Because sometimes it’s very difficult to hide it, even for the sake of our kids. In fact, sometimes that dislike or frustration turns us into bratty kids again. Sometimes we are terrible, terrible examples for our children and kinda suck at being very adult about anything at all.

And sometimes we’re just glad to know other adults who share our dislike and/or frustration so that we can vent a little with each other and then deal with the situation in a grown-up way. And for those adults in my life, I am so very, very grateful.