2nd Parenting adventure and I’m still getting my ass kicked…

Todd Preston
Aug 23, 2017 · 5 min read

Some days I look at my children and wonder how the hell I am going to pull this off? Parenting is an extension of your dysfunctional childhood. Knowing you barely survived your parents is an aberration blinking like a sign in neon lights. Or your parents surviving you… I have been present at 7 births. My father was present at 10: actually it was 9; he missed the tenth while retrieving the video camera from the car.

One would think you would be an expert at raising children, or having them, nothing could be further from the truth. I am an expert in knowing how horribly difficult it is raising them. My first wife delivered 4 girls and I was their father for about a decade, give or take a few years. My current wife has delivered 3: two girls; and a couple months shy of my 44th birthday, our sneaky son. During his freestyle swimming dash for the egg he somehow managed to sneak right passed the IUD… Proving Murphy’s Law is alive and well.

Life has been nothing like I thought it would be at 20… I planned it out in my head like a good little Mormon boy. I would have told you how many kids I was going to have and what my perfect little wife would be like. My world was insulated with a white Jesus and a white God. How could I go wrong with the third member of the godhead; the Holy Spook as a personal companion. I was set: all I had to do was avoid reading the wrong books.

Three more children and wife number 2 and once again a deviation from our original plan, as life often arranges it. As my adopted forefathers taught and practiced (Polygamy): a really bad fucking idea, I say!!! Handling one woman is tough, why would you want another. Wife number 2 happened a couple years after wife number 1 gleefully divorced me. In other words: I have only been married to one woman at a time. Being married to both at the same time would have ended eerily similar to a Shakespearian tragedy.

Mormon men at the turn of the twentieth century, married em… under age, over age, sisters, daughters, cousins, neighbours, hell; even other mens wives if they were away at war or a church mission. Polyandry was inspired and practiced by the Mormon founder Joseph Smith, which eventually led to his inevitable and timely death. Although with apt study of Mormon history it wasn’t so timely. If he would have escaped the angry mob of cheated husbands his actions would have eventually buried him and most of all: buried his bullshit stories. Which would have saved thousands if not millions a lot of misery and grief then, and centuries later.

I often wonder why we think we have the answers at 20, and if we don’t we think we know where to find them. Just google… Right!!! How do you ask google what its like to raise children? I recently read an article on marriage and children. It high-lighted having children and how it leads incrementally toward divorce. When it comes to parenting your style will surprise you as much as it will your partner. There is no right or wrong when it comes to parenting. What works for one kid won’t for the other. And what works for one parent can be cataclysmic for the other.

If I could give parenting advice: don’t have children. Period… Surely someone will create an app for having children via virtual reality instead of reality. When my wife hands me our 8 month old son right before dashing out the door and the toddlers are screaming down the house, her beaming with a smile. “See you later buddy, oh!!! Good luck.” I take a deep breath and hope like hell we all survive. We have so far, but the so far part is still very much in play.

Most days we are surviving: picture a sinking ship, taking on buckets of water and your only chance at survival is floating. The scrambling chaos of keeping the children safe overloads your synaptic firing into fraying rather than efficiency. I feel like a puppet from the muppets being pulled through a meat grinder and then screamed at for not doing it quickly. The little shits win almost every time. And their adorableness saves them.

Kindergarten drop off yesterday for my 3-year-old was more an exasperated fuck you… than a pleasant good-bye. Not a fuck you to the teachers, they saved my day or my kid. It was a quiet fuck you to the kid… I know right! Your thinking bad parenting, and I’m with ya… It is bad parenting to yell (fuck you) to your 3-year-old. I even flipped the bird in her curly blonde shit head direction. Pretty sure no one saw. In fact my asshole 3-year-old didn’t see either. But it felt good. And after having all my buttons pushed by this beautiful little creature, I was reminded of all my shittiness and pulling off this parenting thing is similar to skating down a steep hill for the first time.

To my twenty something self… Its okay to fail, its okay to be wrong, because you will fail and you will be wrong. Pulling off my second parenting adventure is just as tough as the first one. But this time I have a voice, it isn’t always a voice of reason, or justice, but it is a voice. Whether parenting together or solo having a voice matters. In having a voice you give your child a voice. Having a voice is the heart of a democracy. Being silenced is the heart of tyranny and leads dictatorships.

In some ways I failed my first set of children and live with the remains of a broken heart. The unplanned second is a redemption to be a better parent, to be better at being human, and to be better at loving those we love. To be a better example of kindness over rightness and to teach children critical thinking in the wake of prophets, demagogues, who use prejudice and popular desires over rational thought.

We all fail, yet in our failure we cannot retreat, it is in the retreat where we fail again. Our egregious history shines light on a better way rather than a failed one. Parenting forces us to look at the shadows within. We either awake to our deepest illusions or we close the door. Parenting keeps opening this door, over and over again… until your deepest fears and demons are found and all your shit is revealed. Yes!!! These little toddler assholes become our greatest teachers. Revealing more about yourself in one year than 7 years at Harvard. But remember you will still get your conscious parenting ass kicked in the process.

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Todd Preston

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In my twenties I knew everything, my thirties I lost everything, today I question everything…

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