Annoyances of Parenthood?

The hardest thing has been trying to get my daughter to get up and go to school on time, day after day after day, while she hides in the bathroom and/or feigns illness.

 

I have to say the most interesting part of having to adult kids is seeing how your choices actually worked out.
For example we made the choice to start sex education early and talk to them as adults about the subject.
Made sure they knew when it was time they could come to us about getting birth control.
I also had a day care so they were helping to take care of babies and little kids at an early age.
They never got the idea that babies were dolls you could dress up.
They understood what little pooping, crying, messy, monsters, babies could be.

So now neither one of my daughters plans on having kids.
Being a grandpa isn't that important to me so it's not a worry but it's interesting how these things turn out.

 

As soon as the girls were old enough I started letting them pick out what they wanted to wear.
As long as it suited the weather and wasn't full of holes, I didn't care if it matched, was cute, etc.
The idea was to give them empowerment and the teach them about making choices.
Of course as adults it means they keep showing me pictures of themselves and saying "Why did you let me go out of the house in that?"

I was terrible at brushing their hair.
There was a lot of screaming and crying involved.

One time a PWKBTY (parent who knows better than you) told me I carried my youngest around too much.
She needs to be allowed to explore the world, I was told.
So I set my kiddo down and she promptly waddled over to the PWKBTY's son and sat on him.

 

My wife and I worked opposing shifts when our daughters were growing up. There were a fair number of WTF moments when we compared notes.

"You can't give 4 month olds chocolate, they tend to be allergic to it" ... "Well, yours aren't "
"You let them climb 12' in the air to go down a slide" ... " Well ya, it's kinda necessary if you want to go down"
"Their shirt and pants don't match" ... "They are wearing both a shirt and pants, deal with it"

My eldest offspring just fininished her level 2 testing for National Ski Patrol, yesterday. She is now certified to haul dad down an expert run in a tobogan. Looks like starting ski lessons when she was 3 may have been a good idea.

My younger daughter is on her last month of student teaching. I guess my throwing a temper tantrum at her high school was a good thing. "Not every kid graduates High School" my ass, she'll be teaching it next fall.


These days the biggest annoyance of parenthood is the expectation that grandma and grandpa aren't doing anything and are free to babysit at a moments notice. Ummm, empty nest syndrome hasn't occured, yet. Love our grandkids; but if you don't plan things a week or so in advance, we are likely busy.