Schooled

by Ted Fox

With parenting, you often have to satisfy yourself with smaller victories—or just not losing too badly.

Being a stay-at-home parent is like this paradox: on the one hand, you’re never alone, because your kids always need something, but on the other, it’s easy to feel completely isolated.

I wondered why there wasn’t some way to have your kids always need you without them being so needy all the time.

“And maybe ten percent because I don’t know what to do with my life if my children don’t need me anymore.”

“Actually, all these people are already so invested in proving their kids are better than everyone else’s kids that I think the idea of going test optional would cause them to riot.”

It’s just that showing up at the house of someone you yourself aren’t friends with—let alone a complete stranger—to watch your kids play together is one of the more odious social interactions humankind has dreamed up.

Having kids is amazing—but it can also suck. Full stop. And being a stay-at-home parent? That takes it to another level due to the sheer amount of exposure we get to the kids’ tyranny.

And then when it dawned on me that gun violence, of course, wasn’t new but had always been a problem, just not where I’d lived, there was a wave of guilt too. Because it shouldn’t take having a kid of your own to get you to think about how prevalent this stuff is.

In a certain sense, any political debate, from elementary school parent board to president of the United States, is just for show. So many of the people you’re talking to already have their minds made up and are only there looking for ways to score points on the other side.

“But that’s so much of what parenting is. You do the best you can, and then you move on to the next battle. Because there’s always a next one.”