Go to your rooms!!!

My kids don’t get along very well. To simply say this is a vast and profound understatement. They cannot be in the same room together. In fact, often times the entire house seems an inadequate space to contain their high level of disregard. Disregard might be the wrong word. I wish they would just disregard each other and pay no attention to what the other was doing. Such is not the case. They very much regard. They cannot pass on any opportunity to comment, shove, scare, berate, leer, shout, scratch, or in my daughter’s case, pinch and/or bite. They seem to enjoy the screaming, both the other sibling’s and mine. I have become a key player in their sordid little game. I don’t want to play, but I get sucked into their battles. Ironically, in my persistent struggle to achieve some degree of quiet in my home, I yell. I don’t want to, but I can’t help it. They make me. I try to remain calm and set a nice tone and allow them certain appropriate expressions. But that doesn’t work. They drive my polite bus off the cliff everyday, forcing me to their level of passionate, often illiterate and borderline obscene, violent threats.
I have only my own experience to make any judgment about what is normal. Most days, I feel that my kids, and certainly I, are seriously flawed. Some little genetic code for tolerance and forgiveness and simple niceness has malfunctioned somehow, with devastating results. It is worth noting that I am always quick to pass the buck to excuses like this. Looking in the mirror makes me feel bad. But some goofy genealogical defect seems like a reasonable explanation and gets me off the hook. I can get very creative in finding these excuses. They may perhaps be the canvas upon which I paint some of my best work.
As frustrated as I become by the incessant bickering between my kids, I, on occasion, have the good fortune to encounter some of my friends’ kids. Last week, I picked up my buddy’s three daughters from school and drove them home. The entire trip was littered with “shut ups”, “I’m gonna kill you when we get homes”, and one “your butt looks big”, followed by “not as big as yours”. These girls, aged 5, 7 and 10, took the gloves off and delivered! They were ruthless and sharp as blades with their scathing insults. My heart was warmed. I was not alone. My kids are not weird and I am not the smoking gun leading to the corpses of my kids’ sad, mean and mouthy childhoods. I was quite relieved by this and as I dropped the girls off, I looked at my buddy and smiled and thanked him as he started what was sure to be several hours of telling his kids to “knock it off” and “leave each other alone”. Again, I was touched. I had a brother-in-arms. I suspect that all parents are comrades in this war against our kids being whatever they are, unless, of course, one is a parent of children that actually get along. I have heard of them, but have never met any. I will likely be highly suspicious of them if I ever do. Something devious and possibly criminal must be to blame for children’s good behavior.
So I can rest easy knowing that most, if not all, parents are screwed and I just happen to be one of them. It is an undistinguished and unsavory fraternity. But I wouldn’t change it if I could. Though, in full disclosure, not a day goes by that I don’t consider renouncing my membership. However, when dawn breaks, I awaken with some strange form of amnesia, possibly one that only afflicts parents of annoying kids, and begin each day with new hope and fresh eyes and good thoughts that this day might be the one that leads us down a new path. I usually end the day beaten and disappointed. Thank God for the amnesia. It may be the only thing that keeps me going.