Feb 19 2009
Is it OK not to like your kids?
I have days when I don’t like myself, my husband or my children for that matter. I think, in all honesty, that we all have days like these and that they are part of life. I mean have your children done or said something that just made you stop whatever it is that you were doing and go, ‘What the h*** was that?’ Again, I implore you to sympathize with me, it’s difficult being a mom to teenagers, but every once in a while I think to myself, ‘This is NOT my child.’
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love my kids. I do. Even my stepson who will test every fiber of my being to make sure that they are still intact, I love dearly. But sometimes I really don’t like who they are. I guess it’s just that I kind of set myself by the question, ‘If I were their age, would I be friends with them?’ And sometimes I can say yes. Other times, I say no. And it begs the question, is that my fault as their mother or stepmother? Or is it simply just the way that they have taken the advice that has been given to them and used or not used it? Is it the way that I have raised them in my house and the way they have chosen to live outside of my house?
I will give you a situation and you can tell me whether I am wrong to look at things this way. I will not signify which one of my kids it is, I will just identify them as a he and call it good. ‘He’ uses people by figuring out what other people can offer and takes advantage of it. The people ‘he’ does this to are quite aware that ‘he’ is doing this and never say anything to ‘him’ and continue to hang out with ‘him’ even though they know. When confronted with this, ‘he’ says things like, ‘So’ or ‘Whatever’. Knowing that you can’t be with your kids all of the time, you can’t control what they do or how they act when they are not with you, you have tried to talk to ‘him’ without success and trying to get ‘him’ to understand the consequences of such actions (people will not like you or won’t want to be around you) does you no good. You keep waiting for the day that people treat ‘him’ the way that ‘he’ treats them.
Now, I have tried to raise all of my kids with dignity and respect for others and other people’s property and have tried to be the best mom I can possibly be. I can tell you that we (meaning my husband and I) did not raise our kids to be like this. It’s really sad to think that someone you love can be so ugly sometimes, but then again I guess we all can be.
And so I say to my kids every once in a while, ‘I love you with all my heart, but I don’t like you right now’ and hope that they understand that although I am their mom and I do love them, but they are not being someone that I want to be around at the moment and hopefully they will take a look at what they are doing, how they are acting and such and it might make them think, ‘Would I want someone to say this to me? Or act like this to me?’ and stop.
To all of those parents in the grocery stores that have a child that is screaming because they aren’t getting their way, you have my sympathies. Trust me, it doesn’t get any better when they get to be teenagers. They’re just not as loud. 
