I am encountering a tween. A pre-tween if you will. But I feel like I handled what I like to call a "learning moment" very well today. My normally extremely honest ( almost to a fault) step daughter was weaving me a doozie. I caught on at about the third sentence as it was full of "um" and "so I was thinking". Classic panic and stall tactics. The amusing part is that she was trying to get her way on a topic that I would have totally agreed on anyhow. So it was a pointless elaborate reason given before the actual request. It was unnecessary ass covering. Considering what a royal pain I was as a youth, I can smell it all a mile away. I felt my eyebrow raising with every word she spoke. And then, calmly sat in front of her, made direct eye contact and said "try again. And this time give me the real reason. Keep in mind, I was you about 20-something years ago and I did this better". She sighed and told me the real version. Afterward I explained that I would have said yes if she was straight with me the first time. She was kinda taken aback and said ok like I was going to say "just kidding you're grounded" and hugged me and quickly went to her room. I felt like laughing. Only because she doesn't get that I have done all this crap when I was her age. While having this episode of the twilight zone, I thought back to the times my Dad was totally onto my bullshit techniques and I gasped. Oh yes. Alternate universe type stuff right there. It all makes sense. When he would throw up his hands and say things like "you'll get it when you're a parent" I rolled my eyes at 15. But he was so right. darnit.
I thought about it a lot today and then had some annoyance at those that think I am a less than perfect parent. I don't think there are any perfect parents. Mainly because of the simple fact that there are no perfect people. Moms and Dads are winging it as they go, using they skills they learned through life to shape the tiny people they created (and top it off that each kid is different. Even if you have a dozen). And it is a crazy chain reaction because those Moms and Dads were raised by their own imperfect yet probably just fine parents. So the idiots that judge others are just showing their own insecurities. The best part of this world is that even if by some freak amazing wonder there was in fact a perfect person, the odds of them parenting to perfection is impossible. Because a child is just a little person with limited life experience and without the foresight of understanding that their own parents were once children pulling the same old crap ages ago ( which makes the appear to be psychic at the time and man it's fun being on the other side of that btw). And the odds of that "perfect" person having a perfect child would be alien and robotic and fiction.
With that said, I am doing awesome at parenting this kid that probably thinks she is a fibbing pioneer. And it's hilarious.
Before you even say it, I do know this will be less fun and funny as she really lands in teenagerness and hormones. For right now it's like training wheels are just coming off our Stepmom Stepkid relationship. So far so good. Plus, I was hellish, so I am ready for when her head spins around.
good night ya'll.
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