Reality comes up against ideals of raising kids and it sucks

When I did not have kids I could sit back and ask myself why parents did some of the stupidest things and why they did not do what is right.
   Now I have kids and I have the answers to all of those questions and some I did not think to ask. I have written here several times about my short coming in my parenting skills and yesterday I asked myself why I insist on beating myself up in public, in front of the seven of you, more or less. The answer it turns out is I am not living up to those high standards that I had set for myself in raising these kids.

   I don’t want to look back at their lives and think if I had only done things differently… I guess I would not be the first person to think that either.

The two of them are the greatest and I don’t say that because they are mine. I say that because it is true and they are great and I want to do my best to insure that they reach the potential I see inside the two of them.

I have also watched the parents of people I know and have not stopped being impressed by the jobs they are doing. It is not easy, well not as easy as it looked from the outside and with some of you it looked hard from the outside and that means it must have been unbearable. I don’t know how some of you have done it.

It doesn’t help to have two kids nine and ten come into your lives and not speak the language and to try and fit them into what has been the normal for the past ten or so years.

I took the kids to the park over at Valley Cottage the one my mother had been telling me about for the last month or so and they ran around and I carried them on my shoulders and they ran some more and ran even more and we then went over to Rockland Lake Park and saw a deer. I had to point the car headlight at the deer for them to see it the guy in front of me who was doing the same thing, looking for deer must of thought I was being a wise guy when I moved the car toward the side of the road and pointed the head light at the deer, because he moved on and didn’t stop. All this took a little over an hour and we had fun.

They also tried to jump off the swings and fly in the air. I got to admit that I encouraged them to do it. I remember when I was a kid in school I would swing as high as I could and the chains would go slack and at that point you would jump out of the swing. It was fun. They didn’t get that high Teri so you don’t have to worry. They got airborn only a little.