News flash: what people do in the privacy of their bedroom is not my business. I do not care. I do care if someone is funny or kind or giving. I care if someone is a misogynist or a racist or abusive. I will never ever get mad because someone is happy and in love, no matter who it is with, as long as nobody is getting hurt. And, of course, all parties must be consenting adults.
All these homophobic people America seems to have lately is really ridiculous. Part of me feels like they’re just really insecure with their own sexuality. Maybe they have confusing feelings they haven’t dealt with yet. Or maybe I’m just noticing them so much now because my youngest daughter just came out as gay.
We must overcome the notion that we must be regular. It robs you of the chance to be extraordinary and leads you to the mediocre.
Uta Hagen
All I know is that my daughter just came hurling herself out of the closet. My only job, after raising her to be an amazing and productive human being, is to be her biggest supporter and her human armor against any hate. It is not to judge or ostracize her for making decisions that are different from mine.
Even though I am not psychic, I already know she will spend her life tolerating and enduring the comments of mean people regardless of her sexual orientation. There are trolls everywhere in life and online. I will not be one more.
I spent seven years of my life trying to make a marriage work, in a conventional husband and wife relationship, while he was abusive. He almost ruined my children’s childhood and very nearly ruined me. Looking back, my children and I would’ve been a lot better off if I had been with someone that wasn’t a dirtbag and made me happy, regardless of gender.
People ask me if I am grieving all the stuff I won’t be able to do now that she is gay. There is no need for me to mourn. She is still the daughter I have always had, always adored and I know her heart now as well as I did before. Whom she chooses to love does not change her soul or make her fair game to be bullied. I promise that her choice of partner will not be what anyone remembers about her once they meet her.
She is absolutely brilliant, makes amazing grades, and loves animals. She especially loves reptiles and can spout off amazing facts about them as if she had been studying them all of her life. And all this at only ten. I have no doubt in her potential to change this world.
I pity the fools who can’t see beyond their own bigotry.
As women, we should build our daughters up instead of giving them insecurities
Depression
As a mother, before taking any action or making a decision of any kind, you must ask yourself, “How will this action that I’m considering right now affect my child?” Before ANY DECISION. It’s just a simple question. It’s not that hard. This one action will save you a lot of grief down the road.
It’s a lot harder to put something back together after you break it than it is to just keep it from getting broken to begin with. Take the answer you provide yourself and make the best choice for your child or children. Not for you. For them.
Women, and men obviously, have their own set of mannerisms and habits that drive me crazy as they are extremely damaging to children.
Men
Ladies, the company of your child is more important than the company of any man you are dating. Childhood is fleeting.
Children form their personalities early and you have essentially done all you can do for them as far as parenting goes by the time they are ten years old. After that, it is up to their experiences and their peers.
So, unless you want your child to grow up as a needy ho-bag by extension, you would be better off focusing now on trying to raise her to be educated and independent.
I know women are capable of having sons. But the damage they are capable of doing to their daughters is worthy of a separate article. Lead by example. Little eyes are always watching and little ears are always listening even if it might not seem that way.
Pretending you are dumb and acting ditzy is the most annoying and unflattering thing a female can do for a male’s attention. Encourage intelligence and independence.
I’m not lying when I tell you that I want to slap the hell out of any woman that acts like that.
Body Image
For 1000 different reasons, it is very common these days for women to have body issues and insecurities. Even so, please do your daughters a favor and stop publicly dieting and criticizing yourself. Stop calling yourself fat in front of them, even if you are. You may be a hippo, I know the feeling, but your daughter is an elephant. They never forget anything.
So please don’t project your body image issues and obsessions onto your children. The world is hard enough without adding to the load they will carry. Teach them about self-love, not self-hate. Teach them about confidence and how there’s a difference between that and arrogance.
Don’t idolize looking like a porn star, either. You don’t have to dress like a lot lizard. Do you really want to teach your daughters to act and look like that? Do you really want to teach your sons to desire that? Natural is beautiful.
Intelligence
We need to make intelligence in women sexy and valued. Less focus should be placed on boobs and more on brains by society, men, and ourselves. We need to set our own standards of beauty. We need to be proud of our accomplishments, our integrity and our character.
Stop hiding your intelligence from men. A real man won’t get intimidated by a strong, smart woman. He will value her as his partner. He will be proud to have such a person on his team. And if he’s not, you should not accept that as an acceptable mate for yourself.
Friendship
When your daughter or child is 25 and self-sufficient, y’all can be best friends. Until that day, you have to be the bad guy like the rest of us and actually parent your children. They have friends. They don’t need you to be a friend. They need you to be a parent.
They need routine, structure, love, guidance, and discipline. They need to be taught values and morals amongst 1 million other things. Focus on being a parent and you won’t have time to worry about the little, meaningless things that you shouldn’t be.
Parenting is hard and thankless. There are days that I cry myself to sleep and think I’m failing. But, I still get up every day and do it again. I owe that to them. And as a result of that, they have turned out to be the best thing I’ve ever done.
Whatever you want and need right now is irrelevant and will be until your children are raised.
Discipline
As I am sure many of you can also attest to, my mama used to tell me it hurt her more than it hurt me after she whipped my butt. I thought that was complete and total bullshit until I became a parent. No matter whether I was just getting on to them or saying I was disappointed, it was always hard to be the cause of anything but happiness to them.
I have had to put aside my personal feelings on how I want to handle things and do it the way I know I should instead. It is no coincidence that we have an entitled, unkind society. It is now more important than ever that we return to discipline, morals, and guidance.
I would rather have them mad at me for a little while so I can ensure that they grow up to be the best humans that they can possibly be. And because I did the hard parts, my children are amazing people that are responsible and independent.
We, as a society, are more worried about political correctness than we are about creating a good generation to leave after we are gone. We have let teaching morals and building a foundation of good character fall into disarray.
Hard-working men have now turned into blustering, overly sensitive little whiners that are dependent on other people for everything. Even men with full bushy beards don’t think they should have to do a full days hard work. Self-sufficiency and hard work has become a thing of the past for most people, not just men. Morality is going out the door with it at a very fast pace.
Instead of hiding behind closed doors and praying for a better world, we should all be working diligently to create one. I hope to teach my children not to wait for change, but to be the cause of change. It only takes one person or one small act of rebellion to spark the fires of change.
At least I can take comfort knowing that there will be a few hard-working men in the next generation. Along with a few hard-working, self-sufficient women. Because that is how I am intent on raising him.
I might not end up accomplishing much in my lifetime, but if being the mother that my children is all I can achieve then I’ve done enough and more than a lot of others have. It would be more than enough of an accomplishment to make me proud of my life.
Therapy is unavoidable, so you might as well have fun
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One of the least talked about benefits, in normal circles anyway, of having children is the ability to be able to make fun of them and humiliate them ever so gently.
You have countless opportunities over the years to embarrass them in many, many ways. Do not let this go to waste. You’re going to be paying for therapy anyway. You might as well make the most of it.
PDA
Otherwise known as a public display of affection, this act will mortify for years on end. A good way to do this is to maybe hug your husband or, if you are really feeling spicy, performing a huge make out session right in front of the school.
If you’re a single parent, as I have been often, just grab someone nearby. Sometimes, jail is worth it if you succeed in your goals. Make sure you use tongue.
Try to dance or be cool in any capacity
My kids absolutely hate it when I “dab.” They also hate it when I use their lingo. I will throw in words like fye and lit during our conversations. Especially if their friends are around. That way they know I’m trying to understand and relate to them.
My fourteen year old son loves to call me bro. Once I started beating him to it and calling him bro first, he cut it out.
The kitty game
I don’t like to remember this dark period in my life. For it is when my parents dealt an embarrassing blow so devastating that only now, many decades later, can I laugh about it.
It was the evening of my first date and the day after my sixteenth birthday. The doorbell rang as all gentlemen must come to the door to pick a lady up, according to my mother.
I thought it was odd that my stepfather didn’t want to answer the door and made me do it instead.I answered the door and escorted my date into the living room where my parents were watching television on the couch.
They were not on the couch anymore when I came in to introduce my date to them. I felt all of my blood rush to my face as I realized what they were doing to embarrass me.
Once again, I had underestimated them. They were on all fours. They were playing the kitty game.
The kitty game is much like it sounds. You crawl around and act like a cat. This includes purring, meowing, and rubbing against people’s legs. To date, I have never been more embarrassed.
Clothing
Take it from me, kids don’t appreciate it when you wear their names on your shirt to celebrate them at a sporting event or even just Applebee’s. They want you to show up to their games. But they don’t want you to cheer for them, make eye contact with them, talk to their friend’s parents, or wear a shirt with their name on it.
Kids also want you to dress your age. Which means they think, at age 41, I should be wearing cat sweaters and elastic band pants. I’ve got the elastic band pants down pat so I’m holding off on the cat sweater.
Conclusion
Have fun with parenting. They are only young once and what doesn’t kill them, or you, will make you stronger. Within reason, of course.
I have failed at being a morning person. It’s one of many things I’ve failed at. But, alas, we only have time for one today.
I have tried many times in many different ways to restructure my life. I want to be a morning person! I just can’t succeed at this one simple goal. Hell, I’ve been trying for 10 years. Now I’m old and it should just come naturally, but it doesn’t.
I have tried replacing habits. I have tried going to bed earlier. I have tried snoozing my alarm. I have tried getting up on the first alarm. I have tried an alarm clock that makes you do a math equation in order to shut the alarm off. My husband almost divorced me.
Failure is what I’m good at when it comes to mornings. It’s not just waking up that does me in. It’s dressing. It’s eating breakfast. It’s functioning in general. The main issue is just staying awake.
I do think I have narcolepsy, but my doctor won’t let me diagnose myself. He seems to disagree, although I’ve never been tested to my knowledge.
I have been an unintentional clusterfuck my whole life. Drama, tragedy, and stuff straight from a B movie will find its way to me even if I don’t leave my house. Even so, I can fix all that. Usually. Or time will fix it eventually.
My schedule is as follows. My first alarm goes off at 6:30 am. I hit snooze. I repeat this five or more times despite my intentions. At 7:05, my husband’s alarm goes off. I sit up and yell, “F**k!”
I rush around the room and trip multiple times while dressing. I run out the door 15 minutes late and make it to work five minutes late everyday without makeup. All my kids are late to school.
How do you fix a bad habit when it’s ingrained in you? This is not one of those articles where I tell you how I fixed my life at the end.
I genuinely can’t fix this about myself. Any tips or ideas would be appreciated even if I’ve probably already tried them all.
Time is limited when it comes to making sure your teen doesn’t turn into a douchebag.
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We must act now to stop more entitled teenage brats or even worse, grown up douchebags, from being unleashed upon the world! The quota has been fulfilled. There are a multitude of ways to accomplish this, but the following is a list of experiences that I feel every teenager should experience, for his or her own benefit.
Volunteer
We need to make them understand, aka show them repeatedly and mention it non-stop, that there are people in the world that don’t have it as good as they do. We need to teach them how to give instead of take all the time. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the fruits of your labor, but you should also continually strive to help others.
Whether they are helping at the animal shelter or handing out food to the homeless, they need to understand the act of giving is so much more rewarding than just receiving all the time. This understanding can be life changing as a person. Live your life with a servant’s heart and you will never be poor.
Save
Teenagers and young adults should be taught early to save 25% of their income. I know that seems like a lot, but when they don’t have any outside, or aka real, expenses that is a doable figure. Then, when they do eventually move out and pay their own way, they will have to go down from 25% and, hopefully, they will stay around the 10 to 15% range. If they move out. Wink wink.
Healthcare
Having volunteered at a hospital, rehab center, or retirement home. How many teenagers will lose at least one friend in high school due to an accident or car wreck. But they need to understand the fragility of life. They need to treat life with appreciation and understand just one stupid decision can make it end very quickly. The life changing consequences of one bad decision can haunt them forever.
I am a firm believer that teenagers should have to pay their own phone bill at a minimum, if not all of their bills. They use their phone for everything, including getting in trouble. It’s also good experience to know what paying a bill feels like and to know the feeling of that reoccurring pressure that they will soon be getting all too familiar with. Then you can just tell them to multiply that by 50. Don’t worry, you cannot make your child too responsible.
Sugar Baby
When I was in high school, I took a home economics class. I learned how to sew, cook a casserole, and balance a checkbook. Of course, if I was allowed to give a review, I would take off some points for not learning about credit scores and debt. But, that’s neither here nor there. By the way, if you put a review on the high school website they will take it off.
Again, I digress. The absolute most impressive thing that they did during this class was to make us care for a 5 pound bag of sugar as if it were a baby. You had to take constant care of it, or get a babysitter and log that, and wake up every two hours to “feed” and change it. And, yes, we had to keep a genuine cloth diaper that was laundered on it. I assume that a disposable diaper was also an option, but not for me. This was extremely aggravating and an accurate display of parenting. It was a genius move that got thrown away sometimes after my experience, but before my own children could benefit.There is no telling how many grandchildren are not being raised by grandparents due to this. I describe that as life changing.
Those items above are what I consider a few good ideas to instill some rapidly dying values into our youth. What are your best parenting tips?
It is 6:46 pm on December 23 and I am still at my office, which is located roughly thirty minutes from my house. I stopped working at five. But I am so far behind in my Christmas shopping this year, that I have to begin most of my shopping tonight. As I look at my children’s Christmas lists and add things to carts online, I am reflecting back on what has to be one of the worst years of my life. However, instead of dwelling on that, I have decided to write about all the blessings I experienced instead.
Primarily, I got married to the most amazing husband who is pictured in the picture above. My kids and I love him more than words could ever articulate. He is the family that I have spent my entire life chasing. I won’t deny that when my wedding venue got cancelled on the eve of my wedding and then my honeymoon got cancelled the day of my wedding, I started to panic a little. That was all Covid’s doing, though. We figured it out and the wedding was even better than anticipated.
We have weathered the many, many trials 2020 has sent us together and the heavy stress has caused us to bend at times. But we didn’t break. And now, we are all stronger as a family. We may be chaotic and filled with one catastrophe after another but, as long as we stick together, we always come out of the other side stronger and more resilient. And, most importantly, grateful for every blessing we get.
Thank you to everyone that has followed my blog, sent me support and guidance, or just read my articles. I write this primarily for my own therapy. This blog has been another blessing that I cannot discount.
Merry Christmas to everyone, or Happy Holidays, or thank you. Every like, read, and comment was more support than I expected and it is very much appreciated. I sincerely hope that 2021 will be a different year for all of us, hopefully better, than 2020. If it is not, I will still find many blessings to count.
Kylie’s Rants 