Especially at this time of year, in the turgid wake of New Year's resolutions—too hastily made, so quickly shed—it strikes me that the hardest, most revolting part of being a parent, at least outside of the emergency room or doctor's surgery, is the extraordinary level of hypocrisy involved in the role. I spend a good part of every day, the better part of my time with my children, telling one or other of them to get on with tasks they'd rather avoid, and avoid or stop those that are taking up their valuable time. When I say tell, I mean (usually) yell: after the third of fourth repetition of the same request, sanctimony, frustration and volume have all increased in due and direct proportion to one another, and to my exasperation. "Get up now: it's time for school!" "Hurry up in the shower!" "Have you done your homework?!" "Stop wasting your time on Minecraft, and do your work!" "If you just concentrate properly for 5 minutes, you'd get it done!" "Sit straight on your chair!" "How difficult can it be to learn these kanji?!" "Are you sure you've finished all your homework?!"... The litany of do's and don't's on a daily, near hourly, basis. Only Justin is spared this diatribe, sometimes by the fact that he doesn't understand, more usually because he's ahead of the game: he gets up before anyone else, sets the table, sits properly, attends carefully to whatever he's trying to do; given his behaviour over the past few months, I've no doubt that when he finally does come to understand homework and other abstract tasks, he won't need my encouragement, supposing that to be the right word (it isn't).
If this aggressive chivvying and carping on my part had any positive effects on my children's behaviour, it might be worthwhile. But it doesn't: a pissing in the wind that serves only to sour parent-child relations and leave me feeling wretched and guilty everytime I drop off the two older boys at the station to catch their trains to school in the morning, or pick them up afterwards (in anticipation of another evening's battle with homework). The sense of futility of it all is entangled with the sickening knowledge of how ridiculously hypocritical I am being.
Compared to me, my children are rank amateurs in the arts of procrastination, work avoidance, and poor time management. Most of all in work completion. Take the last 50 minutes, when I should have been preparing an exam, or revising an overdue paper (deadline September, sorry Andrew!), or writing more of a monograph that was due in 2002, whose first (substantive) chapter is still incomplete (in spite of near-daily tinkering with the middle sections). Or sending those New Year's cards that still sit in my briefcase...or...And here I am still...
It may not be as b-b-bad as
Baudelaire makes out, but it's a pretty pass to have come to.
La sottise, l'erreur, le péché, la lésine,
Occupent nos esprits et travaillent nos corps,
Et nous alimentons nos aimables remords,
Comme les mendiants nourrissent leur vermine.
Still, chin up, eh ?!
If this aggressive chivvying and carping on my part had any positive effects on my children's behaviour, it might be worthwhile. But it doesn't: a pissing in the wind that serves only to sour parent-child relations and leave me feeling wretched and guilty everytime I drop off the two older boys at the station to catch their trains to school in the morning, or pick them up afterwards (in anticipation of another evening's battle with homework). The sense of futility of it all is entangled with the sickening knowledge of how ridiculously hypocritical I am being.
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