Grown Up Hypocrites

He knows when you are sleeping (because I'll tell him).

Prior to being a parent, I was a coach. I had 30 to 100 kids in my life at all times before I got around to making any myself. Despite that, I felt complete authority in creating a rock solid formula for parenting:

SUK=CP

Screwed up kid= crappy parents

BOOM!

Every now and then I would hear someone say, "So sad that Jason has been arrested, his parents are so good." And armed with my lack of parenting resume I would cry "BS!" and the case was closed.

Along came my first child Sam. He was perfect (as expected) but a little fat. No big deal, he'll thin out and my amazing parenting will soon be evident to the world. Fast forward a decade and I have had all three kids suspended from pre-school for biting (undoubtedly their mother's side of the family) and I suddenly see the need to adjust my formula.

SUK=CP*

* There are exceptions- specifically any bad behavior of the DeMotte kids.

When I first started to contemplate why we all set lofty goals for our kids and immediately start backpedaling, it really bummed me out. Do we all have to settle with our kids? The good news is that I think we do not. I have noticed a common theme about raising the future generation. Most of us would be comfortable if our children grew up to be slightly improved versions of ourselves. However, we really don't want to see them take the same pathway to get there. Somehow we all believe that we are living miracles for having survived our own adolescence and are terrified that the same circumstances would doom our own kids.

We therefore strive to have our kids get the message without the screwups. We set standards for our children that we were as children (and still are) never close to. Santa Claus and his tattle-tale Elf-on-the-Shelf are tools that I use to improve behavior around this time of year. I have even found myself marching a lying kid in front of the elf to get a confession which works better than waterboarding (although honestly, I don't really know what I am doing there). But the elf is only effective because he will hear (lie) them and care enough (lie) to fly back to the North Pole (lie) and tell (lie) Santa (huge lie) that they are bad (unfair) so they therefore won't get any presents (lie).

That's how I am teaching my kids to be honest.

I myself partake in language, beverages, food and entertainment that would immediately send the elf screaming to Santa should my children ever do the same. Of course families differ in standards for behavior and that's what gives us diversity. Yet whatever our standards are, the nuance of, "It's okay that I do this but not you" is not an easy one to convincingly defend. Perhaps the emphasis should be on realistic and important standards for the whole family. It's only common sense that our actions as parents are educating more than our words. Afterall, "Watch your damn mouth!" will teach our children a whole lot more about hypocrisy than it does good manners.