Parental Failings

Tonight I feel like my two great failings as a parent are standing over me with giant leers on their faces, mocking me for presuming even to think about trying to overcome them, secure in their knowledge that I will fail. (Let it also be said that we went out for Mexican food and I had sangria and I think it made me mean.)

1) For the last two years, unless I am not home at bedtime, E has insisted that I put her to bed, and then that I sit with her until she falls asleep. Actually, my great advance is that now I sit with her instead of lying down with her. But come on, this is ridiculous. S can read to her, even take her to brush her teeth, but then it has to be me, in the bed, for her to fall asleep.

I know, I did it to myself, I should have been firm years ago. But I wasn't. Like I said, it's a failing. And I keep thinking that we lay down with M for years, then we sat up with her, then we sat on the floor next to her bed, then we sat in our room across the hall--yes, we really did all that, and it worked. Now she goes to sleep by herself without a problem (and we just won't mention how she wakes up every single night and comes into our bed--look, the whole sleep thing is just a failing, as I'm sure I've said before).

But this just feels totally hopeless. I know I won't be going to college with E and sitting with her every night at two in the morning after she comes home from frat parties to help her fall asleep--at least I hope not. But I just have no idea how we will get from here to...wherever we're going to go.

2) So I sat there next to E, totally resenting the fact that I was sitting there instead of reading the newspaper or putting away the laundry or blogging, and right in front of me was the disaster that is her room, that is, the room she and M currently share. I swear it was clean just 48 hours ago, but already it is chaos. And I know the chaos won't be alleviated until I go in there and alleviate it with them. Or, I'm ashamed to say, for them.

For our other great failing is that our children are total slackers when it comes to any kind of chores or helping. Oh they'll help with the fun stuff--they washed the car with their cousins on Sunday and they're always up for baking, E loves to make salad, and they'll occasionally get excited about folding the laundry--but regular chores like good parents supposedly make their children do? We suck.

They don't set the table or clear the table or put away their clean laundry or clean their rooms on their own. They say they don't know how. Which is ridiculous, because they do know how. But they don't want to and we are lazy and it takes time and effort to teach them to do it and then make them do it, so occasionally we stick to our guns, but mainly we just give up. Like I said, we suck. And as a result, they suck too. (Like I said, I drank sangria, and now I'm mean.)