Check. Your. Kid.

This may come across as catty, but I flat-out do not care. If you are sitting on your duff playing with your i-phone with your nicely manicured nails, taking a moment here and there to preen your chemically straightened hair while your child is CAUSING HAVOC all over the flipping place then YOU HAVE IT COMING TO YOU! Today’s parenting fail thankfully is not mine. Well, it is a little, but mostly not.

There’s this kid in Marcus’s gymnastics class that is a holy terror. He NEVER listens, he ALWAYS hits and he rarely does the things he is supposed to do. His mom sits on the bench and watches and sometimes threatens to take him home (although they’ve never left yet). So today Skyler had to use the bathroom which is just off of the gymnastics room. I’m sitting with Talia on an exercise ball outside of the bathroom beside a bucket of balls. Normally I wouldn’t mess with another person’s kid just randomly, but that little monster came up to the bucket of balls and started throwing them at me. Before I even realized that he was doing it intentionally he beaned Talia in the head. I looked up for his mom but she was TEXTING (parenting fail!). I looked him in the eye and said, firmly, “That is NOT okay.” He looked back at me, picked up another ball, and chucked it at me. I got down to his level and quietly informed him that SANTA did not bring presents to boys and girls that are NAUGHTY and he better be careful because SANTA is watching RIGHT NOW!!! (Have I mentioned how December is my favourite month?) He then proceeded to pick up every ball in the bin and toss them onto the floor, which was fine with me because thank goodness he was not my child. His mom was still texting. After he emptied out the balls he was going for the hula hoops but I decided that I didn’t want him chucking around things that were hard so I held them in the bin and stared him down. His mom FINALLY came over to collect him. She was about to walk away with him so I said, “He just emptied all those balls out there.” And pointed. So that she would know exactly which balls she would need to clean up. And she gave him heck and made him pick them up, threatened to take him home again, then sent him back to his class. After Skyler was done in the bathroom I saw the boy head-butt another boy. Mom was nowhere to be seen. As we walked through the lobby I saw her talking to another mom. I said, “He just head-butted another kid. You may want to go in there.” And she did eventually meander back to the room, after she finished her conversation. Lady, you want to be lazy and self-indulgent, that’s your problem. Your bad parenting is going to become society’s problem and that sucks. Parenting is easy. You just have to check in. React. Follow through.

My kids aren’t perfect. But they’re more imperfect in a funny and entertaining way. Their public displays are usually somewhat containable and if they're not then WE LEAVE. Because my kids are MY problem (not that I think of them as a problem), not anybody else's, and they should not be allowed to disrupt at random. When that little turkey runs away in gymnastics class seven other kids have to stand there waiting while the teacher goes to collect him. Don't even get me started about what happens in classrooms!

Breathe deep. Find your happy place.

Skyler is my funny girl. I think she’s going to grow into a funny woman, and goodness knows I like a funny woman.

When I put her in her bed she’s always wearing appropriate attire. She has many sets of lovely pyjamas; she chooses her own out and she puts them on willingly. But something happens to her in the night (or during the day if she’s napping). She undergoes a miraculous transformation. She never awakens in the same outfit she went to sleep in. One night I went in there and she was wearing her tiara and sleeping peacefully. The other day she woke up in her hockey jersey (that’s my girl!). One day I put her down for nap in my bed. I went in when she awoke and saw a hint of lime green sticking out of the waistband of her pants. “What’s this?” I asked. “I’m wearing your panties!” she smiled. Hmm, I don’t have any lime green panties. She was wearing my sports bra under her pants like a pair of panties.

Marcus has been using many of our words against us lately and he’s finding himself in his room more often than he cares for. Today he was chasing Skyler down trying to talk her into giving him a toy and she smacked him when he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He came to complain to me and I shrugged and told him he should have listened to her when she said no the first five times. Once he confirmed that I was unwilling to parent her he decided the right move would be to go parent her himself. “Skyler, it is never okay to hit. What could you have done instead?” My smart little cookie replied, “Barcus, I told you no and you didn’t LISTEN!”

He gets so crabby sometimes. I sent him off to school the other day crabby and I worried about him all day. That evening I asked him if he was crabby at school and he said no. I wanted to know why he was so crabby here and not at school. “We’re not allowed to be crabby at school,” he said. You’re allowed to be crabby here?! I had to know what the secret was. How do they enforce the non-crabby rule? What happens if you’re crabby at school? “You have to sit on the stairs and the teacher talks to you.” That’s it? Because I can do that! I DO do that! You’re still crabby when I do that!