Divorce is scary. Having kids is scary. Getting divorced when you have kids is the type of fear that can be paralyzing. When I was getting divorced, I had an 18-month-old baby and not a single person in my circle that could relate to what I was going through. I felt alone and afraid. There is a world of things to consider before deciding if splitting up is the best move …
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I recently came across an article on NYPost.com and felt compelled to respond. Below is an excerpt from the article – click the title/author name to read it in full – followed by my reaction.

“What are your kids doing over break?”

It’s a popular question when parents discuss a looming vacation from school. What’s less common is my answer: Nothing.

You heard me. My kids are doing nothing.

…

Why would I do that when the TV is right there?

“I am a lazy parent and proud of it”
By Karol Markowicz, NY Post

Dear Karol,

I assume that you knew by writing this piece, that you would get some radically different perspective shoved in your face by someone that doesn’t know you at all, so consider this — that.

First let me start by saying I am not one of those parents that are against TV, or anything that has sugar or GMOs in it, or any other form of “new school” parenting that is becoming more and more the norm as we know it today. I’m pretty much just your everyday mom trying to balance work and family and hoping to harvest a good childhood for my children; one that doesn’t land them on the couch in some therapist’s office 20 years from now.

And much like yourself, I too chose not to send my six-year-old son to some winter break mini-camp, but not because the thought of making a lunch or waking up early turned me off to it, it was because if I sent him to camp, I wouldn’t get to spend the time with him; time that is really precious to me and that in my eyes, I get far too little of.

I’m a mother of two boys, one that is six years old and one that is just turning three months old. Talk about tired, I’m pretty sure I could fall asleep at any given moment with my eyes fully open in the upright position and no one would be the wiser. Heck, I might be asleep right now and I don’t even know it. Who even knows what sleep is anymore, really? It’s just this sort of foreign thing that you remember having at one point, and now it’s just something people talk about and you wish for, and you might actually get again one day but you’re not sure.

But I have to say that if I wasn’t tired and if I didn’t exhaust myself day-in and day-out in an effort to give my children a day full of fun memories or some quality time with me that hopefully they will hold on to, then I believe I might think I’m not doing it right. And it’s not just for them, it’s for me too. I don’t simply parade my kids around from play-date to play-date to soccer practice and to Chuck E. Cheese’s in some effort to have an activity-filled, exhausting weekend.

I plan things with them that will give us good family time together where we can make the memories that will ultimately shape how they remember their childhood and how they remember me for that matter. And that’s just the selfish reasons on my part, but in truth, we have an obligation to teach our children about the world, to teach them the benefit of being on a team, the social skills that are rooted in said play dates that will ultimately help shape their personality, and not to mention the importance of exercise and physical activity taught to them by being involved in sports.

Parenting today, strictly in my opinion, is much harder now than it ever was. Our world is very different than it was when we were growing up.  And consequently we as parents have a much harder task on our hands in raising good, safe, respectful, well-adjusted, healthy children.   For one, we HAVE TO plan play dates for our children and orchestrate time for them to be around other kids and their “friends” because it isn’t safe to just let them ride their bikes and play outside anymore without being supervised at most times. We have to be more cautious about what they eat, and where they go, and who their around, and teach them far more than was ever needed to know years ago. And in this same vain, the importance of hands-on parental role models, quality time, and teaching through interaction in the home is more vital today than ever. And as I’m sure I don’t need to remind you since its plastered all over Facebook (and you seem like the type that probably has time for that sort of thing) children grow up fast. We don’t have endless amount of years to be with our kids, to make memories with them or to teach them the things they need to be armed properly for the real world…its fast and fleeting, and will pass you in the blink of an eye if you’re not careful, or if perhaps you’re napping through it.

Being a parent is the hardest job we are given, and the most important. I’ve worked since I was 13 years old and never half-assed anything that I’ve ever done and I’m certainly not intending to start when it comes to raising my kids. Not to mention the glaringly obvious notions that I’m sure everyone might be thinking but not saying – which is that there are people who go to the ends of the earth just to have kids, and it’s not so that they can take them to the park and “tire them out” all with the goal of having “family nap time” which in my house is referred to as “NIGHT TIME” where the whole family SPLITS UP and goes their separate ways to sleep in their separate beds. Many people I know would willingly vow to sleep with a toddler foot shoved completely up their nose every night if it meant the chance at having a family, or raising children, or having their kids young enough again to do so. How about the parents that are forced to co-parent and give up their children on weekends and holidays? Where it’s painstaking for them to be without their kids and would surely give up a month’s worth of sleep entirely if they didn’t have to hand over their kids and miss opportunities to make memories with them or see their face each time they walk down the hall to their bedroom.

I don’t believe there is such a thing as the perfect parent, and I certainly don’t believe in the idea of engaging in some type of “mom-war” over who’s doing it right. But one thing I do know is that if given the most important job on the planet, I wouldn’t be so eager to tell the whole world that you’ve decided that the “lazy” way is the way you’re going to run things and you’re “proud” of it, because if it were any other job in the working world, you’d with absolute certainty and swiftness be fired.