Consider yourself warned!
A guide for those who think they want children.
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When kids are babies, they can’t do anything for themselves. You have to feed them, change them, clothe them, entertain them, and take them to all their activities as they get older (the older they get, the more activities there seems to be). Taking them to their activities will become a huge part of your job. You will literally become the family chauffeur. This will be a major demand on your time. Now don’t get me wrong, a part of you loves to see the kids in their various activities and will gladly take them there. However, another part of you just wants to go home and go to sleep. If you live in New York City, or any city with mass transit, at some point your kids will want to travel by themselves. My son decided at 9 that he was ready to take the bus and train to school by himself. Now mind you, this was coming from the kid who would forget, almost immediately after I told him, to take out the garbage. This is the kid who was going to pay attention and get off the train at the right stop? I don’t think so. Needless to say, I was not ready for him to start making that journey on his own. So, we settled on a compromise. Since I had to take his 8 year old sister to school anyway, I told him that he could walk to school by himself once we got off the train. The only rule was that before he entered the school building, he had to turn around and wave. When he saw me wave back, he could then enter the building. If he didn’t see me wave back and he entered the building, I told him that I would come to his class to (1) make sure that he got in, and (2) to embarrass him (I thought the promise of being embarrassed in front of his friends would motivate him to make sure that I saw him enter the building). He was agreeable to that compromise, so off he went.
It was a funny thing to watch. As the train pulled into the station, that my son would literally stand at the train door like a race horse at the starting gate. As soon as the door opened, he was off. I would leisurely walk behind with his sister to give him his space. At the beginning, he remembered to turn and wave. Then, he forgot. Now, this was during one of my “off” phases from exercising (Unfortunately, I have many “off” phases from exercising. It seems like I’m more “off” than “on”). So I was already tired and huffing and puffing from walking up the long trek of stairs to get out of the subway station. So, you can only imagine that I did not want to walk up the stairs to get the third floor where his classroom was located to make sure that he made it in. No. Definitely not something I wanted to do! I briefly considered not checking on him. After all, he’s smart. He knows how to get to school. Who knows, maybe the teacher would just call me if she didn’t see him that day. But no, I did the responsible thing, I walked up those three flights of stairs. You will be happy to know that I didn’t embarrass him too much. To be quite honest, I was just too tired after my unplanned morning cardio. However, whatever I said or did was enough to get the point home. But my son is smart. When he didn’t feel like waiting for me to get close enough to see him wave, he would ask the door monitor to tell me that she saw me. And she did. And I was grateful because I didn’t want to make that trek up to the third floor. A year or two later, my kids’ father and I decided that instead of going to afterschool, the kids would come to my job, by themselves, after school. What! By themselves! Yes, by themselves. They were prepared. They had their new cell phones and they only had to take one train. I was a nervous wreck those first few days! Its not rush hour when school ends, so God only knows when the train’s coming. And it’s not like there was wifi at the train station either so they couldn’t call me if the train was rerouted or wasn’t running. Since I have an overactive imagination, I started imagining how the kids would handle all these strange scenarios like, what would they do if a drunk or mentally ill person tried to talk to them? What would they do if a fight broke out near them? What would they do if a pervert exposed himself? Of course, none of those things ever happened … or if they did, they didn’t tell me about it. Over time, I got used to them traveling alone on the train. To be quite honest, its great! I no longer had to take them to school, to piano class, to dance class … hell, to any class! Its like I’m free. Now that I’m back in an “on” gym phase again, I can actually leave the house to get to the gym for 6:00 am! Since the kids are already up, I don’t have to worry about taking them to school. They’re teenagers now. They semi take care of themselves. They text me when they leave home, and text me when they get to school. They text me when leave school or their afterschool activity, and text me when they get home. It’s a great feeling! So, for those of you who either want kids, or have younger kids, don’t worry. Your chauffeur duties will end soon enough, and you too will be free. Consider yourself warned!
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SassyGirlTye lives with her two wonderful teenagers in Brooklyn, New York. No matter what she says in her posts, she truly loves her children with all her heart.
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