My Kid Will Never

She’s finally asleep.

It took 45 minutes of rocking, two diaper changes, a bottle, and some serious “shhh”ing, but my kid acquiesced and decided to go down for her afternoon nap. I can prep dinner, and she’ll be well-rested and nice when she awakens in an hour.

But as I tiptoe out of the room, with the sound machine/projector/life-saver on at full blast, I hear the blood-curdling scream I dread so much; it sounds like the clown from the Saw films is slowly prying off the eyelids of a neighborhood child. Alas, it’s only the neighbor’s little terrors playing in the street.

And then my baby wakes up. For good.

I detest those brats. They ride their bikes in the middle of the street, unaware of (or apathetic to) traffic passing by. And before you ask, no, their parents are not supervising. The spawn are never wearing shoes, even though their mother finds it clever to toss still-lit cigarettes into the street, right in the path of her roughhousing hooligans. Every one of their games includes screams one might hear in the torture chambers underneath the Pentagon, which reverberate through every room in my house. This isn’t the first time that their obnoxious escapades have ended my baby’s nap prematurely. As saucy as I pretend to be, I haven’t actually mustered the courage to knock on their door and rip their mother a new one for allowing her kids to be so evil as to disturb the peace in my home.

Curtly, I think to myself, “My kid will NEVER!” My daughter will play at appropriate decibels, under the close supervision of one of her parents. She will never scream and carry on so loudly. She will never play without Mom or Dad close by. We paid good money for a house in the ‘burbs with a generous back yard in order to confine her games to the fenced-in area. My kid will never roughhouse in the street, a target for a distracted driver. My kid will never…

Oh, shit. I’ve just broken the cardinal rule of parenting. I uttered those four little words that parents always regret five or ten years down the line.

Apprehensively, I ponder: what if my kid does? What if she does play barefoot in the street? What if she does ride her bike (or, by that time, Hoverboard) in the way of traffic? What if she does scream like a banshee when her (yet-to-be-conceived) sibling squirts her with a water gun?

An even scarier thought: what if, as a new mother, my neighbor uttered those very same words?

Is the world full of these mothers? Women who swore up and down that their kid would behave appropriately, do all their homework, eat their vegetables, demonstrate proper table manners while their kid was still young enough to lack kneecaps? And if so, what happened? What changed? Did the hustle and bustle of life get in the way of reinforcing routines and rules? Did they give in to toothy grins and doe-eyed babes one too many times?

I need to know the answers to these cosmic questions now; now, while I still have a chance to learn from their mistakes and raise this girl right. I simply cannot be that mother a neighbor considers with disgust. I cannot allow my kid(s) to disrupt the neighborhood and be the subject of nasty gossip over dinner. If I sincerely want to live by the motto, “Don’t encroach on my right to be left the fuck alone,” mustn’t I raise my child to adhere to this, also?

I open the front door, cranky, sleep-deprived baby in arm, and shoot one of my signature Teacher Death Glares at the rambunctious kids. They consider me for a moment, probably recognizing the stare from their own teachers’ frustrations. Just as quickly as they notice me, they disregard my glower and resume killing each other, or whatever they’re doing. Mom? Nowhere to be found. Shoes? Probably hiding wherever Mom is.

Closing the door, I begin my night-time routine with a fussy, tired baby. I put on my yoga video and Namaste my frustrations away. The screaming outside continues, but I’m comforted the superiority that comes with the assurance that MY kid will never…

© Daisy and Violet 2012. All Rights Reserved.