Am I the Right Parent?

Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing good by our kids.

The highlights of my weekdays are the moments spent in solitude, puttering around the house, doing things for my family in anticipation my children's return from school. The anticipation is always a prelude to being let down.

Perhaps it is because I’m not genetically imbued with sympathy, or to stretch it further, empathy for that matter.

Bella complains that her neck hurts. All I can think about is how I’ve asked her every day for over a week if she really needs to truck every single duo tang and textbook back and forth to school each day and that’s the cause of the so-called neck injury.

She’s been playing dumb again. This time it’s with math. It’s hard to discern whether or not she’s actually forgotten how to do multiplication and division or if she’s faking it. That’s how she often tries to get attention. And, I hate it. I hate falseness and pretenses. I have no patience for this kind of behaviour. These guises drive me further away instead of towards the closeness that she desires to attain.

I sometimes look at her and dislike the person she is and wonder how we’ll make it through the turbulent teen years. Those are just around the corner.

Under her skin, I wonder who the real person is. I wonder who she’s going to be. I wonder if we’ll like each other at the end of it.

More often than not, my thoughts are punctuated by weaving wonderment if I’m the right person to parent this child.