Confessions of an Imperfect Parent

"If only I had a doggie bed...nom, nom, nom"

On the interwebs this week I read a post that detailed five ways to increase traffic on one’s blog. (If only I would write shit down, I might be able to attribute said author of the blog post. FAIL.) The gist of the post was this: certain posts get higher levels of traffic. Posts that handle taboo subjects, or secrets, or topics that are outrageous will interest readers far more than anything else. I have to admit; I filed this under common sense in my mind and forgot about it enough to not remember where I even read the damn thing.

And thus, the seed was sown.

The reason why we read certain posts more frequently than others is because they resonate with us. We have secrets. We think about taboo subjects, even if we dare not talk about them. We are drawn to amazing stories. We like a good confession session. So when someone does this on their blog, we flock to it.

Which led me to think about the secrets I have—the things that I would confess (other than I suck at appropriate attribution. I teach people how to cite sources and even write annotated bibliographies. Sigh). Most of my confessions—since I am rather boring (whoops, another confession)—involve the things that go on in my house.

So, for your Saturday reading pleasure (and not so much to boost traffic to my blog, but to initiate a good weekend catharsis, or to make you feel better about yourself as a person), I give you the top five confessions of my imperfect parenting:

1)     I am a bad pet parent. Super-Sophie doesn’t even have a doggie bed. She did, once. And she ate it (literally) and I vowed that I would never buy her a doggie bed again. In my defense, she did refuse to sleep on the doggie bed in preference to sleeping on the couch (which she also snacks on). Instead of breaking this habit, or moving furniture, or even buying a new couch, I just throw some blankets over it. When she starts eating holes in the blankets, I throw them away and put new ones on.

2)     Also, J thinks that dogs should be fed when they ask for food, because they are dogs (and somehow this makes them less opportunistic about food?). I don’t buy this. I think dogs should be fed once a day, no matter how much Scooby-Doo mouthiness they exhibit. Since I know that J caves every time she asks for food, I often refuse to feed her. It’s not like she’s losing any weight (quite the opposite). And I figure that’s less dog poop the kids have to pick up in the back yard.

3)     I make my kids pick the dog poop up in the back yard. Kids need to learn that some responsibilities suck ass. Plus, I’m not going to be the one who does it. Also, I let them throw it over the fence into the common space behind our backyard. That is no man’s land, and that makes it fair game for dog poop disposal. It’s not like I’m throwing used appliances back there. Yet.

4)     To make up for my less-than-adequate pet parenting skills, I let Sophie pre-rinse all of our supper dishes. I hate dishes, especially rinsing dishes with food still on them. And I’m kind of lazy. Also, I often make the kids do the dishes. Especially if I had to cook the damn meal.

5)     Speaking of meal preparation, our public schools are not the only ones who count pizza as a vegetable. I do too. If it has vegetables on it (and I do make sure that it does) it counts, people! Also a vegetable: taquitos. Seriously. I buy the kind that are similar to the southwestern eggrolls at Chili’s (although I do bake them) and I figure that if they have corn and spinach in them, and I give the kids salsa, that is feeding them vegetables, people.

I’m sure there are more things I could confess, but those are the five things I feel require confession at this point (and by require confession, I mean that each instance happened in the past 24 hours). So, what now? I’m not Catholic, so I don’t know protocol here. How can I be absolved?

What parenting confessions could you make? What things do you do in your house that you wouldn’t normally share?