To all bad parents
Being a father has changed me in one way in particular: It has made me more understanding. Not towards children - God forbid! I'm more impatient, even more impatient than I used to be. No, more understanding towards other parents.
I used to rate parents a lot. And imagined how loving, adventurous and playful I would be with my children one day. Today I am more cautious. When I see a tired mother with her nagging child in the queue at the Coop checkout and hear the child start again: «Mummy, I want some more chocolate...» - whereupon the mother completely loses her temper and shouts: «I want, I want, I want - you can't just fucking want all the time!».
Then I no longer think in the Bettina Wegner*tone of voice: «They're such small children, you shouldn't shout at them!» No, my sympathies are with the mother: «What a horrible, inconsiderate child!» I think. Sometimes I get really loud inside - «Save the woman!» Of course I wouldn't say anything like that. Not even think it. But do you know what I mean?
Children don't just make you happy!
The other day I saw a father on a bench in front of the playground not looking up from his smartphone once when his child asked him: «Can I eat the snow?» In the past, I would have thought: «What kind of father is that? When I have children, I will answer every question and open their eyes to the wonders of this world.» Today I think: «Leave the man alone and keep yourself busy.»
Don't get me wrong, I love my children. But what childless adults tend to forget: Children don't just make you happy. They also suck you dry. They can bring out the worst in you. And make you the opposite of what you actually want to be. Being a parent is a daily failure, and I think parents don't get enough understanding for that.
We cannot plan reality, we can only live in it.
For a long time, I was impressed by (seemingly) perfect families in which happy children and proud parents walk through life hand in hand. I asked myself: How do they do it? Now I ask myself: What if they are perhaps not good parents at all, but just good children? Children who have simply become sincere, committed and happy on their own - and not because their parents have done everything right?
Nobody will deny that love and affection are as important for children as breathing and sleeping, but beyond that, could it not be that they also develop a little autonomy, are moulded by their environment and their origins and not exclusively by their parents?
Maybe that's not true. But in the darkest hours of my life as a parent, it is a small consolation that we cannot plan reality, we can only live in it.
*Bettina Wegner is a German singer-songwriter and lyricist. Her best-known song is «Kinder» (Sind so kleine Hände ...).
