The other day I caught myself doing something I swore I’d never do. No, it wasn’t “I’ll never talk to my dog in a high-pitched voice” (I do this in every conversation I have with my dogs), or “I’ll never use my exorcist Mom voice in front of other people” (most of my friends didn’t even know what my real voice sounded like until they talked with me when my kids weren’t around)…I almost said, “Cherish every minute of it” to a young mother who was frantically trying to find a baggie of Goldfish crackers for her toddler who was screaming, “Dold Ish! DOLD ISH!”

While some people think this is a well-meaning piece of parenting advice, this cockamamie comment is, in fact, cow cookies. Do people think this kind of statement is helpful? Do people think that the frazzled mom is going to start hearing “Sunrise, Sunset” in her head as she’s dumping the diaper bag in search of the “dold ish”? When people said this to me as I was trying to corral four kids (as two of them were kicking and/or screaming at the other two) I remember thinking, “Does this person have kids? Has this person ever even met a kid?”

Let’s face the cold hard facts, people. A lot of parenting just stinks. Really bad. Anything we have to do over and over and over again with no relief in sight is going to lose its magic pretty quickly. Especially if that “anything” involves being sleep deprived while a) dressing a child only to turn around and see that his/her Houdini-like superpowers have foiled your plans for getting out of the house quickly because he/she is standing before you naked; b) thinking up new and clever ways to make the child eat something he/she has deemed “too yucky” before every trying it; c) watching Sponge Bob; d) chasing a naked child in an effort to apply a clean diaper before something too horrible for words takes place; and e) cleaning up the unspeakable mess. And this could go on for years.

It’s not just the fact that you feel like each day is a struggle; the stuff you have to do as a parent is just plain boring. Unless you’re talking with other parents at the Christmas cocktail party, nobody wants to hear about the fact that you had to take your kid to the doctor on Halloween to have a Lego pulled out of his nose. People will move away from you. Sure, you may have saved your child’s life by acting quickly, but interesting? I don’t think so. Keeping our children alive is important and a big part of what we parents do, but stories about pulling Legos out of nostrils will not make us the hit of the party.

Keeping kids alive is very hard work, especially during the times we, ourselves, have lost the will to live. We all go through several ages and stages when we wonder if Darwin was talking about the survival of parents when coming up with his survival of the fittest theory. My struggle seemed to relate to the number four; four months, four years, and 14. I did not enjoy every minute of those ages. I enjoyed like eleven minutes... total...of all four kids combined.

I may not have cherished every minute, but I happen to love being a parent. My kids are my world. I’m pretty sure you feel the same way. So to those parents in the throes of sleep deprivation, diapers, and tantrums, I offer this simile I read the other day somewhere on the Internet in the hopes of giving you an enjoyable moment today; “Parenting is a lot like The Road Runner show, and you, my friend, are Wile E. Coyote. You make lots of detailed plans and think you are really going to get it right, but you always end up surprised that you are falling off a cliff. Meep. Meep.”