Part of the beauty in having my kids home during the weekday over summer break is that we get to watch some really fascinating television. Today, we sat together flipping through the channels and as soon as my kids saw “Wife Swap”, they yelled STOP!!!!!
Now, this is the original Wife Swap, not the really crazy Celebrity Wife Swap (seriously… it’s a train wreck). In this particular episode, the wives that switched homes consisted of one woman who lived in the city and had teenage kids. She dressed hip and young and liked to have fun with her family. She also liked being pampered and getting $45 pedicures… all at her hard-working husband’s expense. She didn’t work. In fact, her husband did most of the household chores. The other wife was from the country (duh!) and raised llamas. Yep… llamas. She had 5 kids of different ages who did nothing all day but work on the llama farm. They dressed very conservatively and rarely did anything “fun”, despite the fact that their mother insisted raising and caring for llamas was “fun”. Oy vey!
So the women switched. Both extreme in their lifestyle. You can guess what happened… they both learned a lot, preferred their own style of living, and in the end, the “country” wife got mad at her husband for having dinner with the “city” wife. Obviously there was a little trouble in that marriage to begin with.
I do have a point here… really.
We ended up having a discussion on parents and what we do (or don’t do) for our kids. The kids totally agreed that there needs to be a balance of fun and discipline. And surprisingly, they all thought that I had a really good balance of the two. Say what????
It always surprises me when my kids compliment me on doing something right… especially when it concerns parenting. I don’t know why it surprises me, but I guess I always think that I can do better - should do better. Of course, we can always do better. We can always do a lot worse too. The trick is not expecting ourselves to be perfect, because there is no perfect parent. I’m not even sure I have such a good balance, although apparently as long as my kids think it’s good enough then, well… it’s good enough.
I’m guessing that the point of Wife Swap is really to recognize that how you live your life isn’t all that bad… and there is always room for improvement. Want to know how you are really doing as a parent? Don’t ask your spouse… or your friends… and definitely don’t ask your family. Ask your kids. Those are the ones that count the most.
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