When you become a parent, the momentous life change forces you to take on various roles that you likely have never taken on before. These new jobs include:

Diaper changer

Those with younger siblings or nursery/babysitting experience might have plenty of diapering experience, but it’s different when you’re a parent. As a kid or babysitter, someone would end up doing the deed if you didn’t. You may get in trouble, but it would eventually happen. As a parent, if you don’t change that stinker, you’ll have to deal with the consequences, whether they be a smelly house/baby, the stuff getting on furniture, or a visit from your local Child Services worker.

Moral guide

You are responsible for teaching your child the social and moral norms that you believe are necessary for a quality, socially-contributing life. The responsibility is daunting, yet awesome because the hopefully wonderful person that your child becomes is a direct result of years and years of your guidance.

Teacher

In addition to teaching your children beneficial behaviors, you need to teach them plain ol’ knowledge, like ABCs and 123s. Your children depend on you to teach them about colors, animals, and the finest children’s videos available on YouTube.

But the one role that I didn’t see coming is one that I’m not proud of:

Deceiver

As I consider the past several months of parenting, it’s been a marvel to see Cool Baby’s understanding of language grow. He gets a lot of what we tell him. We’ve used his fledgling mastery of the English language to our advantage – like asking him to get things that we feel too lazy or old to pick up – and more unfortunate ways, like deceiving him to avoid meltdowns.

Several examples of deception include:

• When CB wants more Goldfish, cheese, or anything else that we think he’s had enough of, we tell him that it’s “all gone.” Like we don’t have anymore, even though we have unopened Goldfish bags or blocks of cheese in the fridge. The only thing that’s truly “all gone” is our tolerance of him eating more of whatever he’s demanding.
• Cool Mum swears that CB falls asleep easier if he thinks that I’ve left the apartment. That way, he’s not asking for me when she’s putting him to bed. So, her idea is that I should pretend like I’m leaving the apartment right as she takes him to bed. It seems to work, until CB realizes that Daddy wouldn’t really go out in a ratty t-shirt and faded Old Navy boxers at 9:00 pm.
• Again, when CB wants something that we don’t want him to have, we’ll sometimes tell him that the thing “went night-night.” That thing could be a cell phone, a toy, or a TV character like Elmo. I hope that we’re not jeopardizing his academic career by convincing him that inanimate objects require sleep.

I feel bad about deceiving Cool Baby a little, but it just makes life so much easier. When you’re going on little sleep and a tantrum hits, sometimes you just don’t feel like elaborating upon the truth or setting up a confrontation.

We hope that this doesn’t mean that we’re bad parents. I think it just shows that we’re human ones. And with that, computer must go night-night…

Related posts:

1. Child of God? Really?
2. O_o
3. The Cool Fam in NYC: The first year in pictures
4. One year: Movin’ on up yet staying in place