Not Angry Just Disappointed

'I'm not angry, just disappointed' - Every child knows that there is no more chastening parental admonition. It's one thing to provoke your parent, quite another to let them down. But what about when your parents disappoint you? In the teenage years each day brings new disappointment and in babyhood it could be said that every cry is simply a primal articulation of being let down.

Some parents will never admit that they have ever done or said anything to let their children down. Some of them even become president. For the rest of us there is the uncomfortable knowledge that we certainly have. Sometimes it's discussed and acknowledged, sometimes pride or other shortcomings prevent a clearing of the air and burying of the hatchet.

Something I am really not proud of is having my child play peacemaker. It's invariably a car based scenario, a late departure (almost certainly my fault), some over enthusiastic driving eliciting a few well deserved sharp words from my wife. Everybody has their own way of arguing. I have two and they are both, I realise, infuriating. Coldly forensic or hotly defensive. The latter is especially inflammatory and most likely to end up with the 3 year old making a wholly justified request that apologies be exchanged.

You really haven't known shame until your behaviour has transformed your pre-schooler into the United Nations and you are never more acutely aware that they see and hear everything than when your heated protestations of self-justification have them interjecting like a Friday night shift copper at chucking out time. 

Of course if you're a really terrible parent your child will quickly learn not to do this because it will be to no avail. Then you have failed, your child will have learned, too soon no doubt, that its parents are incapable of parenting. A hell of a lot of advice is spoken and written about parenting but for me it boils down to one simple message: children can be childish only as long as the adults are adult(ish).