What do I want, a well-adjusted child or a politically correct child? What goes into making a "good" parent? A bad parent- I think I know what that is. Most people have a fairly good feel for what goes into bad parenting. But what about the rest of it? Why don't babies come with instructions?

"non chlorine bleach, warm water, tumble dry on low" would make things a lot easier. Instead there are rows and rows of parenting books and page after page of parenting websites and blogs. Hundreds of experts from Spock to Brazelton. Attachment parenting. Cry it out. The independant child. The independant parent. Nannies. Supernannies. And yet there still isn't a Super Mommy outfit floating out there in my size.

But people still expect a SuperMom. My girl is 18 months old now. My Boy is starting to get very antsy about never having a neat home, about always coming home to a wreck, and -specifically- about me dumping the child on him when he walks through the door. What he fails to thoroughly understand is that bedtime is early because otherwise Mommy would not only drop her marbles she would be loading them in a catapault and flinging them through the locked door with a force that would drop an elephant. That Mommy needs Daddy to take over every night without fail if he expects dinner to arrive on a neat table, the toddler to arrive in her crib tucked in and clean for the night, and if he ever expects to get affection again. I understand he's had a long day. Well, so have I. And my job is such that it's hard to find a substitute. Next to impossible to schedule a sick day, and just forget about mental health days.

I also think too much. Have you noticed that yet?

Fortunately there's a book for that too. "Parents who think to much: why we do it and how to stop". I checked it out of the library today. It sounds like it may have answers for me; at the least it'll be a comforting shoulder to tell me that "I understand"