A Parent's Guide to Surviving Your Kid's Childhood

I have two sons. They are 18 months apart in age. They are now 17 and almost 19. I've survived their childhood. It's been questionable at times if any of us would survive, but we've managed to come through with our sanity.

First off, being a parent of two boys that close in age has been both a rewarding and frustrating experience. By themselves, they were a handful. But together, well, it was like Dennis the Menace times two.

When my boys were little, I was going to be the perfect mom. I childproofed my home, complete with the outlet covers, cabinet door latches, and all that stuff. That didn't last long. My boys would pull the outlet covers out and hide them. They wouldn't bother the outlets unless I had one of those in the slot. One day I went to put my youngest son in the playpen, he let out a blood curdling scream. I lifted up the pad on the playpen and there sat the outlet covers. My oldest son decided to hide them there. So I threw them away. So much for that protection measure. If they weren't in the slot, the boys wouldn't mess with the outlets, there was no sense in having them.

They definitely kept me and their father on our toes with their antics. When my oldest son, Nick, was about 2, if you asked him what Daddy said, he would say, "Gotta go to work." If you asked him "What does Mommy say?" He would say "No, stop, don't." And that was the truth. That phrase was my mantra with the boys.

As they got older, their antics were normal and funny. Of course, they weren't funny then, but they are now as I look back. When Nick and Adam were 4 and 2 respectively, my husband and I woke up one morning to their giggles. We figured they were into something, but we were not ready for what we saw when we walked into the kitchen. They had gotten the chocolate syrup out of the refrigerator, pulled the yellow lid off of it, and were rolling it across the floor. The once full can of chocolate syrup was now three-fourths empty and I had lines of chocolate all over the carpet. From one end of the kitchen to the other. Chocolate was everywhere. Both the boys were covered in chocolate. Chocolate syrup does not come out of carpet easily. My husband asked "Why did you do this?" The answer, "I don't know." It took several hours to clean the carpet.

A few months later, I emerged from the bedroom to find that Nick had cut his brother's bangs. Now he didn't use regular scissors. He used the rounded tip school scissors that barely cut paper to do this. Adam's bangs were butchered. Nick was proud of his handy work and Adam was grinning from ear to ear. We asked him why he did this. Nick's response, "Adam told me to." I stood there not knowing whether to be mad or to bust out laughing at the looks on their faces.

There were many instances where I wanted scream in frustration. I had 2 Trivial Pursuit games as well as 2 supplemental boxes of cards. My husband had dozed off one afternoon while I was at the store. During the 30 minutes I was gone, they pulled out all of the cards and scattered them everywhere on my living room floor. The only place that didn't have cards was the spot where my husband was laying. 3800 cards all over my floor. As soon as they saw me, they knew they had done something wrong. All I could do was run into my bedroom and laugh. Of course I didn't want them to see me laughing because they had been into something they weren't supposed to be into. But it was kind of funny.

One of their worst stunts was when they killed every fish but one in the aquarium. We woke up one morning and my husband goes out to start the coffee. I hear "Your mom is going to kill you." I thought, "Oh no, what did they do now?" I came out of the bedroom and could not believe my eyes. There were soap bubbles coming from the top of my aquarium. The boys decided to make another batch of bubbles for bubble blowing. They took some dish washing liquid, put it in the bottle for their bubbles, and instead of using water from the faucet, they used the water from the fish tank. I was furious. I made them watch me break down the fish tank, flush all but one fish (there were about 20 fish altogether), clean it out, and set it back up. They wanted to go out and play, but I wouldn't let them. When I got done with the aquarium, I asked them why they didn't just use the faucet in the bathroom or kitchen. They said "We didn't want to wake you up." At that point, my husband goes running out the front door, unable to contain his laughter any longer. Which, of course, got me to laughing at the situation.

One time, they had been arguing with each other all day. It was raining and they couldn't go outside and play. I had been telling them to stop fussing all day. They just kept it up. I finally got so frustrated that I made them sit in the hall with their arms around each other's shoulders until their dad got home. When he walked in the door twenty minutes later, there they sat. Very unhappy at the situation they found themselves in. I told him, "You deal with them. They're driving me bonkers." He just rolled his eyes, asked them if they were going to stop fighting with each other for the day, then let them get up.

Needless to say, the boys kept me on my toes as they grew up. I never thought I would survive it. There were days when I would joke they wouldn't make it to their next birthday. I'd tell them "If you want to see your next birthday, you'll knock it off." They'd laugh at me, but they'd stop what they were doing. They are now well-rounded young men, ready to face the world on their own.

Parents need to remember that you will survive childhood. One day, you'll look back on the things your kids do that frustrate you and laugh. And you'll always have those stories to tell to your grandkids.