The Parable of the Leaky Toilet

Remember when you were the best parent in the world?  It was before you had kids.  You knew exactly what that mom of the screamer in the grocery store was doing wrong.  You knew why those nieces and nephews of yours were jumping on grandma’s sofa - no discipline in their house!  And mealtime – don’t get me started – your future kids would NEVER be allowed to have chicken fingers, Oreos, or the apex of neglect – Happy Meals. 

And then you had a child.  Boom.  Truth hit like an uppercut from Tyson, didn’t it?

I can now admit, without a hint of sarcasm, that when it comes to being a dad, I get MOST things wrong on MOST days.  Take yesterday – my 10-year-old son was complaining about a broken toilet.  He sometimes gets confused that he lives not in our home, but in a luxury apartment where you tell the front desk when toilets don’t work.  I saw my chance.  “Get in the car young man, we’re going to the hardware store to get some parts and YOU are going to help me fix it.”  Great.  Kid actually seemed happy to learn and help out.  Until the job took more than 5 minutes.  As I immersed myself in the hieroglyphics of the toilet parts instruction manual, he scattered.  My best guess would be he’s in some quiet corner of the basement enveloped in the warm radiant light of the iPhone.  But I still had a toilet spewing gallons of water on the bathroom floor.  And my “repairs” had made the leak far worse than when I’d started.

In this parable lies an important lesson.   You can chase a kid down and do your best Godzilla impersonation. Maybe you can even rip the video games out of his hand and lecture him about hard work and privileges. Or you can deal with toilet water all over the floor.  Not both.  And that’s parenting.