Archive for the 'The Lounge Lizard' Category

Please stop them growing, so I can catch up

Published by
Darkchocolate
at December 4, 2008 in The Lounge Lizard. 5 Comments

Mom, can I tell you something. Okay I am not supposed to say this but my friends and I are hoping to stay until the early morning at the ObZ festival. V, my other friend has a one o’clock curfew. She was planning to lie to her mom and tell her you will be fetching us. But I told her that it’s not on. So they were planning to get Z’s driver, she has a chauffeur as the parents are too busy to pock and drop her off, to come fetch us and pretend that we have left at 1 am even though we will be leaving at like 3 or 4am. Also they will be drinking, just so you know. I won’t be. But I would like to stay there until quite late. Also Z was planning to sneak off with her boyfriend and I have nixed that. I don’t plan to be hanging around by myself and covering for them. If we go together we will stick together and any sneaking can be done some other time.

I looked at her, and sent a silent prayer to God for allowing this trust to continue between me and her.
My response was. Ok, honey you can stay until 4am BUT you will send me an sms every two hours to say you are ok and you are comfortable. You will call me at 4am and I will come and fetch all of you. Your friends can sleep over. If you are even slightly uncomfortable call me and I will come and fetch you. Promise me that you will open you own soft drinks and won’t leave your drink lying around. Don’t walk in dark alleys and don’t smoke anything or take any tablets. You know there are these cute t-shirts that I saw with JAILBAIT written on them. Do you want me to buy one so you can warn people off.

She looked at me and blinked then she said “Mom you are losing it. You know that don’t you. Just chill out nothing is going to happen. Most people from school are going.”

When she told her friends about our conversation they hit the roof. How can you tell your mom about such things? Are you crazy black mothers are insane when it comes to this stuff. They are over protective and just don’t understand. Her answer was “hey leave me alone. I won’t be happy if I lie to her about this. I will feel guilty”

So they are off to the obz fest. I am apprehensive about this but she has to grow up sometime. I need to loosen the apron strings a bit. She is 17 now.

Why can’t they just stop growing to give us poor parents a chance to grow up? I really feel like I need to be given a breather so that I can catch up to them growing up.

My son asked if I could help him write a note to a girl that he has a crush on. Christ! He is only 11 .I asked him if any of his friends have girls. He says nope, because they are all scared of them. I said why don’t you just hang on a bit and the feeling will pass. His response was “Mom! I don’t want the feeling to pass. What is wrong with you? This is a good feeling.

So we agreed that he will ask for her number and call her instead. I am hoping that he will be too afraid to ask.

I REALLY NEED A BREATHER. Just so I can grow up to catch up to their growth. am i the only parent that feels like this?

Service Excellence

Published by
Darkchocolate
at November 21, 2008 in The Lounge Lizard. 0 Comments

Who the hell do I have to donner to get back the 10 minutes of my life I have just wasted waiting for this heifer to get off the phone?

This was what was going through my mind as I waited, with rapidly dawdling patience for the sales lady at the Howard centre shoes store to get off the phone.

I went to Howard centre to buy woollies lasagne for supper. You know the one the big one that you just pop in the oven for fifty minutes, prepare a salad and voila supper is ready.

My kids had given me a very strong incentive in the morning for sorting out a decent supper.“Mom if we see chicken and vegetables or worse 3 bean soup on our plates for supper we will commit hara kiri”. This said in screechy voices as I was driving them to school.

They have been eating chicken dishes for the last two weeks, mainly because our new helper cannot cook. So I wrote down chicken recipes for her, figuring that there is not much damage you can do to chicken and vegetables. I also cooked a 3 bean soup over the weekend and froze it as a backup. The kidlets had had enough of chicken. They had taken to eating huge door step sandwiches filled with all sorts of nasties instead of supper and not a single vegetable.

So off I trotted to Howard Centre to buy supper.

I have to confess to being the type of person who goes to Pick n Pay to buy a loaf of bread and comes back with a flowing trolley of food and no bread. I know its bad, really bad, especially in these economic times. But hey it happens to me.

So yesterday I made a new resolution to stick to lasagne. However as I was passing a display window I saw the most perfect wedge shoes that would go with most of my summer wardrobe. I stood there debating if I should dare buy them. I finally realised that of course I have to buy them. Hellooo. It’s summer. I need open toed wedgies. AND. AND. AND. They are in sale. 40% off. Come on! Ask any woman, this was clearly a no brainer.

So into the shop I went. Picked up the shoe I wanted and waited to be served. There was only one sales person in the shop and she was on the phone. Just to indicate that I needed serving I picked up the shoes and stood waiting and not looking at the other merchandise. Still no acknowledgement of my presence and the conversation went on. About two minutes late I started eavesdropping on her conversation. Nope she was not talking to another client. Oh no. It was definitely a personal call. She was going on about the price of cheese and something that happened over the weekend.

After another two minutes had passed I approached the counter, she was seating behind it, I stood right in front of her. Nope, no acknowledgement. Still. By now I was no longer interested in the shoe. The matter was now very personal indeed. I wanted to tell her off. She carried on chatting for another 3 minutes.

Three minutes is a long time. Boxing champions have been fought and lost in three minutes. I. Was. Fuming.
Finaaly she put down the phone and asked if she can help me. My response was yes you could have 9 minutes ago. I have now lost all interest in buying these shoes.

Her response “I was speaking to my boss “

My response “Oh is that so. Is your boss buying his/ her own merchandise? It seems I as a potential customer was should have been more important than your boss a few minutes ago”

I dropped the shoes on the counter and left. She still showed nit an ounce of regret.

My flipping word. Whatever happened to service excellence?

I went home sans shoes and most annoying for the kids sans lasagne. I was just too mad to go to woollies. My kids could be committing hara kiri as we speak after yet another bowl full of 3 bean soup last night. They were not impressed.

The trouble with husbands

Published by
Darkchocolate
at November 19, 2008 in The Lounge Lizard. 4 Comments

The trouble with husbands

Is that they have amazing super powers of regression. You meet a guy. He is not living at home with his mommy anymore. He has his own accommodation. He is generally self- managing. Able to cook, can do his own laundry, has a full set of teeth, a brain and a sense of humour. You think to yourself “wow, what a find”. You rush him up to the alter before the other heifers can discover this amazing find. You tie the knot and breathe a huge sigh of relief. After all why shouldn’t you. You have tied the knot with a self-managing contributor to the home fires. Never again will it be your sole responsibility to keep the home fire burning. That is until one day you wake and you look at your gorgeous hunk of beef and realise that he has, almost overnight, regressed to being a boy again.

It’s a huge shock I tell you.

It happened to my wonderful husband. More about him here and here In retrospect realised that there were symptoms. I just missed them. How was I supposed to know?

Here are some of the symptopms

• The first one was his inability to find anything. You could put the man in front of a drawer full of socks. Put a huge sign on the drawer saying “find socks here”. He will still turn around and look at you with this puzzled expression and then asks “where are my socks”. I ask you!

He is also unable to find matching pants or shirts. He has been known to misplace his wallet. However the biggest teeth grinding irritation is his inability to find his parking ticket. It. Drives. Me. Bonkers. Invariable the parking ticket is somewhere in his wallet. But do you think that this is the first place he looks in? Oh no. No. no. no. That would be too easy. It always happens in a dramatic fashion. We would be walking casually back to our car and as we come closer to the car, he would stop dead in his tracks. Then he will start patting himself all over. Then he will search each pocket muttering “where is the damn ticket”. He will totally ignore my helpful and rational suggestion “check your wallet”. If I insist he will answer in an irritated way “I know it’s not there, I put it in my pocket somewhere”. Then, just to inch me completely towards a psychotic episode, he will turn to me and ask “did I give it to you? I must have. Can you check your purse?” This is usually the point where the kids, if they are with us, start glooping towards other cars, or slyly attaching themselves to perfect strangers and pretending that they are not with us. Last time we went out, my daughter made a perfectly sane suggestion “Dad can I keep the ticket for you” My dear sweet hubby answered, without a hint of irony on his face “no sweetie, you will loose it? Can you cope!

•There is also procrastination when it comes to all things linked with fixing things around the house. “Honey the pool is green” I will say. Him “Oh I know. It’s all this rain. Don’t worry I will do it tomorrow”. Tomorrow I will say “it’s still green” Him “I know. Don’t worry I will sort it out”. If I take matters in my hands and attempt to sort it out. He goes berserk and drills me on how much acid or chlorine did I put in? Trust me it’s better to nag than to do the job yourself.

• There is also his inability to want to pay another man to do sort out things in house. I blogged about it here. It’s a catch 22 situation I tell you.

• There is also his ability to see through his kids’ manipulation. They only have to say one thing “But DAAAAD. I need it and it will help me with school” said in this whiny I- am- about- to- cry- any- minute voice and he melts. I am then left to reverse decisions. This makes me, oh so popular with the kids.

• His fixation with the news. In my house it’s not sports, unless it’s a world cup of some kind or Olympics. It’s the news. He reads two news papers a day and watches the news in two different languages. He tried to watch the Afrikaans news too. Thank god I nixed that in the bud otherwise we would have no time together in the evenings.

• His inability to cook stuff. Even though he was able to do this whilst he was living on his own. It’s like he erased all the recipes from his memory. The funny thing is if I am away on business they- notice the THEY cause apparently my kids are all eager to help too- will cook supper. They are able to abandon , news, mtv, and play station to do this. I have yet to see this miracle happen when I am around.

Anyways. If you pick up any of these symptoms, just know that your partner is in regression. If you find out how to reverse this syndrome, do drop me a line.

A river runs through it

Published by
Darkchocolate
at November 17, 2008 in The Lounge Lizard. 2 Comments

For more comments visit dementia
“The word is full of bastards the number increasing rapidly the further away you get from home. So you better be street smart and learn to trust your instincts.”

This is what I often feel like saying to my kids. The only reason I am able to stop myself from drumming it to their heads is the fear of raising kids that are freakishly scared of trusting anyone.

Let’s face it, a parent’s duty is judged on whether or not they have a raised a balanced individual who can function in the adult world and contribute to society as whole. We are not raising our kids for us. We are raising them for the world. A world that is quite capable of chewing them up and spitting them out ravaged and in bits. If you are lucky they will be able to come home so that you can help them lick their wounds and the send them out into the cruel wolrd again for more ravaging. Hearts broken, innocence lost, illusion destroyed, emotions frayed. Such is life. I dont know how our parents coped with it all. I know I am not ready for my kids to be adults even though I have no choice in the matter. My daughter turned seventeen last week and son is turning twelve in Jan. Its all happening frighteningly fast. They were babies just yesterday.

If you are not a parent yet, do know that parenting is one of the scariest jobs on earth. Once you have given birth your heart literally lives outside your body. If anything or anyone hurts your kids, you feel more hurt than you would if they had hurt you.

One of my favourite movies is “a river runs through it”. The first time I saw it I couldn’t stop thinking about it for weeks. My daughtre was about a year old. The idea of giving birth to a beautiful child, who grows up charming, talented and loving. Then to watch the same child fighting demons of gambling addiction, whilst you stand aside hopelessly unable to help, sends shivers down my spine.

I saw this movie again on Sunday evening. I was struck by how beautifully it’s acted the amazing scenery and by the moving story line.

It made be examine my own parenting style and think about what I would do if I ever found myself in such a situation. When you know something is terribly wrong and you are unable to help as a mother. It made me think of the woman who is now standing trial for strangling to death her drug addicted son. It made me think of a friend of mine, whose son got addicted to drugs and was experiencing hectic drug induced psychosis. This is her only child. He had been a sweet loving child until he went to university and got hooked on drugs. Before that he never wanted for anything as he was the apple of his mother’s eye.

She called me one day, at the height of the pychotic episodes, and said that she was going away and leaving him alone in the house. When I pointed out the obvious, which was there was a very real chance that he could commit suicide or burn the house down as he was really off his head by then. She told me that, whatever he did would be fine with her. She was emotionally stretched beyond the limit. I was very shocked by this but I also understood where she was coming from. She had been living in hell for two months. She had reached her limit.

I wondered if it was one of my kids. What would I do?

Archives

Published by
Darkchocolate
at November 14, 2008 in The Lounge Lizard. 0 Comments

Do not edit this page

Home life

Published by
Darkchocolate
at November 14, 2008 in The Lounge Lizard. 0 Comments

Check Dementia for more comments on my blogs

“If you are coming through to this voice mail, you are probable stupid or dangerous. You know what to do after the beep doncha, Stupid! Aaaaaasta lavvvviiiiiiisa. HEHEHEHEHEHE”

This, I discovered last night, is my pre- teen son’s new voice mail. My sister, who had come down for a business meeting and had decided to visit, was the receiver of this annoying message. She was standing outside our house and calling him to come open the gate as the intercom system is not working. She was not best pleased. She told me she kept calling, cause she knew he was inside the house, hoping that he will pick up . The first few times she heard it she was pissed off. By the 3rd time she couldn’t stop laughing at the ridiculousness of such a voice mail. Also it is such typical behavior from my son that we all started wondering why we had not checked his voice mail before.He has been stuck of a toilett humour and gags phase for a while now. I cant wait for this stage to be over.When he was asked to explain, he found the whole thing hilarious. He has been told to change the voice mail forthwith and put a decent message on it. Anyway such is life.

On the maid front we finally sacked our drugged to the eyeballs helper. What drama. I don’t even have the energy to blog about the whole thing. Last week we started finding out shocking and worrying stuff about what has been going on in our house. Like the fact that:

• Two Nigerians were seen jumping over our high wall to get to her room at the back. Not once but several times by the neighbours. They, the neighbours were very keen to find out what is going on.

• She had befriended two young coloured boys who live next door and they regularly jumped over the fence to get to her

• When we finally searched her room , since she had gone awol with our front door key, several empty bottles of cheap whisky and several two litre bottles of autumn harvest wine were found.

• We also found my son’s clothes , some of my shoes, some of my dishes. These taken without permission.

• What annoyed me extremely , was discovering a tub of body butter cream that I had just purchased from Woolworth. I had been looking for it for a while and had no clue where it had gone.

Anyway to cut a long story short. She has gone and all the locks in my house have been replaced. I still mourn who she was, before all this. She was enthusiastic, had a vision for herslef and her family, was builiding a house back in the Eastern Cape for her kids. She has five kids and 1 grand child. The house was already almost finished. She was so reliable and good at her work. Its the last two month of her time with us that were bizaare and crazy. I think she is on tik. The detoriation has been way too fast.

We are now walking a new path with a new helper. Hopefully this will be a better relationship.

Hope your weekend is great. I intend to sleep, read and generally vegetate. I will also be helping my kids with swotting for exams.

Are you happy ?

Published by
Darkchocolate
at November 12, 2008 in The Lounge Lizard. 2 Comments

Visit dementia for more comments on this blog

Are you happy?

What makes you happy?

Well I have been thinking about happiness.

What makes me happy? How do I know that I am happy? How can I keep myself happy?

Dont dare ask why I am thinking this way. I just am, OK.

I have come up with my own happiness index and given the fact that I am a Gemini true and true please factor in rapid change of indicators basically depending on the day. As a matter of fact, just to confirm my Gemininess, I have just decided to shelve the blog that I was going to write today and dedicate this to the development of my own happiness indicator. I didnt know that until I was half way through this page.

Great stuff.

Sometimes my mind changes itself before I even know it’s changed. I constantly have to remind it to slow down. If you think I am talking crap, just as the poor schmuck that married me. He gave up on reading my mind two days after the wedding. Now he is just happy if he can follow my train of thoughts.

Any huuuuuuuw .

Happiness means different things to different people of course. To others it is money, to some it is sex, it could be life style, it could be health. You have heard of the term one man’s poison is another man’s medicine. Well that surely applies when it comes to happiness.

However there is one certain fact. We all want to be happy. Rich , poor, black , white, yellow , green, old , young, we all want it.

Can you remember a time when you were truly happy, when you had a feeling of total joy? Do you remember what that felt like and how everything and everyone around was affected? That is an awesome feeling. Obviously if its drug enduced that is a different story altogether. Why would you not want to feel like that ALL THE TIME?

In order to perpertuate the feeling you have to have a good idea of what makes you happy.

Here are my happiness indicators :

1. Money Matters

Honey I don’t care who you are, should you ever find yourself poor and destitute your happiness will be directly affected. Money may not buy you happiness but it sure is the basis of your happiness. If your basic needs are met, you are happy. Sure you can claim that money is not everything. I am not talking about gobs of it here. But a happy person should be able to pay their bills and do a little retail therapy now and again.

There are billions of Saffers who are unhappy right now due to the state of the economy and indebtedness. I become truly stressed when, due to some unplanned emergency, my month is longer than my pay cheque. I feel grumpy and irritated. Moola leads to happiness finish and klaar!

2. Desire

I am talking about general desire for stuff and desire as in libido. You kinda need to satisfy both to be happy, me thinks. Confession time… I am a recovering advertising magnet. I don’t always pay attention to adverts but when I do, I tend to swallow their balony hook line and sinker. It’s a curse. Christ I think I was born one giant advertising magnet. I wish I was more like hubby who threats all adverts with extreme suspicion. As for sex… my take is if you are satisfied sexually you do tend to be happier. Enough said on this

3. Intelligence

How can you be happy if you are dumber than a lump on a log? The only saving grace is that you could be so dumb that you don’t know that you are dumb and therefore be happy in your ignorance. This as a matter of fact does not mean you are happy. It just means you are dumb. Hope you are intelligent enough to follow this line of thought.

4. Beauty

I am a gorgeous goddess of all things that are me. I am talking about how you feel about yourself here not what other people think about you. If you believe in your beauty, internal and external. You exude it. You walk tall and you are confident. You are happy Chum.

5. Family / Friendship / Kids

Being alone in the world aint an easy thing. It is really necessary to have close relationship with family and have support when trouble comes a knocking. You don’t have to be related to someone to regard them as family. Just put yourself out there if the family you are born to comes short. My kids make me happy.

6. Health

Hospitals aren’t happy places. Even those how have given birth are keen to go home. Health = happiness in my book.

So are you happy chum?


Smiley Face

or are you like this all the time?


Smiley Face

What make you happy?

The darling buds of May ……

Published by
Darkchocolate
at November 6, 2008 in The Lounge Lizard. 4 Comments

I am not sure what it is but I am feeling hopefull and full of vigour these last couple of days.

I went through a rather dark and gloomy period for months.

I was constantly feeling that this year really ought to end. Right this minute would have been a very good idea. December and the holidays seemed dismally far away.

My mind, my emotions, my finances, my work load, my hectic non stop email which leads to hectic fights with the techies about the size of my inbox, my family’s hectic needs, my crazy - possible drug addicted helper, SA politics, the weather, my car, the blog … all these things were sending me a very loud message. Down tools!take a break!

Its time for the fucking year to end!!

Well I think I have got a second wind thing going now. Thank Christ.

I cracked on rapily through 300 emails yesterday….. 100 of those job applications accompanied by 3 page covering letters, thick CVs WITH colour photos. WTF? Christ, whatever happened to a simply chronological CV when applying for a job? Have I missed some kind of trend? It seems every single applicant wants their CV to stand out. Can you imagine recruitting in china? I am currently ploughing through the lot.

I had a heart to heart talk with my premier banking manager. That went great but I may consider changing banks soon. I have been with this one bank since I started my carreer so maybe its time. They are taking me for granted as a client. I feel. So time to shop around.

I had an honest discussion with my maid. She is really on something, struth god! She has admitted to being a “sip leads to a case” type person when it comes to alcohol. This is a BIG problem. She ,fortunately, has not imbibed my own liqour , even though my house is riddled with the stuff. One does need a crutch , doesnt one. I really cannot even think about running a dry home, sharia moslem law style, to help her with her issues. Honestly I cant destroy my fleggling wine stork for her. Honestly I JUST CANT. There are times when her eyes are clearly glazed over and her behaviour indicates that she is not herself. However she does not appear to be drunk. She walks straight, doesnt slur her words, has no pervasive liqour smell.

She just behaves weirdly. She swears blue that she is not taking drugs. I still cannot fire her. She has five kids and when she is good , she is very very good. But she has alarming lapses. I cannot deal with a new energy in my life right now. So she will have to do.

SA politics are changing. Who knows what the Shikota will bring in the long term? However right now they have brought a much needed pressure on JZ and his ilk. The message is simply: ANC is not infallible. Stop being arrogant. Shelve your personal issues and think about the voter. I think that is what we needed. CHANGE WE NEED……

The techies have given me more space on the server. Enough said.

I am blogging again. Honestly I thought of chucking it. Even on dementia there was no interest. I had no energy for it. It represented one more thing I needed to deal with. But now i feel like blogging again and may it continue.

My body is still exhausted. Its been a long year . My work load has not eased. My family still demands my time hectically but I am feeling more positive about life. My ceo is ecstatic with my perffomance this year , which hopefully will lead to a bigger bonus come Dec. Really he was so positive about my contribution which made me want to contribute even more.

When I listened to Obama’s acceptance speech. I got very emotional. I sat and tried to figure out why? I have no personal investment in America emotionaly or otherwise. Yes , he is black. Being South African that is obviously a big deal but not enough to make me feel this way. Why would I suddenly feel so emotional?

Then the phrase … the Darling buds of May… came to mind. I used to love this television series about the Larkin family and their idyllic rural life, when it was showing on our TV screens. The phrase itself according to the net, can be understood as follows:

“The phrase refers to the opening buds that point toward the warm summer season ahead and to the freshness and exuberance of youth as it turns toward adult maturity. It probably refers not to the month of May directly but to the May tree (the Common Hawthorn) that flowers in England at that time of year. The hawthorn is important in the mythology of old England and there’s a rich symbolism wrought from its standing as an early flowering common tree”

It is also linked to shakespear’s sonnet

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Well I feel revived and hopefully. I hope you feel the same way too …….

LIFE

Published by
Darkchocolate
at October 21, 2008 in The Lounge Lizard. 2 Comments

Can you really love one person for life? YES.

Does the universe provide only one life partner per person? NO.

If that was the case the world would be a very sad place to live in.

If you get divorced does that mean you made a mistake?

Possible but in my view it just means that the person was right for you at the time you made the commitment, that is if you truly believed they were the one, and that your life experiences have somehow led to you outgrowing each other.

In the case of abuse there are more complex laws at play and this philosophy is too simply. In the case of outright dishonesty such as cheating, you simply need to catch a wake up call and examine the foundation of your relationship if you are so inclined or simply cut the sonofabitch off dead.
Here my assumptions in life:

1. All your life experiences make up who you are. Every single contact with things, people, good or bad make up who you are at any given moment.
2. As a person you change as you mature or experience various things. You pick or drop new hobbies, interests, mannerism, etc
3. It is impossible to be the same person you were at 18 at 40
4. You choose a life partner on the basis of values, common interests , how they make you feel and view life
5. You choose a lover on the basis of sexual attraction
6. You can learn to be attracted to your life partner but it’s a bitch to build a life time relationship on sex alone.

Right all of the above clearly indicate that the universe should theoretically be able to provide us with more than one life partner in our lifetime.

If this is the case I sure wish it does provide one for poor Lucas Radebe who lost his wife to cancer. I was very moved when I heard his tribute to his dead wife. This man cannot go through life without healing and being able experience love again.

Please God, help him heal.

When the child you hate is yours…..

Published by
Darkchocolate
at October 16, 2008 in The Lounge Lizard. 0 Comments

A couple of years ago I posted this blog.

I am reposting it again as something that is currently going on in my extended family has made me dust it up. My brother in law has two sons. He has always favoured his first born. there is a gap of about two months between the boys but the youngest has always been made feel small and permanetly young. Both boys are now at university. The youngers is on his third year , the favoured first born is repeating 1st year for the fourth time. The father is at a loss and the family is cracking apart. I dont know how to help…. worse I dont know if I want to help.

here is my old blog……

Life has a funny way of showing up our weaknesses. Just when we least expect it. You have to wonder why the gods have to make life more tough than it already is? Surely natural processes such as having a positive connection with your offspring should never be tempered with. It must be a benefit that all parents get by virtue of being parents. Post natal depression , in my view, is really an indictement on whoever designed humanity.

I love my kids and I can honestly say , without a doubt and without reservation, I love them both equally and differently. However as I say that I am aware that life did its best to help me with this. It gave my daughter physical similarities to me and a personality that is like her father to a T. It then did the reverse with my son; he looks like his father but has a personality similar to me. As a result it is easy for me to love them both equally but differently. I can’t imagine not liking or loving my kids. I

However I imagine if I saw in one of them bits of what I see as negative aspects of my personality. Would I love one of them less? Would I have a favourite? Would I dislike them to the point of actually not being able to stand my own child? Oh no, that is unthinkable. It is to me but I am not so naïve as to not understand that it happens. The truth of the matter is it very common for parents to have a favourite child. It is a very painful for both the parent and the children involved. If the bible is to be believed this is an issue that has been around since the beginning of time.

There is the story of Abel and Cain and also the story of Esau and Jacob and the story of the Joseph.

When the LORD accepted Abel’s offering but not Cain’s, the latter became angry. God warned Cain about potential sin. But even so, Cain murdered Abel. This was the first case of sibling rivalry … with dire consequences (Gen. 4:4-9). jo
All these are examples that even in these times this was an issue.

Its clear that sibling rivalry can be fuelled by parental favouritism. Parental favouritisim is apparently very destructive to the favoured child whilst it seems to make the unfavoured child stronger although emotionally crippled. I read an article that did a whole lot of research on this issue last night. If a parent shows a preference for one child over the other there is a negative impact on BOTH children. No one wins, least of all the parent who is usually crippled with guilt.

In most families this issue remains a snake under the carpet. No one speaks about it but all the members of the family know about it. The impact of this problem is felt by all. Its worse when one parents then tries to over compensate for this by trying to love the unfavoured child more thus leading to cross favouritism.

In my opinion having no relation to your child or not liking your child is a situation that takes loads of energy and determination to resolve. Just think about it. Its natural not to connect with a person for whatever reason. It stands to reason that there is a likelihood that such a connection can be absent in parent child relationship. So then what do you do in that situation?

As a parent you have to face this head on. One hopes that you will have the strength to do so. The child cannot be expected to understand no can they be expected to know what to do. But what parent wants to admit , even to themselves, that they hate their offspring? The sad thing is that pretending will never hide this fact. It said that some parents, having realised these feelings, become so guilt that they over compensate by other giving the disfavoured child more material things, if they can afford them. However this does not solve the issue.

I know families where this issue was never addressed and the emotional scars on all of them can be clearly seen.

Life can be cruel. You have to wonder why the gods designed it so?