Eight-year old Chris called me "Satan" the other day. It's hard to interpret that for any audience, but my sense is that he believed at the moment that the Devil and me were pretty much interchangable. My "sin" as far as I can ascertain, is that I wouldn't let him (Chris, not the Devil) wwatch YouTube on the computer past 9pm.
Being a parent is like riding a rollercoaster. One minute you're the shining star of your child's life, the next minute you're Mussolini, only without the captive audience. My wife Terry has a good approach to the changing fortunes of parenting, never getting too high or too low. I wish I could adopt that stance for myself, but when Chris lashed out I took his words to bed with me and felt like a real failure as a father.
What saved me was remembering some of the hateful things that I said, or imagined I said, to my own father. The world of a child is centered on self, and that world revolves around their wants and needs. Not having computer time in 2010 is a lot like being called in off the playground while the sun is still out in 1971. The level of technology changes, but not the perspective of the child.
As I approach fifty, it's striking how much I value contact with my folks. Perhaps as we learn to cope with their imperfections, they teach us how to cope with our own. As parents, we're no angels, but we're certainly not satan either.
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