Robert Dean

One of the biggest challenges of being a parent is keeping your shit together around your kids.

Sure, When they’re little, they do little kid stuff like drawing on themselves, the couch, the wall, and the dog in a very black, thick, and hard-to-get-off Magic Marker. Or they whizz in their pants when you’re a whopping five minutes from the front door. Or if you’re raising boys, they pee everywhere that isn’t a toilet. Or these minor demons refuse to eat when you let them pick out every ingredient on the plate.

(God, how many times have you made Kraft Macaroni and Cheese or pulled out a cheese pizza from the freezer? Most adults need a multiyear detox after the kids’ palates expand.)

But I’m not talking about those kinds of moments of small furies.

Instead, it’s when kids say things that make you clasp your hand over your mouth, look away and pretend what they just said wasn’t hilarious. 

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There’s a podcast I listen to called One Life, One Chance, hosted by hardcore singer Toby Morse, an explicitly positive person who’s a straight-edge vegan who sees the best in people.

And at the end of every interview, he asks, “do you have any regrets?”

Some say yes, and others say no, that the path they’re on is theirs alone, complete with its successes and failures.

I cannot relate to this. Like, at all.

Every single time he asks about regrets, my mind does one of those montages of moments where I die inside, pinpointing my fuckups, leaving me wishing certain things were different, curious what my life would be like had I played situations a little smarter.

I know I can’t change the past, but the past has come collecting its tax more than once. And because of those hard-knock lessons, I’ve learned to think critically and strategically when it comes to being a parent, for better or worse. 

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