Seriously_.I'm Kidding - Ellen DeGeneres [25]
A few years ago in an online poll, Portia and I were voted the number one celebrity couple people would trust leaving their kids with. That’s very flattering, but before anyone starts dropping their babies off at our house like it’s a day care center, let me tell you how much I know about them. I know which end you feed. I know up from down. I know front from back on the boy ones. And I know that when they’re born they’re slimy and make weird goat noises. I might be thinking of a baby goat in that instance.
I know everyone says it, and that’s because it’s true—parents have the hardest job in the world. I can’t think of anyone who has a harder job on the planet, besides maybe whoever glues those tiny rhinestones onto doll shoes. It’s so precise.
Portia and I have learned so much about parenting from being around our niece Eva and her mom and dad. It’s a challenge even if you have the most precious, most adorable, and cutest baby on the planet. (I know everyone says that about their own kids, and I’m sure you all think your kids are the cutest kids on the planet. It’s sweet that you think that, but the fact of the matter is, Eva is the cutest.)
We’ve learned how much patience you need to have and how careful you have to be with what you say and what you do because from the moment these little creatures are born their brains are like sponges that absorb every single thing around them. We’ve also learned how attentive you have to be. If you’re not attentive 100 percent of the time, you will quickly learn how difficult it is to get grape juice out of the antique rug in Auntie Ellen and Auntie Portia’s sunroom.
Here’s why I think every parent out there should be given a medal or a ribbon or a trophy, like those bowling trophies but instead of a person bowling on top there would be a little statue of a parent sitting down to watch some mindless TV after scraping dried peas off the sofa while their son or daughter is finally sound asleep in the other room. That might be too much to put on a trophy, but you get the idea.
First you have your baby, which in and of itself is a stunning feat. I won’t go into specifics, but ouch and no thank you. Then you spend the next eighteen years raising the child. Throughout that time you ask questions you have never before thought to ask another human being, like, “Who needs to go potty?” and “Can you please take your underwear off your head for Mommy?” and “You got what pierced? Where’s that?”
Once your kids turn eighteen, you think you’ve done your job and you can go back to having a clean basement. But it turns out, according to an article I read, 80 percent of college graduates are now moving back home with their parents. Eighty percent! It would probably be 100 percent but some parents were smart enough to move without telling anyone.
That has to be frustrating for a parent. Your dream is to send your kid to college, be there when they graduate, and watch them go on to do great things. They’re not supposed to come back home. Their room has already been turned into a gym.
That sort of thing doesn’t happen in nature. When a bird leaves its nest, it leaves for good. The mama bird does all sorts of things to get those babies out of that nest for the long haul. First she’ll nudge them to encourage them to get up and move around. Then she’ll show them how fun it is to fly. She’ll circle the nest, swoop around, play peekaboo. Then she’ll fly to another branch and squawk, “Hey, get out. I have company coming.”
And the baby bird leaves. It learns to fly and make its own nest. It doesn’t leave, get a bunch of tattoos, and come back to mooch off its mama. It starts looking for its own food and searching Craigslist for temp jobs.
I think parents can learn a lot about parenting from nature. Not