Sunday Secret

Josh and I were really young when we started having kids. Neither of us had the best in the whole 'parental role model' thing to go on, and so we have winged it. We have guessed, we have messed up, we have just closed our eyes real tight and hoped we don't screw these kids up too badly.

We don't have a lot of friends with kids, and until school started for the boys, we didn't really ever have a basis of comparison for how our kids are turning out. And then, one fine day, a beautiful thing happened.

Someone created SuperNanny.

SuperNanny is one of our dirty little secret things we do late at night when we're sure no one's looking. We watch this show, and every week it teaching us something. It teaches us that we are damned fine parents.

SuperNanny is the one time when we can get really smug and holier-than-thou. We watch, and we talk about what idiots these people are, and how they are making rookie mistakes, and how oh my god we'd never do that or holy crap could you imagine if one of our kids pulled that shit?

Our secret little hour of SuperNanny, when we can get it in, gives us a chance to compliment each other. To discuss our strengths and weaknesses. To hold a mirror up to our parent-selves and admire the reflection. It brings us together in a way that we thought only the Wii could.

This parenting thing is hard, and isolating, and terrifying a lot of the time, and it makes you crazy with worry. No one tells you when you're doing it wrong, because, like religion or politics, wrong parenting is a very subjective sort of thing. At least we have SuperNanny every single week telling us just how right we are.