I had genuinely little experience with young children before I had my own.
I was the youngest child in a family of six, and I was never keen on the method of baby sitting when I got to private school and needed part time work to gain cash.
Instead, I mowed my neighbor’s grass on and off to rake in a little bit of cash. It worked and I was able to save and buy things like trading cards, CDs, and food at restaurants with friends on the weekends. My sister was the baby sitter in the family and it’s no surprise that she was the first a single of us siblings to have children of her own. I was the eighth sibling to have a family, but I had the least experience by far. If it wasn’t for my partner, I don’t think how my teenagers would be—probably some combination of screwed up and mangled from a father who has no method what he is doing half of the time. I believe that I’m doing the right thing a single eighth, only to realize it failed to have the intended effect. For instance, I told my teenagers a long time ago to stop touching the Heating and A/C temperature control because they could accidentally chop the air conditioner or the gas furnace in the process. Despite repeated warnings from myself and my partner, our teenagers keep showing a lack of respect for the temperature control and the Heating and A/C method that it controls. I didn’t want to be the parent that put a lockbox on the temperature control, but I had no choice. I can’t afford to buy a new air conditioner or gas furnace just because our children don’t respect our rules.