I am a Know. It. All.

If you have kids you may not want to read on: You have been warned. Take nothing personally.

Here is the thing.  I have worked with kids for the past 11 years.  In those 11 years I have become what you may call...a- Know. It. All.  I have prided myself on learning the talk, learning how to reason, learning what kids like and don't like (even when it comes to how they are parented), I have read the books,  planned and sat through the seminars.  And through it all I have watched.  I have watched how kids have been parented, how they are punished, (or not punished in some cases). In all of my watching over these years I always have asked myself the question "what would I do with my kids in that situation?" so I have developed "all of the answers" in the past 11 years.

I have found that my wife also is a little bit of a Know. It. All.  She too has worked with little kids for the past 10 years.  In her time as a teacher she too has worked hard on her path of becoming a professional in understanding kids, parents, and how they work.  She has gone on to even become a specialist in education to fully understand kids and how they work and function.  In her time as a teacher she to has watched. Yes, watched. In her watching she too has seen how parents behave, how kids respond to certain things and has asked herself the same question as she has watched in the past 10 years "What would I do in that situation as a parent?"

Because both of us have watched so much we now sit back and openly discuss parenting techniques as they happen before our very eyes.  One of us will say...did you see that? Or did you hear that? And we than give the "right answer of how we would have handled that situation. It has made us into Know. It. Alls.

Even as we were on vacation this past week we watched how people parented from France, Mexico, England, and even some places we did not know the language. So, we became international Know. It. Alls.
We had all the answers, we knew exactly how to handle each situation.

We keep coming up with the same conclusion. We are going to be AWESOME parents. AWESOME.
Just ask us.

Here is the irony of all of this.  We don't have a kid. We have one on the way, but we really don't have one.  We truly have no idea of what parenting is going to be like, we have no idea of how our child is going to behave.  We have no clue of how we really will act in each of those situations.  We are rookies.

Being a Know. It. All. is going to do nothing for us because the truth is we know nothing. Nothing.  I hope that as we learn to be parents just a little bit of what we have learned in the past years will be applicable, but it is just like God to toss us a curve ball and allow us the gift of relearning everything we thought we knew.

So, I guess I need to apologize to all you parents out there that have been watched by me.  The answers may not be as simple as I once thought. I hope that when you watch me with my kids you are giving me a little grin knowing that I am a recovering Know. It. All.

CSM<><