I don’t understand why it’s okay to joke around in front of all the kids about a Smosh parody video about Pokémon Go that calls Weedle “Party Weiner” and the like but freak out when my middle son references a fan fiction character “Gay Luigi” or when Little Bear says the word “crap”.

Seriously, my husband completely loses his shit over any reference to anything homosexual in front of the kids claiming it’s completely inappropriate…. but he’ll watch it or read it as much as he likes. It’s the same for sexual content. I don’t care much for hypocrisy. Practice what you preach and be the person you want your children to be – or die trying. And again, I don’t agree with censorship.

For the record, I did look through my middle son’s 3DS to see what the big deal was. As usual, there was a misunderstanding. And as usual it was Little Bear that had to explain it. Which means this was something Little Bear had watched and my middle son was parroting it. Little Bear had already gotten the hot seat for that ages ago, but here we are now trying to save my middle son from the hot seat with my husband who doesn’t seem to be willing to fully understand Autism. All he heard was “gay” and jumps the gun on him. Truth be told, since he’s 12 years old developmentally there’s actually nothing wrong with him asking questions about being gay – if he were to ever ask them. So seriously I don’t understand the crisis here. If this man did go to church faithfully every Sunday and read the scriptures every day, etc. then maybe I could understand but he doesn’t. Instead he just comes across as a homophobic bigot that could potentially emotionally damage one of my children. I don’t know what my son’s interest is, but that’s not the point. The point is he should be allowed the freedom to figure it out for himself. All I ask is that he is careful and safe about it.

I had to remind him that the word crap is not a swear word, but that shit is and if Little Bear isn’t allowed to say shit then what is he supposed to say? If we censor crap, he will use a different word. Are we supposed to censor that too? If we keep doing that there will come a point where he won’t be able to say anything. You have to draw the line somewhere, otherwise you will lose the battle completely and this kid will just say all the words all the time. If you take this path your rules will be unfair and ridiculous. And this kid is smart enough to realize it.

And really in the end I feel it boils down to him just making himself look morally superior to everyone through the kids. Which is complete bullshit given how this is happening at my parents’ house for one and for two we all know what he is guilty of in the first place.

The other annoying thing about all of this is events like this happen at least once every vacation. Only thing different is that Little Bear isn’t being treated like a “Golden Child” this time. Last time he could do no wrong – didn’t matter what happened or what he did, Daddy was on his side. Truly surprising if you ask me. It almost seems as if my husband has taken what I said about doing what is best for the children to heart. Too bad it’s clear that he still has no idea what he’s doing.

Parenting is hard and really sucks. It’s not like buying a car where you get a manual with it. In fact, owning one car is pretty much like owning any other car. It’s not like that for parenting. Raising one kid is not the same as raising another kid. Each kid is completely different. Sometimes the rules have to change from one kid to the next – not the major rules, I mean the rules of operations. How you do things sometimes have to change.

Like take my first two boys. As long as the routine holds, all goes well. This is because of my middle son’s Autism and my oldest son adapted to accommodate for it. The two of them work incredibly well together. I never had to yell at them; we just followed the visual charts. Yes, there were meltdowns – for both of them. But we managed. Then came Little Bear. There’s yelling, there’s screaming, there’s chaos, there’s… I don’t know. I do know our routines have gone to shit. The older two aren’t having meltdowns, but they are frustrated. They deserve medals for trying. I’m still trying to figure out what works with Little Bear. I’m hearing a lot of good things about the book “The Explosive Child” and I keep meaning to get it. Maybe I need to stop putting it off. I know my dad scoffs at it, but so far nothing else really seems to help. Can’t hurt to try something new at this point.