Scary!

I was sitting in the living room, working on my laptop, when my daughter Callie excitedly announced that she had just painted her brother and sister’s faces with clown make-up.  Trying to finish a message, I didn’t look up immediately upon the clowns’ entrance.  Instead I gave an enthusiastic “Yay!,” while keeping my eyes on the computer screen.

After a few seconds, I looked up at them, and my breath caught in my chest. Why?  Because these were no silly-looking clowns. These were seriously scary, morbid-looking clowns. Like the kind they put in horror movies that I refuse to watch. The kind that make you say, “Well no wonder you’re afraid of clowns!”

But these clowns didn’t think they were scary.  Caleb, especially, thought that he was really funny.  I was definitely laughing–maybe a bit nervously at first.  Then I called my husband in to see the clowns. He managed to stifle his scream upon seeing their faces and then joined me in laughing. Then, as any good parent would do, he went to get the camera.

These are the worst pictures I could have of my children, but I still decided that they needed to be shared on Facebook. As the photos uploaded, I considered the privacy settings. I didn’t want just anybody to be able to see them, because these snapshots were not a true depiction of my children, who are normally (in my opinion) incredibly beautiful and sweet-looking. I didn’t want people to think that my children were actually trying to be utterly creepy, even though the pictures hardly portrayed otherwise. So I secured the proper setting.

My guess is that all parents have experienced something like this at least once. Most likely more than once. We’ll be out in public, and our children will decide that this is the perfect time and place to throw a tantrum or hit another child or say something ugly, which can be much like those snapshots of my children that don’t give a true depiction of their character. Suddenly we feel the need to explain that our children aren’t really like this and that they’re just tired or off their schedule or something. We don’t want people to think that we are bad parents or that we have ill-behaved children. Admittedly, it’s a matter of pride.

We really should cut ourselves some slack. Any other parent or grandparent observing this “snapshot” will most likely understand that all kids have their unruly moments, particularly when they have an audience.  They’ll also understand that parents are not perfect either–that we have our own unruly moments.

Let’s not fear the snapshots. Let’s use them as teachable moments and try to forget we have an audience. After all, we are the parents, and only we know whether our little clowns really are scary . . . or just temporarily misunderstood.

P.S. This is an actual photo from the actual event. And the photo is much more terrifying than the in-person event was!