Living With Grown-Ups: Raising Parents

By Nadege Nicoll

This is the first volume in the "Living with Grown-Ups" series. In this book, Isaac, the eldest child of this fictional family uses his everyday life to highlight parents' weird ways. He describes with humor how adults display inconsistent behaviors.:From applying double standards to winning an argument with, "Because I said so", Isaac tries to analyze why adults are so unruly. He might not have an answer for everything, but he surely knows how to put a funny spin on kids day to day life. And it reassuringly looks like this: if parents are not perfect, that's because they are normal!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nadege Nicoll
• Release date: Oct 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9780988860711

Nadege Nicoll

Nadege Nicoll was born in France but now lives permanently in New Jersey with her family. She stopped working in the corporate world to raise her three children and multiple pets, thus secretly gathering material for her books. She writes humorous fictions for kids aged 8 to 12. She published her first chapter book “Living with grown-ups: Raising Parents” in March 2013. It is a pretend self-help handbook for children to cope with their parents’ inconsistencies. Her second volume in the series has just come out in October 2013! Living with grown-ups: Duties and Responsibilities. In this volume, parents' behavior seem even stranger... Can it get any worse?!!

Book preview

Living With Grown-Ups:

Raising Parents

Nadege Nicoll - illustrations by Stuart Nicoll

For Jake, Kyle and Skye, you inspire me every day.

To Stuart, you are my everything.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and

incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination

or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual

persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2013 by Nadege Nicoll

Illustrations copyright© 2013 by Stuart Nicoll

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-9888607-2-8

Smashwords Edition

Published in the United States.

From The Same Author:

Living With Grown-Ups: Duties and Responsibilities

*

Visit The Website:

www.nadegenicoll.com

Contents

From the Same Author

Visit the Website

Introduction

The Kids

Mom and Dad

Double Standards

Pick Your Battles

Parents Prefer the Youngest

Adult Logic Makes No Sense

The Creepy Things They Tell Us

The Soccer Mom Disease

The Hundred Questions Game

The Universal Book of Parenthood

Why Do Adults Have Children?

The Telling Signs That You Have Become an Adult

Introduction

Have you been to a bookstore recently? Or searched the internet for books about being a parent? There are tons of How To . . . manuals, for pretty much each and every childhood phase; How To care for a baby, How To survive the terrible twos, How To prepare for school, How To discipline rebel kids, How To understand teenagers, and so on. I was half expecting to find How To . . . write a book about How To . . . Parents need so much guidance about how to keep us under control. Because, let’s face it, they are totally clueless. OBVIOUSLY. Even though raising children is so simple: boys are cool, independent, don’t want to talk and like all sports where they can throw or kick a ball. Girls are mischievous, love pink, scream a lot and cannot get enough pairs of shoes. Pretty straight forward if you ask me . . .

What’s not so simple is how to understand parents. They are complex, inconsistent, can be a little crazy when pushed, and simply make no sense most of the time. Yet, can you find a book that explains how to handle them? Or simply cope? I bet not. There are none. Which is a shame, because there is soooooo much to say about the obsessive, nagging, lecturing, moody adults we live with.

Well, I think it is time to speak out. It is time parents realize that we are a piece of cake compared to their complicated beings. Therefore I have decided to pick up my pen (or mom’s laptop) and write about how it is to be us; how hard and challenging it is to deal with our parents midlife crises, mood swings and other (many) contradictions.

So here it is, out in the open, for all the kids. Just know that you are not alone. And what goes on in your house, goes on in my house . . .

The Kids

My name is Isaac – not my real name, obviously! I am writing this book anonymously. I do not want mom and dad to find out I am the author. My mom already says, I know what you’re thinking, which I find very disturbing. So let’s not give her more insight on what’s going on in my brain!

Having said that, I don’t think she is truly able to tell what I am thinking. Because if she could, I would get a lot more punishments for swearing in my head, talking back at her, and hatching evil plans to torture my siblings, parents and pets. So her radar must be off most of the time . . .

I am the eldest child of three. My little brother was born when I was just eighteen months, so I can’t quite remember what it was like to be by myself with my parents.

From what I can gather, I spent the first few months of my life in various hospitals’ ERs (short for Emergency Rooms). Not that I had a sickness or anything. It’s just that my mom is a hypochondriac – that means, she hates doctors but she can’t live without them.

I should say my mom WAS a hypochondriac. Then, when I was born, she transferred all her health worries onto me. So if my temperature ever rose a quarter of a degree higher than normal, I would be taken to the Emergency Room; a quarter of a degree below normal: ER; not drink my milk: ER; drink too much milk: yep, ER. You get the picture. After a few months, the hospital near my house renamed their Emergency Room the IR – stands for the Isaac Room. It’s no wonder as I was spending a good chunk of my days there.

I shall also add that I was born in England, where you don’t pay to go to hospital. That’s why my parents are not bankrupt yet – that’s grown up talk for me-no-have-money-no-more. Most often heard as the reason why we can’t have an X-Box. If we had been living in the US, things would have been very different . . .

See, when we moved to America, my parents took me to ER. A month later we got