As the educational film Half Baked taught us, smoking weed can enhance everything from Al Pacino's performance in Scent of a Woman to the back of a $20 bill, but can it make you a better parent?
In a new essay in Cosmopolitan, one lady writes that she's been getting high, not for fun, but specifically because "marijuana makes me a better mom."
Leo Grover writes that she doesn't even like to smoke weed that much and that she gets paranoid being high around other adults. But when it comes to dealing with her young twins, toking up makes her more attentive, patient and empathetic. She doesn't even care if her daughter takes a leak on the hardwood floor.
It even helps her to see things like a preschooler:
"With marijuana, I have more patience. I'm slower to get angry or frustrated, because I understand their frustrations. I am able to see the world through their eyes, to remember how hard it is to be a preschooler or toddler, how things that seem obvious to me aren't yet known to them. We all have a better day."
Grover writes that parenting gives her anxiety, and her anxiety drug of choice is weed, which doesn't knock her out like Xanax.
"I say yes to more requests for childhood fun. To baking cookies, craft projects, trips to the park, board games, fashion shows … any of the things that under normal circumstances make my shoulders tense up as I contemplate inevitable messes and tantrums. When I'm a little stoned, there are no fights."
Well, the cookies part certainly makes sense.
So are we cool with this? Obviously, some moms smoke weed and take care of their kids, but it seems like Grover is the one out there actually admitting the benefits, at least as she sees them.
No wonder teens don't think weed is cool anymore.
