Last month I celebrated my 44th birthday, but since it was on the same day we were supposed to be leaving for Florida it received very little attention, which wasn’t a bad thing.  However, my mom insisted on making me a cake for my birthday, I am not a big cake guy but I didn’t protest because I think making me a cake for my birthday allows her to think I had a perfectly normal childhood (I didn’t). Regardless, I ended up meeting up with my parents at Ada Bible in Kentwood for their 5:30 Saturday evening service and then we proceeded to Ucello’s to continue the festivities.  Shirley and the boys were at the airport trying to get us on a flight to Florida the next day due to our Saturday flight being canceled.  Dinner was fairly uneventful but my mom not only had a cake but also some presents from me, she cautiously said “don’t get mad” when she handed me my presents. Don’t get mad is never a good sign for anything and it may be the first time in the history of the universe that it has been said prior to someone receiving their birthday present.  The gift bag contained some random food and when I say random I mean really random, hot chocolate, beef jerky, and some mixed nuts.  I am certain they all came from Big Lots.  However, the  don’t get mad comment had nothing to do with the randomness of the snacks she purchased me, but was a reference to a book she also sent my way that involved limiting your kids screen time.  In addition to the book there was two page note which I have yet to read, in my defense if I read it I would have gotten mad and my mom told me not to get mad.

This isn’t the first parenting book my mom has given me, it’s actually the third parenting book.  Is my mom that oblivious? It would be like Shirley giving me a book about how to preform better in the bedroom.  Your parenting really sucks so read these books and you will be a better parent.  Will I?  I suppose it is possible, but what if I am completely content being a mediocre parent.  My parents were terrible parents and I turned out to be a mediocre human being, my mediocre parenting is likely to produce average adults if the trend continues.  What’s even more problematic is the fact that my sister and one of my brothers have offspring but they have not received any parenting books, and my sister is raising the second coming of the anti-christ who is ironically named Elijah, the kid purposely fucks with you.  He was at our house and my sister had to leave to breast feed her youngest child (as previously mentioned she has three all under the age of four) he looked at me and pulled her plate of food off the table spilling it all over the floor.  Did I want to call him an asshole? Yes, but I managed to not call a spade a spade (I got in trouble last week for calling Aiden a dick in front of Shirley, note to self don’t call Aiden a dick in front of his mom) but that wasn’t the end of it, later on he repeatedly punched Parker in the face.  For some reason Parker just took it instead of doing what he should have done, beating the shit out of him.  Maybe for my sister’s next birthday which is comping up in May my mom can get her a book on how not to get pregnant.

The reality is is there are plenty of shitty parents out there who think they are really good parents, I feel like accepting who you are and being fine with that is way better than thinking you are something that you aren’t.  How receptive would my mom have been to her mom giving her parenting books on her birthday?  I can tell you, not receptive at all, my mom takes advice from no one, especially not from me and Rosella giving Ardis (that’s my grandma and moms name resepctively) would have gone over like a lead balloon.  There is a guy on Freakonomics, (Stephen Dubner) who is a professor at the University of Chicago and he postulates that it really doesn’t make much difference what you do as a parent, keeping them alive is basically your one and only job and regardless the level of effort you put into your children they are going to turn out the way they are going to turn out.  The guy is really smart and I feel much better letting my kids watch hours of television and eat ice cream after every meal knowing that getting rid of the TV and cutting out dessert wouldn’t change their future one bit.

Obviously the screen time book, which is still sitting on my night stand in an attempt to make it look like I took my mom’s passive aggressiveness to heart (my mom cleans our house, unfortunately she doesn’t dust so at some point the charade will be over) is relevant because there are so many different types of screens out there than we had as kids.  We had one screen, and it was a shitty screen at that.  It is hard to find an old school tv anymore but if you do or you happen to watch non high def TV it makes you wonder why anyone even watched tv before the advent of flat screen ginormous high def televisions.  Phones, tablets, refrigerators (yes, they now have fridges with televisions in them, that’s fucked up) and the conventional and old reliable television.  My kids constantly are demanding my phone.  When I bring them to school its “dad can we watch your phone in the car?”  when I pick them up from school it’s “dad can we watch your phone in the car?” When I go to the store with them on the five minute trip from our house to D n W its “dad can we watch your phone in the car?”

You know who’s fault it is that they get so much screen time?  That’s right, Netflix, they have at least 600 shows and the content that is available for kids is top notch, a lot of it makes me laugh as I they watch my phone and I am a captive audience member forced to listen to it over my blue tooth.  Growing up we had shit for choices, Wile E coyote and the road runner, He-man, and the justice league with the wonder twins were the cream of an unsatisfying crop of shows.  My kids would probably rather stare out the window as opposed to watching that garbage.  They have Captain underpants, boss baby, atomic puppet and many many more shows to choose from.  I can’t tell them no, it would be inhumane to deprive them of such amazing content, and on top of that Netflix just raised their subscription fee so I need to get the most bang for my buck.