Yesterday the Jansma family, including our new dog Max, were returning home from Green Lake. Aiden was in the back seat with Max on his lap and Shirley was riding shotgun. I pulled up to a stop sign and just as I began my right hand turn onto 68th street Shirley flipped her shit making me think I was pulling out in front of oncoming traffic. Immediately I veered into the ditch and stopped. To make matters worse some Good Samaritan motorist pulled off the road probably thinking I had had a stroke or a heart attack in response to my erratic driving. However, Shirley was not reacting to my driving but to the fact that Aiden had pushed Max off of his lap and onto the floor. If we were all trapped in a burning building, Shirley would rescue Max first. On top of all of it Shirley then began to freak out worrying the truck was going to roll over and end up at the bottom of the ditch. I tried to collect myself and remain calm as I determined what the safest course of action was. Realizing that there was no need to immediately do anything but yell at Shirley, I gave her a good tongue lashing for what she had done. It was the rare occasion where she admitted she was 100% to blame for the predicament we found ourselves in. I threw my new Ram truck into 4 wheel drive (probably unnecessary, since it’s a Long Horn) and backed out of the ditch and headed home. We managed to arrive home in one piece and I used the event as an excuse to stay behind as Shirley and the kids headed over to her sister’s above ground pool so that I could decompress (stay at home and watch the second half of game 7 of the Clippers Mavericks game).

Last week I received the following email from it turns out, Shirley’s aunt, who is well meaning but way too passive aggressive and oblivious.

I have been supporting a family this year with three boys who are struggling with emotional outbursts after video games and sometimes meltdowns. The preschooler is the youngest but the oldest in this family struggles the worst – but models the behavior for the youngest.  
This resource is spot on – but takes hard work and thoughtful reflection on the part of the parents.   I thought of you both who have boys that love their games and thought maybe there would be something supportive in here for you!  Let me know what you think!
video game addiction advice

(that was at least two too many exclamation points)

The email was sent to Shirley, Shirley’s two sisters, and one of the sister’s husbands. One of her sisters has two girls and no boys but she threw her on the email chain for good measure. When it popped up I was half engaged in what I was doing and saw the email thinking it was some type of prank or hoax. Who sends out unsolicited parenting advice like that? My mom when she was alive tried to get me to read parenting books but this is a whole other level of meddling in someone’s affairs and basically telling them they are doing a shitty job in at least one aspect of their parenting if not just saying they Suck all together. I tried to imagine myself emailing parenting advice to my nieces and nephews and their spouses and it made this email attempt at back seat parenting even more infuriating (and difficult since my oldest niece or nephew is 6 and hopefully at least 15 years from needing any parenting advice). I would never do that for a number of reasons the first being I don’t care enough to put together an email (regardless of how poorly constructed, and I’ll get to that later) and send it to anyone, especially family members. I had a T-shirt that I have since given to Goodwill, it read “world’s okayest uncle”. That is where I am at as a parent, I’m not knocking it out of the park but my kids are alive, not committing any felonies, and are faring decently in school despite my complete lack of assistance other than signing Aidens planner every morning indicating he has done his homework. “Aiden, did you do your homework?”

“yes”

“get me a pen so I can sign your planner”

I was half tempted to come out firing with both guns blazing but instead took this route and hit reply all with the following message:

“Is this real or some type of scam? Not sure I should click on the link, I”ve been burned before”

Shirley’s aunt responded to my email as follows:

“It is real”

Not only is her aunt a bit passive aggressive she also wouldn’t know sarcasm or humor if it bit her in the nose. I was infuriated by the email, or at least as infuriated as I get when I am not losing at something or my kids aren’t pissing me off, which isn’t that infuriated, so eventually I forgot about it. However, we ended up going to the Score for dinner and Shirley brought it up as the kids were off playing video games with the five dollars a piece we gave them (that gave us roughly 1 minute and 23 seconds of alone time). My anger came back but the problem was that Shirley was going to defend her indefensible aunt no matter what. Her aunt could go on a homicidal rampage in the Wal Mart’s parking lot and Shirley’s response would likely be “you know how my Aunt Jane gets when she has to go to Wal Mart instead of Meijer.” My first complaint about the email is how poorly constructed it was. If you are going to critique someone’s parenting and “suggest” ways they could fix it, at least lay out your case in a concise grammatically constructed email. This email may as well have been written in crayon as far as I was concerned. Shirley defended the grammar and structure of the email and it was as if I was playing tennis against my brother and we were in a tiebreaker. My voice began to raise and my temper began to flare. Shirley went on to say that her Aunt had good intentions and that it wasn’t that big of a deal. However, if one of my aunt’s,I don’t really have any aunts, but let’s just say one of my uncle’s wives had done that, pretty sure the reaction would have been completely different.

And now for the rest of the story. It turns out that Aiden had a complete meltdown when my mother in law was over because Shirley took a device away from him or threatened some type of restriction on his screen time and Aiden’s response was tell her to “fuck off”, literally fuck off. For some reason this was not communicated to me until last night when I went to the pool party after the Clippers game and my mother in law was talking to Shirley and I and the “incident” came up. If I had ever told my mom to F off the first person to be told what happened would have been my dad and he would have kicked the living shit out of me. So, Sue (my mother in law, who drives a Subaru and drives it at 60mph in the left lane routinely) told Jane (Cara’s aunt) about Aiden’s melt down and the rest is history. Finding out about the incident at least a week after it happened caused me to miss out on what would have been a top 3 disciplinary moment in my career as a parent. Unfortunately, or fortunately for Aiden, punishing him a week after his misdeeds would be like taking Max to the basement and rubbing his nose in the dried out turd I found when I went down there to watch hoops on Friday night so I didn’t have to watch Final Destination with Shirley and the kids. (Yes, Final Destination, which I have never viewed is likely inappropriate for an 8 and 10 year old, but so is Scream which we watched Saturday night, but I’m still blaming the fifth graders on the bus for Aiden’s foul mouth) I probably should have just taken Aiden down there and rubbed his nose in Max’s turd as a form of punishment for his mouth and terrible attitude, maybe next time.