An Expert’s Father’s Day Guide to Raising Kids
I’m coming up on my 13th Father’s Day in the titular role, and I’ve come to the conclusion that this officially makes me an expert on fatherhood. You could take any authority on raising kids ...from Dr. Phil to those doe-eyed child rearing experts to the pointy-headed child psychology book authors with the alphabet soup of doctorates after their names to Bob Saget himself... roll them all together and they wouldn’t have anything on me. Because I just recently figured out everything there is to know about bringing up kids.
Since I’m older than the average Barstool reader, there are probably very few of you have a kid as old mine. (Unless you happen to be that 14 year old who fathered a baby with his teacher and then when she got out of jail they had another kid and now they host “Hot for Teacher” nights at barrooms together, in which case there’s not a thing you can learn from me, Kid. You’ll get a lot more out of Kati Cawley’s column instead.) And as terrifying as it sounds, it’s likely that some Stoolies will bring kids of their own into the world. So in honor of Father’s Day and as a service to you, I present you now with the everything there is to know about raising kids. Here goes:
Nothing. I know nothing about the subject. There is nothing to know. Nothing any expert can tell you. Nor your own parents nor your friends that have kids. Those books like “What to Expect During the Toddler Years” might as well be technical manuals for the Starship Enterprise for all the practical advice contained within. You don’t need a doctor to tell you how to raise your kids. You need a sergeant. As in Sergeant Schultz. Because you know nothing. No-thing. And neither does anyone else.
It would be great if I could tell you different. It would be swell if I could be like the lady who writes that column in your town newspaper with the little lessons about the joys and strife of family life. But I’m going to be honest with you instead. Raising kids is the ultimate act of fumbling around blindly in the dark.
I suppose everyone’s default setting is to use their own parents as a guide and raise them the way they raised you. And better yet, take the things they did wrong and do just the opposite. So if your mom is cold, judgmental, and emotionally repressed (my mother-in-law, holla), you smother your kids with love and support (My Sweet Irish Rose). But that model doesn’t work for me. The way my parents raised me was to remind me every day how hard they had it vs. how easy life was for me. Which was 100% true. My mom literally begged in the streets in the Depression. She walked to a job in the next town to support her own mom and her mentally retarded brother while my dad fought WWII and supported a family on a phone company salary. I grew up in the 80s. What am I supposed to tell my kids?
Me: “Those were dark times, my friend. Dark and frightening times...”
My son: “Dad, are you still talking about the time Van Halen broke up?”
Me: “You’re goddamned right I am...”
So literally from the time we got our first son home from the hospital, I’ve been making it up as I go. And faking it. A lot. One conclusion I have come to (and this probably falls way short of any actual real advice but it’s all I got) is that the biggest challenge of raising kids is figuring out what they can and cannot do. It would be great if they came out of the womb with a character card like in Clue: “Prof. Plum is an archaeologist who knows a great deal about chemistry, and is an expert on poisons...” If nature told you right off the bat “Your son will be socially awkward with no athletic talent and if you ever expect him to get laid you better get him a guitar” it would be a big help, but it doesn’t work like that. You’re left to figure out what your kid is good at on your own, and it’s a messy business.
The thing is, a newborn baby is a little pink bundle of pure potential and limitless optimism. You know how every baseball Opening Day Dan Shaughnessy and Steve Buckley crank out those cliche-ridden “every fan thinks their team will go 162-0" hack pieces? That’s what having a baby is like. You worry about bad stuff, but when you look into your little angel’s future, you can’t see anything but success ahead. His life is going to be all cuteness and sweet dreams, eating everything on his plate with the smile of a TV commercial kid, adored by adults and getting elected team captain in every sport on his way to valedictorianism and the hot coeds fighting to be his sloppy thirds and fourths.
Then... reality raises its hand and wants to be heard from. No kid ever turns out like that. Tom Brady has come close, but even he has his flaws (I suppose). There are no real Renaissance Men. Ben Franklin was a genius, wit and ladies man, but as far as anyone knows, he couldn’t throw a spiral to save his life. Everyone has their flaws, and figuring out your kid’s is the key to steering them in the right direction.
The funny thing is though how many parents can’t seem to come to grips with that simple fact. To hear some people... OK, a lot of people... tell it, their kid is pure perfection incarnate. He’s never dropped a popup or flunked a test or bitched about having to turn the goddamned X Box Live off and get to bed. And what I don’t get it where do they think all that perfection comes from? Parents with no discernable talent, no athletic skills, no musical ability and who can’t do 4th grade math, think somehow their DNA rearranged itself at conception to produce some miracle of human evolution. The things that fall off apple trees tend to be apples, not Filet Mignons.
If you’re an even slightly normal parent you know this. And whether you realize it or not, as your kids mature, you start figuring out what they can’t do. Maybe they can’t eat vegetables without doing the Brad Wesley death scene from “Road House.” Maybe they can’t read or write. Or have no verbal skills. Or don’t make friends easily. Maybe they can’t skate or get into a 3-point stance or hit a baseball. Whatever it is, you’ll find out that like you, your kid’s not perfect and there’s a hell of a lot more things he can’t do than he can. Either that or you’re 1) Tom Brady’s dad or 2) delusional.
Not that the delusion is hard to understand. Admitting your kid’s shortcomings s is by extension admitting your own. A while back my son asked me what was the best thing I ever did in sports, and I drew a blank. A team MVP award when I was a catcher for Randall’s Service Station maybe, but that was Weymouth Farm League, the kids who weren’t good enough for Babe Ruth, so it hardly counts. I had a JV football coach tell me I was all heart once, but since I never got into a game it’s not much of a story. The sad fact is, there’s no “Al Bundy scoring 4 touchdowns in a single game for Polk High” story in my background. So if one of my kids goes into a slump at the plate, who am I to get discouraged? In fairness to him, I’m probably responsible. Me and my whole genetic makeup.
So that’s the trick really. You figure out what your kids shortcomings are. And if they’re correctable, you work on them. If they’re not, you move on. If you try to teach a pig to fly, you just end up wasting your time and annoying the pig. I’m sure when I was in 2nd grade, my mother wanted more for me than a joyless, soul-crushing job, a burgeoning stand up comedy career and spot writing for a smutty sports paper, but those are what I was cut out to do. And the best you can hope for is that whatever your kid’s interests and talents, they lead him toward something better than what you have. I mean, coal miners don’t dream that someday their kids will grow up to mine coal. But that’s what some kids are meant to do. In the immortal words of Judge Smails, “The world needs ditch diggers too.”
So that’s it. All I’ve been able to figure out in 13 years of turning down the TV volume and putting down my scotch long enough to pay attention to my kids. Nothing. Your kid is going to be who he is, something very much resembling you, and all you can do is get him there safe and in one piece.
The difference between the other experts and me though is at least I know I know nothing.