Modern parenting

It is inevitable that any writer seeking public acceptance will have to scribble something about parenting, children and the disgusting way that the young parents of today fail to raise their grubby specimens to be exactly like the perfect archetypes that reside in my impeccable home.

So I’ve spent time at some shopping centres, parks and other public places to watch parents and to learn valuable lessons from the ways they deal with the challenges of children.

Here is what I’ve learned:

Naming your child. Give your child a name that will rip through the eardrums of innocent bystanders when you yell at them from 500 metres away to “get over ‘ere”. Anything with a vowel you can torture in it is good. “Mark”, for example, works particularly well when you scream it like a kamikaze cockatoo on final approach. Anything ending in “on” or “en” works – “Darren” or “Sharon” with the emphasis and volume on the final syllable – slide your voice up the scale about a fourth as you crescendo to that final sound. The “ene” family of names is also great when you give the final syllable the whip-bird treatment: Joeline, Darlene, Pauline, Kerosene, Chlorine, Bromine etc.

Remember that your children are really adults inside. Whatever childish things they do are not just normal for their age – they know what they’re doing and they do it to spite you! They know full well that today’s a busy day for you, that the traffic’s likely to be a nightmare after the overnight rain and that you need to get out the door early. Because they hate you, they’re playing Lego when they should be getting their school uniforms on and willfully failing to cut their own lunches, clean the toilet and repaint the lounge room so that you can get out the door on time.  Punish them accordingly!

Children don’t know when you’re lying. You know those Christmas shopping trips? You’ve been in an overcrowded shopping centre with thousands of other short-tempered adults and crying children for four hours, busily preparing for the season of joy and goodwill? When your children cry, just console them with, “We’re nearly done, honey, nearly home time.” As they look up at you with their wide trusting eyes, you know they believe you, even if it’s the fourth time you’ve said it. You know they think that the ordeal of Christmas will all be over soon and so they won’t cry, steal toys off the shelf or demand drinks, donuts and visits to the toilets that are now at the far end of the centre and which they told you they definitely didn’t need to use not five minutes ago.

Children should always be on a state of heightened alert, ready to sprint to you whenever you so much as whisper their names. If you can’t mumble “Tom” into an empty sugar bowl while hiding in the back of the pantry under a stack of tea-towels and have him turn up within 5 seconds, the kid deserves to be punished. What you do next is escalate your mood and voice exponentially, storm into their rooms and scream at them “I told you to get out here now do it now!” (they know you’re angry if you use words like “now” with sledgehammer emphasis twice in one badly constructed sentence).  If they didn’t hear you the first time, they’ll become so paranoid after your bolt-from-the-blue explosion that they’ll hear you every single time from now on. Really, what else do these kids have to do with their time?

An adult’s tolerance for boredom should be innate in kids’ DNA. There’s something wrong with your children if they can’t sit still, un-stimulated, for 2 hours without the intervention of duct tape and sedatives. As adults, we’ve resigned ourselves to the fact that most of the precious minutes of our lives will be squandered in boredom from any number of sources: someone’s inability to manage a doctor’s schedule,  chronic lack of carparking at a major event, making small talk with people you don’t like, watching power-point presentations or listening to self-indulgent, monotonous wedding speeches. Boredom and sleep will take up most of your life. If your kids aren’t born with an ability to demonstrate that knowledge before they can walk, they are evil and ill-disciplined.

The modern parent doesn’t plan ahead, doesn’t manage things for their children and resorts to yelling and swearing as the first (and, often, only) means of discipline.  Parents had kids because … they were cute as babies, but they kept growing up and wanting stuff and not understanding that mum and dad have their own issues to deal with – what with getting older, and going to work, and trying to find money for cigarettes (gone up again - bloody guvmnt!) – without having to manage stuff for these kids as well.

So there they are; my observations about the skills of modern parenting. Go forth and multiply!