Parenting 101

OK this is a tricky subject to write about. You have to watch what you say these days when it comes to parenting philosophy. Luckily this is my blog so I'll say what I want.

Here are a couple Parenting things I saw recently that disturbed me.

Girl no more that 6 years old riding the subway with her Dad. Cute right, nope Dad was reading the WSJ and the girl had iPod on. Are you fucking kidding me. I would kill for extra time with my son. Actually I quit a job for it and this prick of a father is pretty much ignoring his daughter to catch up on the mornings financial news.

Father is at a dinner with his 3 year old son who is a little bit of a handful. It is clearly Daddy's weekend and it isn't going well. The son is talking loudly and playing with the silver wear and almost spills his drink a couple times. Really nothing that is that bad, normal stuff in our family these days. the problem is that the father is talking to the son like he is a work colleague. He is seriously saying things like "Come on Jordan, your acting childish" Seriously he said that and just FYI (childish: A adjective 1.childish, infantile,indicating a lack of maturity) Isn't that how he should be acting you dummy. This banter went on for about 15 minute with the father getting so worked up that he has to tell the waiter to wrap his dinner up and take it home. The real kicker was that the dinner is a well known kid friendly place and it was packed with kids so know one really cared. I felt like telling the Dad "yo Dad go get a bucket of KFC and go to the park across the street and let your kid run around and play" I didn't because D- wouldn't let me.

D- told me this one. this was a comment from a 4th grader to one of his classmates after he was invited to come over to the kids house. "I don't like going to your house because you don't have Grand Theft Auto" FYI that is a totally inappropriate video game for kids to play. this is a subject that really get my goat. I am totally against kids having video games period. I never had video games and when I went to my friends houses that had them I would have to watch them play for hours. When I would get my turn I would die after 15 seconds because I wasn't good and then have to watch them try to beat the level. I grew up playing outside in the woods or the street. Since I didn't have video games I became wicked good at sports and was able to play division 1 athletics. My best friend became a world famous rock climber and extreme skier and our other friend was playing scratch golf in High school, non of us had video games in our houses. So you know what... no video games are going to be in the P's house sorry Liam. You'll thank me later in life. I'm sure that I begged my parents but they refused and that is what I'll do. So when I tell other parents this and they say "we'll see when your kid is older if you keep that promise". I'm not that worried, I like playing with my kid and will make sure he has other things that interest him like playing sports of playing fun activities outside. The best video game of all is the human imagination and everything that our great earth has to offer. I haven't played a video game that gives you the taste of the ocean in your mouth when you fall of your surf board or the feeling of snow under your feet when you are sledding. What game lets you smell the sent of fallen leaves in the fall or fresh cut grass in the spring. None of them do so do you and your kids a favor say no to the video games and invest in their imagination. That's just my rant but Liam's future is to important to waste on a PS3.