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Things are getting out of hand and I for one am super sick of reading one story after another about some over the top bossy parent trying to decide how the rest of us have to raise our kids. When we don’t fall in line, then the world literally comes after you, thanks to this fancy Internet thing we have, reactions are quick and sometimes very painful.
A mom, one mom, is trying to make it a law for all of us to vaccinate our kids. Hey, I am for vaccinating kids, I do it with mine, but what I am not up for is one random lady with an agenda dictating policy for the rest of us. To her I say: Relax! Shut Up! Raise Your Own Damn Kids!
Then there are the parents in Maryland who, God forbid let their kids “walk home from the park!” Yes! Can you believe it, they let their 10 and 6 year old walk together from the park! The horrors! Child protective services got involved, the Today show covered it, they have labeled “free-range parents.” What the hel$ is a free-range parent! Isn’t it just parenting?
Do we really need more labels for parents: Helicopter, Free-range, Gluten Free, Non-spanking, Uninvolved Parents, Attachment Parents, Permissive Parenting and on and on and on. I am a tired parent who does his best with what he has and tries to learn from his mistakes or TPWDWTHHATTLFHM you can move the letters around and I think you can spell “awesome dad?”
I understand the possible dangers of letting your kids walk home alone from a park, but there are also the possible dangers of a kid drowning in a bucket of water or choking on dental floss. Is an outraged group of gnarly-toothed parents going to reach out to Matt Lauer to err their grievances against the flossing families of America? Relax! Shut Up! Raise Your Own Damn Kids!
Moms in California decided Happy Meals were unhealthy and now the fries are roughly the size of a three pack of condoms. If you don’t want your kids to eat at McDonalds, don’t take them. If you don’t want your kids to play video games, don’t let them, if you don’t want your kids to get a vaccine, cool with me. That being said, Relax! Shut Up! Raise Your Own Damn Kids! I have a 6 year old who is 4’3 inches tall, the kid is an eating machine and when we do decide to go to McDonalds it costs me more money, because I have to buy him an extra fries to go with the condom sized fries that now come with a Happy Meal. Thanks for that!
I know a family who raises their kids in an RV, I know a mom who breast fed her kids until they were 6, I know a mom who doesn’t wake her kids up for school, she takes them when they are “ready,” I know a mom who is a functioning alcoholic, mean as hell, but has great kids, I know a dad who never stops yelling at his kids, I know a dad who travels 200 days a year, I know a family who is all vegan, I know a family who loves to walk around naked, I know a family who says The Pledge of Allegiance every day, I know a family who all share a bed. I don’t agree with any of their parenting styles, but I do recognize the one thing they all have in common, they love their kids. They are doing what they think is best to raise their children and giving it everything they have in the process. I think the family bed is one of the most insane concepts ever, however the people who actually commit to making that working have my admiration. I won’t eat off their dining room table (wait for it……yup, there it is) but I also won’t inflict my will on them.
Believe it or not, the mom who wants everyone to vaccinate their kids or the ultra high maintenance moms who fuc*ed up the Happy Meal are also not perfect and are going to mess up their kids along with the rest of us. It’s called P-A-R-E-N-T-I-N-G, the most inexact of all of the inexact sciences.
The people who try to make everyone fit into a nice tidy boy Relax! Shut Up! Raise Your Own Damn Kids!
At the end of the day, you can vaccinate your kids, feed them kale with every meal, make them pray, exercise, drink milk or not, drive them to school, read to them, praise them, reward them, protect them and cook every single meal from scratch and it may add up to absolutely nothing. Go visit a pediatric cancer treatment center and you will see how evident that is.
So Relax! Shut Up! Raise Your Own Damn Kids! And please fix the Happy Meal!
