Essential Parenting Skills
Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2008At long last, we leave the dark days of winter.
We change the clocks: spring forward, fall back.
That’s one of those traditional stories people use to terrify children, isn’t it? Spring forward, get impaled on an enemy’s spear and fall back screaming with blood pouring from a gaping wound as you gurgle your last on some filthy medieval battlefield. Isn’t that what it means?
Oh, it isn’t? Sorry.
I thought it was one of those stories like the ones I used to tell my own children when they were small. I particularly liked the Bad Tooth-Fairy, who creeps into your bedroom in the middle of the night, takes all your money and leaves teeth. I used to collect unwanted teeth from the dentists and sprinkle them on the floor around their beds. Nyaaa-ha-haaaa!! I’d cackle, with a bag over my head in case they were awake. Happy days.
It reminds me of that other great character from their childhood: evil Santa. I used to tell them how Santa Claus laughed.
What? I’d chuckle. Ho ho ho? Not at all, children.
And then I’d form my hands into claws and hold a torch under my chin.
Santa goes Haaaarrr Haaaarr Haaaaaaarrgggghh!!! as the shadows of his long yellow nails creep up the bed covers towards your face and his red eyes glow in the dark. Ha haaaarr!!
I think they liked that one best of all, because they still talk about it.
When raising children, it’s very important to make them fear and hate you.
I recommend making many promises which you then fail to honour. This will prepare them for the disappointments of life. Tell them you’ll bring them camping, but don’t. Promise them little rewards if they do well at school: sweets and goodies, but eat them yourself instead, laughing loudly and dribbling.
We spent many happy days chasing around the garden as my kids desperately tried to save their football from my bread-knife, and this gave them two advantages. They didn’t become fat obese bastards like all those scumbag kids with nineteen chins you see wobbling around the streets in track-suits with their fat dole-sponging parents. And they developed a real sixth sense for lurking danger. No-one’s going to sneak up on my kids: they’re quick, and they trust nobody.
Isn’t that a wonderful gift?
Of course it is. If you raise suspicious and fearful kids, nobody will ever take advantage of them, but there’s one other gift you need to give them, and that’s independence. When Bullet was very young, I told him I’d shot his real father in the forests of Sumatra. I explained to him that, in a fit of remorse, I raised him as a human child, and I think this gave him the resilience to withstand much that life has thrown at him.
Sometimes, he’d say things like, Dad, what makes the sky blue?
I’d crouch down beside him, look up at the sky, and I’d say in a gentle voice, Shut up!
This approach has made him very self-reliant.
Stumble it!
March 30th, 2008
dude, your completely twisted LOL!!! the scary thing is your not joking!!… but it makes me smile all the same :) Keith wants us to have kids so he can train them to wait inside the door and bite the post mans fingers when he delivers the letters….
I want to train them to chase people who Jog, nashing their pointy teeth screaming uncultivatedly at them, yeah that will give them an excuse to run alright! :p
March 30th, 2008
I shall encourage my children to follow in my footsteps and develop an healthy interest in explosives. For example, if you get some solid camping fuel pelltes (hexamine) and add some fuming red nitric acid you can get RDX the principle component of C4. Err, actually don’t try that, it will most likely blow up in your face and leave you horribly scarred or dead.
March 30th, 2008
I’m laughing far too much at this. Bock, you’re a bad man! Bad, bad mad!
March 30th, 2008
isn’t it grand, sugar? i can’t wait to be a grandparent and really perpetuate the insanity! xoxxo
(you crack me UP!)
March 30th, 2008
Ah yes…the football and the breadknife….such a classic.
How about the Action Man Deserter? Just an empty box under the Christmas Spider plant is always good for a cackle.
March 31st, 2008
eeep.
March 31st, 2008
Bullet’s real name is Sue, right?
March 31st, 2008
LOL.
When i was younger i was threatened with the Good shepherd.
Say that to a child now and they will laugh.
My daughter is 8 and i have her trained to attack mens testicles if they annoy her.
My 2 sons are 3 and 18months they seem to be immune to any feeling what so ever in there head.So they just go around head butting all day;
(Bock i cant beleive i didnt know about your site earlier.I must say i am some what addicted now and your humour is like a cup of coffee to me in the morning.I cant go through a day properly with out either
March 31st, 2008
They should have threatened you with the bad shepherd.
March 31st, 2008
The bad shepherd is just a myth wee all know that.Its the boogie man and the monster under the bed that will get you LOL
March 31st, 2008
Ah but we were innocent children. This generation is completely different. My dad said that children who picked their noses and ate it (I didn’t!!), grew another nose out of their throat, and that in fact what we all thought was an “adams apple” was an extra nose to blow. And i believed it until I was oh, about 30? We also got the good shepherds story, which worked well on us. He told us totally believable stuff,the hairy hand and so on, and in our innocence we absorbed it like sponges. We had a pet hen, who disappeared and then a roast chicken appeared on the kitchen table. He said it was her and that we needed to accept that chickens were not just pets, but had to be eaten as well - My mother kept it zipped. We wouldn’t eat her. to this day I don’t know if it was Nora or not. Kids may have more money and so on today, but I have to say I had great parents and a good laugh. The hand me down clothes were a bit of a confidence killer though…
March 31st, 2008
I laughed out loud reading your post. Remember the days when teachers could give you a beating and if you went home and told your parents, they would give you another one because you must have done something wrong at school to deserve it. Now we have spoilt shits doing whatever they like then leaving school wondering why they’re illiterate…
March 31st, 2008
Hee.
My mother used to tell me that the Tooth Fairy was drunk, having left a dollar under her pillow instead of mine.
March 31st, 2008
Hearty guffawing from across the world.
I admire your parenting approach, Bock. I’ve no doubt Bullet is a remarkable young man indeed for it. Yep, I bet he’s remarkable all right…
The girls are doing a chicken project at kindergarten and their eggs hatched late last week. I wanted to call Prob Child I’s Fang on account of his bigger than average egg-tooth, but she went with Peter Fluff in the end. Gah.
March 31st, 2008
My son thinks I have eyes in the back of my head and that my new mobile phone transmits live footage of him doing bad things at school when I am at work. Mwah ha ha ha ha ha.
April 1st, 2008
“We wouldn’t eat her. to this day I don’t know if it was Nora or not”
It wasn’t.
April 1st, 2008
Bock,
yer terrible, jest terrible, …hahahaha, um, er, a ah mean, yer terrible…! ;)
April 1st, 2008
Nora: it was i’m sure it was! Her name was Nora Johnson. Unless of course she was nobbled by a fox and he didn’t want to tell us. Much easier to pretend he’d roasted her to eat, yes, that must have been it :)
April 1st, 2008
Nora “Johnson”?
It gets worse and worse. :)
I was in the Donegal Gaeltacht as a kid (13), and boarded at a house in Anagaire. We woke up early one morning to awful noise, and saw that they were slaughtering lambs in the cobbled back yard. Blood everywhere. They were the local butcher’s and we didn’t know. I’ll never forget it.