Published on August 12, 2014 by Old Man Murphy

More and more every year I see it happening. Parents think that the television, the fridge, or the computer can double as a babysitter, and then they wonder why they have no idea what their kids are into, what they are up to, and what they are doing. It’s a sad state of affairs when you can blame an inanimate object for the lack of attention parents give their children

Music:
Mechanolith – Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Aces High – Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Touching Story – Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

All Imagery, not created by WellHey Productions is licensed under Creative Commons 1.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/

Something wrong with your kid? Is it the video games? Is it the television? Is it the music? Nope… It’s YOU!

We’ve all seen it a thousand times. My son plays GTA5 and now I fear that he’s turning into a gangster. Or my daughter listens to Goth Metal, and suddenly she’s turned into a lesbian. WHAT’S WRONG WITH MY CHILD?

Harley? Hand me my hammer!

It boggles my mind that some parents these days are so completely clueless as to why their children are not turning out they way they planned. These are the same idiots that feel that McDonald’s is a good source of nutrition. While you’re at it, I hear nuclear radiation is excellent for your pores.

Why does my son play video games all day? Well why did you buy him a video game if you didn’t want him to fuckin’ play it?

Why does my daughter love this music? Then why did you buy that album for her if you didn’t want her to listen to it?

I understand that when you become a parent, there is no manual, but for CHRIST’S SAKE…. let’s use a little common sense, people! You do realize that you have to RAISE your children, right? you have to participate in their lives, you have to guide them, instruct them, teach them. These are not iPads you get from Best Buy, you can’t just go to the store and ask Geek Squad “What’s wrong with my kid?” Are you fucking serious?

I actually saw this article on television and the reporter didn’t call them out, and I was SO upset. The mother and father were well over 300 hundred pounds and their kid, who was well on his way of winning “Most likely to resemble The Goodyear Blimp” was diagnosed with heart disease. The tub-tub was seen waddling around the house, and if every shot… EVERY FUCKING SHOT they had of this rotund fucker he had some junk food, cheeseburger, chocolate, sugary what the fuck ever in his hand and haphazardly schmeering it all over his face and his parents… his fucking USELESS PIECE OF SHIT PARENTS were quoted as saying,

“We just don’t know how this got so out of hand?”

THIS… THIS… THIS… is child abuse! If you don’t think it is, then there’s something wrong with you. They are literally killing their kid by just letting him eat anything he wants. And, it wasn’t part of the report, but I’ll bet… I’ll fucking bet my silver lined banana hammock that if they would have simply taken that apple pie out of his fuckin’ greasy sausage fingers he would have thrown a conniption so huge that it would have given him a heart attack and that would be the end of it.

GOOD, I’m glad he’s dead… now you fat fucks can be charged with neglect! I hope you both get diabetes and croak while rolling each other in flour trying to find the wet spots.

Kids are not built by Ronco, you can’t just Set it and Forget it. You have to be there for them, you have to tell them what’s right and what’s wrong, you have to teach them by example, because, and I know this first hand, they will do EVERYTHING you do. EVERYTHING! Case in point:

If you haven’t already guess, i do not have the cleanest vocabulary in the world. Murphy you swear too much, HEY… go fuck y’self! Can as soon as my son started talking, I KNEW, that the sailor’s thesaurus would no longer fly in my household. Try as I might to clean up my language, you know there will be certain words that slip through the cracks. BUT, every time the boy would repeat one of my more colorful four-letter Anglo-Saxon words, I would let him know, that that word is naughty, and you’re not supposed to say that. Fast Forward to most recently, he is NOW the Swear Sheriff. EVERY TIME my wife or I swear, he is right up on it with “HEY, YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO SAY THAT WORD!” Of course, and my wife doesn’t agree, but I believe it to be a reinforcing and remembering lesson, if I get caught by the Po-Po, I always ask him, what word I said, and he reluctantly tells me. And I I let him know that he was correct, I’m not supposed to say that word. I feel it allows him to commit all of these bad words to memory, so he’ll instinctively not use them. Because… we had an altercation

We got a phone call from the daycare director one day, and she had to be professional, but you could tell over the phone, that she was chuckling through her teeth. Apparently, in the toddler room, the teacher was attempting to explain a new game the children would be playing, and my son simply didn’t get it. He didn’t understand, and he let the teacher know.

At one of those stereotypical low points in volume, my son very calmly and confidently blurted out, “What the Fuck?”

At hearing this, my wife and I struggled to hold back our laughter. Yes, it was a case of poor judgement on our call, but you have to admit, that’s fuckin’ hilarious! After that day, we strove to instill the fact that there are certain words, that you just can’t use until you’re older. And I’m a firm believer of not bullshitting my kid. I’m not afraid to wash his mouth out with soap if he continues. But he took to it quite well and now he’s the sheriff of these here parts.

I don’t understand why you WOULDN’T want to be an integral part of your kids lives? Yes, it’s a lot of work, but it’s rewarding in its own sense. You get out of it what you put in. My son wants to be around me, he wants to do things that I do, he wants to help out around the house, he wants to learn, wants to get better, wants to excel. Why wouldn’t you want to see that for yourself? Why wouldn’t you want to do a good job of parenting so that you can be proud of your children when they are all grown up and discover a cure for cancer, or become president, or soar to the moon, or even Mars.

Just recently, I started a new game with him that seems to be catching on. Instead of saying, CLEAN UP YOUR TOYS, I make it a game. I say “I CHALLENGE YOU, son, TO CLEAN UP ALL OF YOUR TOYS IN THE LIVING ROOM!” and he will respond “CHALLENGE, ACCEPTED!” And then he’ll do it, and I’ll time him. If he completes the task, no matter the time, I just like to see him hurry and run around, but if he completes the task, he is rewarded, maybe a piece of candy, maybe fruit, whatever his little request may be, I will tell him “CONGRATULATIONS YOU’VE WON THE GRAND PRIZE, YOU GET TO CHOOSE ONE SNACK!” Nine times out of ten he’ll choose something decent, so I’m not worried with him getting all fat and sloppy.

He loves sports, so that’s how we keep him fit, we get a baseball set, we get him indoor hockey stuff, we get him a football. Most of the time he wants to play outside, which kinda sucks in the winter… in Wisconsin… but we do what we can. He rarely if never plays video games, mainly because he doesn’t have that motor control yet, but what he does play are active fun games, like Nickelodeon Dance, or ABCMouse.com. Stuff that will work body AND his mind.

I know for a fact that he is destined for greatness, and that’s because we’ve put greatness into him. I like to look at children as a crock pot. If you simply put the bare minimum into the pot, you’ll get a bland boring soup, maybe an au jus, but that’s it… garbage in, garbage out. But.. if you put meat, and potatoes and onions and shitload of bullion cubes and let it sit and simmer and check on it periodically, adding something here and there to enhance the flavor… well damn, you’ll have something even Gordon Ramsey can approve of!

The TV and the fridge are not babysitters. If you don’t know that, well you know it now. You cannot coast on this, you can not cut corners. Being a parent is a 24/7/365 job, it’s tireless, its exhausting, its relentless, its frustrating, but it’ll only get worse if you don’t put forth an effort. Soon all that negativity will turn to joy, and laughter, and excitement, and encouragement, and pride, and there’s nothing on this earth better than when you look into your child’s eyes and you can see that they are eternally grateful because you put your heart into it.

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