A New Year’s resolution for all experienced parents: Silence the small, sad and stupid. Allow expecting parents to be expectant.

Now that I’ve posted my New Year’s resolutions for 2015, I have a  New Year’s resolution suggestion for all parents:

Spend the next year (or even better, the rest of your life) telling expecting and first time parents that children are joyous miracles, and that being a parent is a remarkable and rewarding journey. Pour forth positivity. Tell stories about your children’s unadulterated adorableness and all the ways that they have made your life better. Glorious, even.

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Have no fear about portraying parenthood through rose colored glasses. There are more than enough dumb ass parents in the world who are hell- bent on spreading doom and gloom to expecting and newly-minted parents. For every positive remark that you extend to an expecting parent, I promise that there will be a dozen or more nattering nabobs of negativity whining about the cost of diapers, the loss of sleep, and their inability to go out to the movies anymore.

It’s impossible to shut these people up. I have tried.

Instead, I spend my time attempting to balance the world by assuring pregnant mothers and expecting fathers that these whining, complaining, unhappy parents are small, sad, stupid people who cannot find joy in their own lives and choose to spread misery wherever they can. I assure these soon-to-be parents that they are about to embark upon an amazing journey, and the cost of diapers is nothing compared to the happiness that they are about to experience.

Make 2015 the year you bring some balance back to the world. Counter every parental whine and complaint with a story of happiness and joy. Follow every ridiculous warning with an expectation of elation.

Expecting parents should be exactly that: Expecting. Not dreading.

Make this your 2015 resolution.

Charlie found a whistle. And he was happy.

There are so many great reasons to have children.

I think this needs to be said more often, because whining about the challenges of parenting is a popular pastime in certain corners of this country.

Maybe every corner.

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I have theories as to why this may be the case, but I’m writing a book on the subject, so you’ll have to wait and see what they are.

Regardless, one of the great things about having kids is the constant reminder about the joy of novelty and simple discovery.

Charlie found my whistle the other day, and it made his day.  

I hereby release myself of all parental guilt regarding the iPad. It was shortsighted, stupid, and purposelessly nostalgic.

I brought my son downstairs for breakfast. As we stepped into the kitchen, he saw the iPad on the counter and said, “iPad! Chair! iPad! Chair!”

This is the two year-old version way of saying, “Father, I would very much like to take a seat in my favorite chair and make use of that glorious device.”

A large part of me wanted to deny him the use of the iPad. Breakfast would be ready in five minutes. There are a thousand toys in our home that he loves.

More importantly, I was suffering from iPad guilt.

I should avoid sticking my son’s face into a screen as much as possible, including now.

Charlie continued to beg, and so I surrendered, handing him the iPad. “Thank you, Daddy!” he said, as if knowing that a polite remark of appreciation would improve his chances of getting the device again in the future.

I started to make breakfast, feeling the weight of parental failure on my shoulders. I had done the modern day equivalent of what my parents did to me: Stick the kid in front of the television so he would stop whining.

I was ruining my son’s life. Destroying his attention span. Stealing his boyhood creativity. Taking the easy road.

Breakfast complete, I returned to Charlie to extract the iPad from his tiny clutches. I looked down. I saw this:

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Charlie was sitting in his chair, scrolling through the hundreds of photographs of the family, calling out his sister’s name and touching his mother’s face and whispering, “Momma” whenever he saw it.

In that moment, I dispensed, once and for all, with iPad guilt.

For some incredibly stupid reason, I had decided long ago that smashing a toy fire truck into a toy bus while making growling sounds was an infinitely  more valuable use of my son’s time than using an iPad.

Why is that?

My son sat down in his chair with the tablet, and of all the choices he had (and there were a lot), he opted to peruse the photo album. Had he come downstairs and demanded an actual photo album from the shelf, with real photographs, I would’ve been pleased. Ecstatic, even.

But on a screen? Not as good, or at least I used to think so.

I left Charlie on the iPad, scrolling through photos, while I folded the laundry. About ten minutes later, he closed the photo album and opened an interactive book. A narrator reads the fairy tale aloud as Charlie touches the characters to make them speak and act.

I realized that had Charlie grabbed a physical book and flipped through the pages, I would’ve been pleased.

But reading an interactive book on an iPad? Not as good.

This point of view, however, is insane. Charlie can’t read yet. Charlie flips through books on his own all the time, calling out colors, letters, and the names of objects. The poor boy wanted to actually hear the story read aloud, but for some inane reason, I saw this as a failure on both his and my part.

No more. No longer will I be sucked into this nostalgic, idealized, moronic view of parenting. As I’ve written about before, Charlie knows all of the letters of the alphabet thanks to the iPad. Without my wife or I encouraging, directing, or participating in any way, he learned to identify every letter, upper and lowercase. and knows the sounds that many of these letters make.

In a million years, I couldn't have taught my two year-old son this skill, and I’m an elementary school teacher. But a cleverly designed app, that is both fun, interactive, and deceptively instructive, did the job.

How could I ever think of this was time wasted?

No longer will I view my children’s childhood through the lens of my own childhood, valuing the choices of my childhood over the rest.  My children are growing up in a world in which they will do the vast majority of their writing and reading on a screen. They are growing up in a world where technological ability and efficiency are no longer prized. They are required.

I should not be worried that my two year-old son can operate the iPad, finding photo albums, music, books, videos, and learning games without our help.

I should be thrilled.

Please don’t get me wrong. We don’t let him use the iPad often, and this release of guilt will not change that. We don’t allow him to use the iPad for long stretches. We limit his time, say no to his requests for often than not, and believe that his day should primarily be filled with physical activity and time spend looking and listening and communicating with his family.

But some time spent with technology when his father is making breakfast, folding the laundry, writing an important email, emptying the dishwasher, sweeping the floor, or driving long distances?

No guilt. Not any more.

My 3 best pieces of parenting advice

A reader recently asked me for parenting advice. She is pregnant, reads my blog regularly and would like to know what are some of my best parenting tips.

I was honored by such a request, though I know that some might think it crazy to ask for parenting advice from me. I’m certainly not an expert on parenting, and some might even say that I’m the last person to ask this kind of question, but I’m not without experience.

I’m an elementary school teacher who has been teaching children for more than 15 years.

I’m the father of two children and a former stepfather who raised a stepdaughter from the ages of 6-16.

So yeah. I have some experience with kids.

I wasn’t exactly sure what my best parenting advice would be, so I scoured my blog for posts on parenting and found three that I think are my best:

Raising my daughter is a piece of cake, and there’s a good reason why I say this as often as possible.

It’s fine to be a slightly insane parent. Just don’t pretend that you’re not.

How to sleep train your child.

All are slightly controversial to one degree or another, but I stand behind all three posts just as much today as when I wrote them years ago, and I’m fairly confident that my wife would do the same, but with less bravado and certainty.

And if the proof is in the pudding, just look what I have to show for it?

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Wigs for bald, baby girls are a thing now. Stupid parents have been around forever.

There are wigs for babies now.

Designed for parents (mothers) who are tired of listening to strangers refer to their bald, baby girls with masculine pronouns, Baby Bangs seeks to make baby girls look more like baby girls.

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… the website reads, undoubtedly capturing the frustration and outrage of bald baby girls everywhere. 

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Even as a novelist who tends to write character-driven stories, it’s difficult for me to imagine the level of self-centeredness, image obsession and lack of self worth required to strap a wig onto your baby girl so people on the street would no longer mistake her for a boy.

I ask myself:

What kind of mother or father would be feel hurt, threatened, disappointed, upset or even outraged by some wobbly old lady or store clerk mistaking their baby girl for a baby boy?

The horrifying kind. The wretched kind. The disgusting kind.

The kind that only dresses their child in designer clothing. The kind that believes that their child's outward appearance has some bearing on how others perceive them. The kind that thinks of their baby daughter as an accessory akin to a handbag.

I’m sure that the purchasers of Baby Bangs would argue that this is not the case and to mount a strong defense on their behalf, but this defense would be coming from someone who just strapped a wig to their baby’s head, so any credibility they may have enjoyed has already been destroyed.

As Baby Bang should be as well.