The World Series of Parenting

Fortunately they don't award these for parenting

A friend recently posted a Facebook story where a stranger walked up and said something to the effect of “your kids are so well behaved, you must be darn fine parents.” Let me eliminate any mystery and let you know that no strangers ever walk up to us in restaurants and tell us that. In fact, I am usually in the uncomfortable position of explaining our kids’ behavior away. I usually say something like “they’re foster kids; they were raised by wolves.” That way strangers can rest assured that we are in fact, “darn fine” parents.

But we’re not darn fine parents, at least in the eyes of strangers. In my experience, strangers generally judge your parenting skills by your children’s ability to sit still and instantly do what they are told. Whether these skills are actually what helps them develop into well-adjusted, productive adults… nevermind, that’s a rant for another time.

No, our parenting will never meet the stranger definition of darn fine. The reason is we are big softies. But we are softies in different ways. Andrea is hard up front and soft later. I’m soft up front and hard later. In other words, when a child asks me if they can do something, I tend to decide right away whether or not it is okay. And I’m soft in that it is usually okay. But if it is not, I stick to my guns. No. Matter. What. This has the upside that I have a slightly higher compliance rate on first requests. It has the downside that trivial incidents tend escalate into the Cuban Missile Crisis. Soon intermediaries from Switzerland are visiting Cody and I trying to generate mutually face-saving solutions to whether or not he can have another bed time book.

But being hard up front and soft later also has its downsides. Here’s how it goes in this situation:

“Can I have another cookie?”

“NO!”

(Whine)

“No.”

(Whine)

“no”

(Whine)

“Well okay, since you were good today.”

Andrea and I used to play a lot of poker. In poker terms, my parenting method is to either fold or go all in. When you go all-in a lot, you win a lot of hands. But it puts you at risk of occasionally busting out. Andrea’s method is more like bet-bet-bet-fold. She busts out, but she does it slowly.

As a side effect, the kids are becoming master poker players. They can read Andrea’s bluffs; they know when to call down my all-in to a chopped pot. Andrea and I aren’t going to win the World Series of Poker any time soon. But we have a better shot at winning a bracelet than we do to be called “darn fine parents.”