There are a lot of things kids aren’t: cooperative, obedient, quiet, funny.

But enough negativity! Today, I want to talk about what kids are.

Kids are annoying. They need so much attention!

I’ve complained about every stage of my son’s life, from his boring infancy to his destructive toddlerhood, from the terrible twos to the threenage wasteland. Every phase of your kid’s life has its challenges, and every time you master one stage, they move onto the next, and you have to start from scratch again. (It has its perks too, but that’s not my thing. Try Ask Your Dad for that.)

Detective Munch has always had his annoying moments, but recently he’s reached a new gear.

He literally hasn’t stopped talking in at least two months (and yes, I know what literally means. THIS IS SERIOUS.) Not only has he not stopped saying things, he’s also begun thinking that everything he says, and does, and is about to do, and might do, and just did, and did yesterday, and almost did but didn’t do, is the most important thing ever and we need to hear about it.

The old joke is that you spend the first two years of your kid’s life desperately waiting for him or her to start talking, and then you spend the next ten praying that s/he’ll shut up. Except it’s not a joke, it’s my waking nightmare. He’s talking to us, he’s talking to himself, he’s making up songs, he’s making up languages, he’s making up names for us (usually they end in “head,”, e.g. bobby-head, banana-head, head-head, etc.). He’s making me hate my life.

The talking alone would be enough to drive me insane, but it’s not just that. It’s also the energy. Which one of you gave my son sugar? And caffeine? And cocaine? And the food coloring that melts kids’ brains? And slammed a needle full of adrenaline into his heart? Because lately he’s more hyper than the Flash.

And it’s not just the energy either; it’s also the neediness. It’s like living with the genie from Aladdin only instead of the genie it’s actually Robin Williams himself and he never stops mugging.

In this day of reality television and social media, everyone thinks of an attention whore as someone who desperately wants to be famous or as someone who constantly floods Facebook and Instagram with transparent pleas for compliments and validation. But children are the ultimate attention whores, both because they constantly need it (to survive; they’re stupid and fearless) and because they want it (for no reason other than wanting it). All my son is missing is his own book of selfies.

My four-year-old needs me to look at what he just did. He needs Mommy to look at what he’s about to do. He needs us to turn around from the front seat and watch him put his fingers in his mouth and he needs us to come to the other room and listen to him speak gibberish.

The worst part is that he doesn’t realize that by begging for our attention at every second, whether it’s necessary or not (hint: it’s almost always NOT), he’s wearing our patience so thin that when he actually is doing something worth watching, we’re so burnt out we can’t be bothered. Shitty parenting? Probably, but also human nature. Keep crying wolf and eventually the village will stop listening. It all becomes white noise, only white noise with a decidedly high-pitch and a lot of requests for TV and chips.

My son is like a dog that hasn’t seen its owner in a while: he’s constantly jumping on us and pawing at us and barking at us and asking us for food and wanting us to play with him and I’m seriously considering having him neutered because he’s obviously in heat.

If that sounds funny, I probably haven’t told you about my upcoming vasectomy.