19 Dec

Dad and Buried Posted in discipline 16 comments

What Parents Want for Christmas

Growing up, when I asked my parents what they wanted for Christmas, they always made a (sad) joke out of it. They knew my brothers and I didn’t have any money, so they didn’t bother asking for anything real, like a new car, or a box of Cuban cigars, or a new furniture set.

Instead, they used Santa the way someone might use a genie: by asking my brothers and me for things that were abstract, theoretical, and totally unattainable. Just to make a point. They’d make requests like, “for you and your brothers to get along” or “a little peace and quiet” or “for you to behave.” Just totally insane shit that would never happen in a million years.

Now that I’m a dad, nobody ever asks me what I want. But if they did? I’d reply exactly the same way as my mom and dad. Because I was wrong; they weren’t joking.

The intangible, imaginary stuff really is what parents want for Christmas.

17 Dec

Dad and Buried Posted in discipline One comment

[E-Card] Parenting Euphemisms

Sometimes we parents have to lie to our kids.

To put it another way, if it makes you feel better: sometimes we have to use “parenting euphemisms.”

Like these…

17 Dec

Dad and Buried Posted in Health 7 comments

Clean Enough to Eat

I love coffee.

I don’t know how you can be a parent and not love coffee. The smell alone is Pavlovian, and a few cups a day are just plain necessary for survival! I also love both the taste and the smell of coconut. Like, a lot. No joke: I have seriously considered drinking Mom and Buried’s coconut-scented conditioner. But I didn’t want to die.

So here’s the problem with frank body’s otherwise highly effective frank coconut coffee scrub: I WANT TO EAT IT.

How to Act Like a Child at Work

Children are little terminators.

To quote Kyle Reese, “They can’t be bargained with. They can’t be reasoned with. They don’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.” The only difference between my son and Arnold Schwarzenegger in that movie is that my son’s speech is more intelligible. And that Arnold loses. My son never loses.

His commitment to being irrational is so absolute, it’s like living with Andy Kaufman. I honestly can’t tell where the act ends and the real person begins. Or if there even is an act. Or a real person. I’ve never been so uncertain of how to deal with someone in my life.

Which is why I might start acting like a child at work.

10 Dec

Dad and Buried Posted in Charts and Graphs 4 comments

Parenting Reward Chart

A few days ago, we procured a reward chart for our son.

The hope is that by incentivizing his behavior we can train Detective Munch into a decent, reasonable person instead of the feral four-year-old he currently is. Our typical repertoire of threats is neither working nor healthy (nor really stopping because I’m terrible at this new “reward” method!)

So far, it’s been going okay. If he brushes his teeth (without a fight), or goes to bed (without a fight), or eats his dinner (without a fight), or gets dressed for school (without a fight), he can earn rewards like dessert, and TV, and not getting yelled at by a dad who is at the end of his rope.

It got me thinking about what a chart for parents would look like. So I made one.

Dad and Buried

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What Parents Want for Christmas

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[E-Card] Parenting Euphemisms

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Clean Enough to Eat

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How to Act Like a Child at Work

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Parenting Reward Chart

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