Life as a parent is a schizophrenic existence. One minute you're a 34 year old father on the verge of tears because your two year old son is running to greet you with a slobbery kiss, his excitement to see you unmistakeable. Five minutes later, however, you swear that the same child is Satan's spawn when he starts writhing on the floor, his cries and ear-piercing screams triggered by something as trivial as your refusal to let him stab his little sister in the chest with the scissors he somehow managed to reach on the kitchen counter. Before children, there was a certain level of predictability in your life—you went to work and came home at roughly the same time each day, you may have even managed to enjoy an entire meal, and you were able to actually follow a television series or two. After children, however, the only thing that is predictable is that your children will act unpredictably. They will ravenously devour every morsel of spaghetti one day as if it were the last meal on Earth, and then they will throw the bowl on the floor the next, making sure to dump the contents on whatever surface has actually been cleaned recently.
If you think that your children will be the only ones in the house acting erratically, however, you're profoundly mistaken. When your child's behavior is all over the place, I'm guessing that your reaction to his or her irrationality will be all over the place as well. I'm sure that the ubiquitous parenting books all counsel parents to be firm and consistent in their approach, meting out discipline in a structured and even-handed manner so the children will learn from watching a calm, collected parent express his disapproval. I've got a few choice words for those perusing the pages of parenting books for advice: those authors don't know shit. And if you claim to actually follow their advice you're probably a Holocaust denier, someone willing to confront reality by ignoring it altogether. More likely, though, you're simply a bad parent like me, one whose approach depends on how close you are to losing your shit that day. A simple whine may set you off one day, particularly if it was preceded by your son smearing poop all over his clothes and your hands while you try to change a diaper filled with an amount of chunky, colored feces fit for a four hundred pound glutton who just gorged on Cornuts and Cheetos. Other days, when your son is spilling his orange juice on the couch for what just has to be the three hundred and fortieth time, you are somehow as calm as you were when you dabbled in “medicinal” marijuana on a thrice daily basis.
Instead of following any of the parenting advice I've read, I'm taking a more Zen-like approach, willing to embrace my unmeasured and erratic reactions as simply a new, unorthodox parenting style. I have come to accept that I will not be able to change the things that I cannot change, a philosophical approach perhaps beset by tautological incoherence but one that provides someone incurably stubborn and perpetually irritable like me a dose of comfort. Yes, I'm sure my son is confused by my inconsistent reactions at times. Hell, with even the slightest bit of introspection, I'm confused by my inconsistency. And perhaps I should try to learn some modicum of patience in my parenting technique. In all likelihood, however, my reactions to my children's tantrums in the future will be forever predictable in their unpredictability—parenting books be damned.
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