The Great Orange Grove Miniature Cliffside Village Urine Fire Disaster

A lot of people have, in the process of becoming my friend, had a moment where they felt the need to ask me, a man of leisure and refinement, why I had not used my obvious intelligence to make millions, end world hunger, or improve the World Wrestling Federation, and I always have to chuckle and tell them "I wasn't always this smart."

Here's proof.

The bulk of my childhood occurred in rural Florida, only a stone's throw from Walt Disney World, during the time when Central Florida was just beginning to boom. Old Floridians were selling off their land as fast as they could. Entire counties worth of Orange groves were leveled, paved over, and subdivided into curbed, storm-drained, cookie cutter neighborhoods with names as compelling and imaginative as Brookglenn, Glennbrook, Brentwood, Glenbrent, Woodglen, even Oakwood. Each one had a dramatic entrance flanked by swooping stucco buttresses with the name painted across them in big loopy cursive.

The idyllic, pastoral fugue these names were supposed to invoke didn't affect the population much except when they were buying the home. I suspect my father got a glazed look in his eye when he looked at the brochure for Whistling Pines, never suspecting that as raging, bored, highly literate pre-teens, my friends and I would discover late one night the letters on our entrance were easily removed with a Philips head screwdriver. He lived in Whistling Penis subdivision for 14 hours before anyone noticed. If only we'd had YouTube then.

Without the narcotic effect of cable or video games, our minds were free and quickly turned to the detailed and somewhat destructive exploration of our new home.

As my pop was the plumbing super, we got a discount on a house. We visited it nearly every day from slab to roof beams and moved into it's gleaming vinyl interior in 1975. The subdivision had space for 400 homes. Only half were started. For the next three years, I lived in a construction site.

Which makes a lot of waste. Which has to go somewhere. Which is expensive. So to cut costs, they'd drive a bulldozer at a 30 degree angle into the ground, digging a long sloping ditch. Over the next year they'd fill it up with trash, cover it with dirt, then build a house over it.

Of course, as 10 year olds, we didn't know anything about all that. All we know is one day we're taking a shortcut home from school. We stop at the bait shop and buy nickle cigars and we're smoking them in the dark shadows of the abandoned orange groves when we come across a huge hole in the ground.

It started at our toes and sloped gently down until the rim of the hole was several feet over our heads. You could see striated clay in the walls, citrus roots dangling like severed limbs, a little water seeping into the very bottom of it. And there was a tiny pile of trash way down there. We walked all the way in, amazed at the tufts of dill weed and long grass poking over the edge of it over our heads.

No one else knew about it. It was ours.

We immediately set out to create thrones. I found a big brass plate in the trash and used it to carve a hole out of the wall. My buddy, Tim McDonald, dug his throne with a board and we stuffed ourselves into them. Then we used the trash to build a tiny village. We got into it, carving roads and garages and using twigs and pieces of cardboard from the trash pile to create huts and corrals and a ramp. Eventually, we had to step back and admire out work, a miniature primitive encampment a good yard wide, several levels with connecting roads. It was a marvel of imagination. It was the Anasazi ruins. It was Rome.

Naturally, we had to set it on fire. And just as naturally, it only made sense that, in order to put out the fire (which was getting pretty big pretty fast) we should use our pee.

Our pee.

Now, if we had really thought about it, even in our wildest imagination, we would never have considered that in Florida, where it rains almost every day, where the tangle of weeds is so pregnant with moisture that even on a dry summer day in the afternoon if you walk across a field you'll be soaking wet, we would never have believed that trees might be dried out.

But apparently they were, because the orange tree hanging directly over our miniature inferno promptly burst into flames the very second we ran out of pee. We stood there in the bottom of this pit, horrified, as the next tree exploded, then the next, then--

We ran like hell. We dove between house rows and crept around garages and took another short cut through the little woods behind my house and snuck in through the sliding glass doors and were sitting in the living room watching Gilligan's Island when my dad burst into the house.

Sirens were wailing and smoke was drifting over the subdivision. Dad came in and told us half the orange grove just burned down. We acted rather astonished. Thirty years later, I gave it up and told him and he didn't believe me.

Did You Say Penis? I Thought You Said Penis! Penis!

I wish I'd never studied psychology. I wish I didn't know about Freudian slips or marker locution, or any of that psycholinguistic, semiotic mumbo jumbo because if I didn't, then I wouldn't know my daughter's got procreation on the mind 24/7. I used to live in a disabused state of blissful ignorance. Now, I get this.

Dad: Hey, can somebody get this bag of dog food off the table?
Sarah: What!? Dad, did you say penis?!

Dad: You want a glass of orange juice?
Sarah: OMG! Dad said penis!

or

Dad: . . . so you have to divide the quadratic dividend into the coefficient of fourteen to get zero for a.
Sarah: Did you say penis?

I know I'm supposed to realize she's grown up, that she'sa woman now. I know I'm supposed to realize her hormones are raging through her like the Niagra filling a teacup. I know. But I don't want to know. I want to remain the blissful inebriate king I was when she thought she was Pochahantas, when she said she was going to grow up and marry a cartoon.

By definition I am a Dad because I am the sole male progenitor of my own spawn. But by habit, I'm fairly certain I am a mom as I spend most of my day doing laundry and cleaning floors. I am the limo. I am the grocer. And I am he who obtains pads. I've learned to deal with a lot of womanstuff and I think I do it with all the aplomb such trans-traditional-parenting requires. Once you find yourself standing in the HYGIENE aisle on your cell asking your daughter if she needs heavy or regular flow kotex, your manhood's pretty much a wash.

But the sex line is one I will approach fully Gandalphed. I'll wag my beard, staff stabbed into stone, and thunderously proclaim YOU SHALL NOT PASS! And my daughter will poke her head around the kitchen door and ask: "Did you say penis?"

As a boy, I had sex on the brain with the same drooly retardation as any other kid. I just didn't know girls did that too. I really didn't. Like my father before me, I found it hard to believe girls even pooped, much less thought about peen. But having replicated into the opposite gender, I have had all my girl illusions shattered like porcelain princess dolls run over by a van full of girls-gone-wild videos. When I was a kid, I didn't know:

• Girls fart.


• Girls name their boobs.


• Girls think about sex.


• All the time.


• God help me.

This illusion, I think, serves some evolutionary purpose. I don't know if it's Darwinian or Lemarkian evolution, but it came out of a desire for fathers to ensure their girls marry someone who is as smitten and retarded about them as their father, because that narcoleptic effect allows the girls to remain in control for years, giving them time to establish their man as something just above the level of pack mule.

I like the illusion. I like being ignorant. I like it enough that I'm inches away from stabbing my eardrums with an ice-pik so I can remain deaf and stupid and not hear my daughter say the word penis. I don't care if she grows up to be a fluid dynamics scientist and wins a Nobel prize for her invention of a urinary canal replacement device, I don't want to hear the P word come out of her mouth ever again.

As I've remarked before, my girl was born deep into the aftermath of the sexual revolution. She has the exact plans for herself as any Victorian railroad tycoon's first born son: that she will receive an alarmingly expensive quality education at a college built during the age of steam; that she will walk out of that college into a job in science or law, promptly receiving a salary slightly smaller than a wrongful death payoff; that she will rock a sweet convertible from day one, vacation in luxurious leisure villas on exclusive island mountain resorts; that she will marry a man just as smart and witty as she is who will immediately give birth to and raise her nine children.

I said as much recently as the family frequented the best new sushi joint in Chicago, Makisu, which is actually in Skokie. We were all sitting around the table sinking our teeth into a plate of White Dragon maki when the wine and the joise d' vive washed over me and I said I was so happy, that my kids seemed destined to do well, that I was really proud of my daughter's acceptance into a summer Arabic language program.

Dad: I'm so proud of you.
Daughter: [snorting Rame cola through her nose] Did you say penis?

I'm Not Crazy—I'm Listening to Louis C.K.

Roon's school is a quick walk from our house to his home room. Of course, he sleeps until the last minute each day so he can't make it there if he walks so I have to drive him to school which means I have to make it through the Gauntlet of Stupidity each morning without cursing into cardiac arrest.

For the first couple of weeks I did what all the other parents did. I hung my shaggy dome out the window and screamed phrases banned from use in the British Navy. And prisons. Some mornings I found myself dangerously close to leaping out of my car and eating the living crap out of some petit, double cell phone wrangling soccer mom and her impossible inability to use a blinker. I mean, I don't—I wouldn't. Those bitches are armed.

But man, the cranky is deep. You know the news footage where someone is trapped on top of their car while muddy water and ugly sofas swirl around their mini hummer? Imagine that but it's not water, it's pure unadulterated anger.

And everyone hates everyone else. They're all beady eyeing each other through the windshield and waiting to pounce on the tiniest infraction of morning drop off traffic jam etiquette and unload all the pent up anger left over from yesterday when they did EXACTLY THE SAME THING.

Bear in mind, this school is located at a three way intersection that entertains nearly 20,000 cars on each artery every day. Most of them are trying to drop off their kids.

Here're examples of the pure stupid:

• Just stopping in front of the school to wait


• Parking in the right hand lane for whatever reason


• Switching drivers in traffic


• Parking in front of the entrance to switch drivers, unload eight slow children, replace their engine


• Parking on the train tracks


• Causing me to park on the train tracks


• Blocking the intersection


• Re-blocking the same intersection


• Turning left from the right hand lane into the other right hand lane

And these are all the same car.

After a stint in anger management, I realized I merely needed to accept that I drive among the retarded—and that by changing my environment, I can change how I react to them. I wasn't sure what to do. Until Pandora added comedy to their stream.

Now I turn on my Louis C.K. channel and laugh my way through the tard fest. While everyone else's face is clenched into a fist of pure rage, mine is loose and relaxed, scrunched up into an insane grin or split ear-to-ear from full on guffawing.

However, I caught someone's eye today (we all try to avoid this) and realized that while inside my car, I'm simply being super entertained, jolly, and relaxed, from the outside, I look like a terrorist. My hair is attempting to escape. My face is a post-pillow, drool crusted wedge, my eyes are wide, and I'm laughing hysterically. They don't know I'm listening to Louis C.K. They think I'm stewing in angry silence just like them. Only I'm laughing.

The Death of Death by Children

Well, here we are. Death by Children will cease to exist by the end of the summer. Dylan told us: "You gotta serve somebody;" and I am starting a new project which will take up all of my time not devoted to publicizing the book, Beat Cops Guide, which is out now.

The new project is Eating Vincent Price, an amateur cook's journey through the legendary Treasury of Great Recipes, by Vincent and Mary Price, circa 1965.

You can continue reading about my misadventures as a father by picking up Chicago Parent magazine which has picked me up as a columnist/contributor/funny guy, delivering a well illustrated column each month.

I want to thank everyone who has ever read this blog. It's been a delight writing for you.

Toodles;

Christopher Garlington

The Overnight Camp Sagas: Day 1

I took the kid to computer camp yesterday at Northwestern. He's staying in one of the frat houses. It's all gray stone and ivy and makes we want to kick myself in the ass for dropping out of college and becoming a daredevil. But such is life. We shoot for a better life for the kids and when we score and they get it, there's a certain element of jealousy, a twinge of envy.

This twinge is offset immediately upon check-in. We get there and the people running this camp, an all day computer and game design training camp run by industry experts and professional nerds that will jack my son's blossoming computer savvy arrogance into the mesosphere from whence height he will lob ego shattering duhs onto our plebian queries and induce gravitational shifts with the rolling of his eyes, check us in.

Roon takes his bags, his pillow, and fan and starts walking into this cinematic ivy league frat house and I make for a goodbye hug and he KEEPS WALKING. So, ok, I get it. No PDA. Whatever, so I shift into hi-five mode and he turns to me and says, "I got it, Dad," and disappears into the dorm.

I stood there with my mouth catching flies until I caught the eye of a mom checking in her three newly teened boys. She made a face so clearly sympathetic yet so obviously amused, a look that said "Join the club."

I knew it would happen. I knew a soon as he got taller than me (by three inches now) and soon as the suffix -teen was appended to his age, that he'd dismiss me as irrelevant and possibly retarded and indeed he has.

I suppose I've joined my own fraternity now: Omega Delta Phi, the Order of Dismissed Parents. We know each other by the sad look in our eyes as our children grow up, turn their back on us, and walk bravely into their future as they casually ditch us in their past.

I hope the boy turns out good

I love practical jokes. I think a well executed PJ says as much about the mental faculties of a person as a well crafted essay.

My high school supported some legendary pranks:

• On of the Ag class superstars smuggled a fetal pig out of class and onto the salad bar. He nestled it gently around the giant plastic bowl of lettuce and like 13 people went through the line before someone screamed.
• This same guy instigated a food fight on a day when the school had decided to serve mashed potatoes. I remember him towering over everyone and (always with the lettuce) grabbing the huge salad bowl and slinging the lettuce out over the entire lunch room so that nearly everyone got some. Pure ninja.
• The rednecks were more theatrical than the drama club. One of them came to lunch dressed as a doctor. He sat all the way across the lunch room from his pals and quietly ate his lunch. Suddenly, one of them has a dramatic coronary, spilling his food, falling across someone's table. His friends lay him out and perform CPR, full drama, people freaking out. One of them stands up and yells out: IS there a Doctor in the house?! And this guy stands up and says "Why yes, I'm a doctor" rushes over and does CPR with full frontal face plants and everything.
• My friends and I started a secret society called the Red Guard Baptist Youth then refused to admit we were in it. One guy actually came up to us and ask how he could join and we swore it was fake, that there wasn't really a Red Guard Baptist Youth and he got pissed off at us for being such elitists. I'm surprised we didn't get called to the principals office.
• I healed someone during our televised morning announcements.
• We filmed a "drug deal" and "accidentally" broadcast it between classes.
• I filmed the Ag class when they butchered a cow and I broadcast it just before lunch.
  

But nothing compares to the brilliant and perfectly executed mastery of Kyle Garcher who tricked the opposing team into spelling out WE SUCK! over three tiers of fans. Brilliant!

Naturally, Mr. Garcher was suspended, which is entirely appropriate. You can't break the rules without paying the price. I'm sure Mr. Garcher knew he'd get busted and was prepared for it. Here's the video and please visit Mr. Garcher's blog.

I do hope Mr. Garcher learns a lesson or two from this brilliantly executed prank. A) never stop, never surrender B) always work with plausible deniability in mind.

Chestnut from the Nut Chest

Getting into the Holiday Spirit, I offer you a gift, this handsomely wrapped BEST OF post from last year. I swear it's worth your time. Don't believe me? Check out this handy quote . . .

But I don't blog for myself--I do it for you, dear readers, and to give up merely because there were risks, discomforts, or potential blindness would be cowardly. I pressed on. I pressed the blunted pik into my left nostril, tilted my head 45 degrees to the right, flipped the switch, and blew the top of my skull off.

The Water Pik Netti Pot Listerine Don't Try This At Home Sinus Irrigation Disaster

Introduction to Death By Children

y name is Christopher Garlington and I write these stories so that when my head finally explodes, the authorities will have a ready explanation.

You’re probably a parent. If you aren’t then FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST DON’T READ THIS BLOG . . . if you intend to breed. The stories I’m going to tell will change your mind.

In that respect, this site is not really about the crazy stuff my kids do to try to fling me into cardiac arrest. It’s about parenting. It’s about how we really don’t grow up until we have kids-then we lord over them with our vast experience and wit until we finally feel superior to another seven year old and can get on with our truncated development.

My own childhood was fraught with ridiculous and harrowing acts of stupidity and I am lucky to be alive. There are countless moments when I unknowingly stared into death’s jaws; countless times when the probability of gaining the nickname “stumpy” was improbably high. There were concussions, live burials, forest fires, demolitions, and public nudity. I was morbidly obsessed with fire, electricity, poisonous snakes, fire, BB guns, power tools, wind-powered home-made go karts, and fire.

Yet I managed to make it into adulthood intact, trick a brilliant, hot scientist to marry me, and impregnate her.

When my daughter was born I sighed with relief: surely a girl won’t get into the tortuous predicaments I embraced as a boy.

What an idiot.

Shortly after that, my son showed up and I set out to mold him into a better version of myself.

What an idiot.

There are two mistakes I’ve made with my children. First, I’ve always told them the truth. No matter how uncomfortable, I vowed to always answer any question as honestly and fully as possible. In hindsight, I can see where I went wrong there.

a) Kids do not care what you think. If the words coming out of your mouth don't add up to food or television, their eyes will glaze over and they’ll start daydreaming about setting the curtains on fire.

b) Children are malicious, mean-spirited, cocky, impatient, and more often than not, smarter than their parents; they will see through your little hippy manifesto the third or fourth time you answer some dingbat question in detail; they will then confer with friends, abuse the library, and watch R rated movies when you aren’t looking; and they will lie in wait until the preacher comes over for a cup of coffee whereupon they will march into kitchen and announce, “My dad told me how to masturbate,” grab a cookie and leave.

Secondly, I told my children true stories about my childhood instead of making stuff up. I should’ve lied. I should’ve told them stories exemplifying courage, character, and leadership. Instead, I told them the truth. I told them stories about catching snakes, building swamp boats, chasing wild boars, setting things on fire, complex and nearly fatal pranks involving farm machinery, learning to drive, electric urine disasters, sneaking into government facilities, and smoking. And drinking. There might’ve been a few brief tales about carousing--I can’t remember them all.

Apparently, and someone could’ve told me this beforehand, kids take a lot of cues in their moral and critical thought development from—-this will blow your mind—their parents’ stories!

Consequently, Malcolm, down at poison control, knows me by name; there are paramedics who can point my son out in a crowd; and the guys at the bowling alley cheerfully (in unison) greet him as ‘Cheesefry!’

I’ve tried to fix it. The kids will say “tell me a story about your childhood, Dad” and I’ll launch into a hilarious tale about school safety preparation or emergency exits and they’ll throw the scissors at me and beat me with implements until I break down. Then I tell them.

I tell them everything.

So welcome. Welcome to my parenting disaster. As my son is still pretty young, I imagine I’ll have plenty to write about and, as I lived a totally immature life well into my 30s, there’s plenty of backstory to fill in on boring weeks when the kids make it through without breaking anything, getting arrested, or blowing themselves up.

In regards to the apparent vested interest I have in my children engaging in highly dangerous and potentially lethal activities:

a) My wife’s a lawyer;
b) Please see “Disclaimers.”

Yours truly

F-Bombing as a Second Language

It’s finally summer. I can enjoy the warm embrace of June days. I can throw the windows open to fill the house with the sharp perfume of fresh cut grass. I can enjoy my morning coffee to the symphony of birdsong and the rustle of leaves. I will wake leisurely to drag my fully Lebowskied carcass out onto the porch and chat with the neighbors as they pass by. I can’t wait.

4:25 am: I’m enjoying a spectacular dream when I’m interrupted by:

“F-BOMB”

I recognize the voice of my son, but the words are perfectly articulated inmate.

“—YOU F-BOMBING JERK! PUT THE F-BOMBING! GUN DOWN! DO. NOT. F-BOMBING. SHOOT. ME!”

I race downstairs ready to throw myself in the path of a bullet to save the fruit of my loins.

I kick his door open and behold a scene so vile, so perverse, so saturated with horror, I hesitate to describe it. My son, still in his school uniform, wearing nine-million dollar noise cancelling headphones, is furiously pounding his controller, eyes bugged out, bleary and bloodshot, glaring into his monitor, screaming into his microphone.

“I WILL F-BOMB YOU UP YOU F-BOMBING—”

“Roon!”

“—I’M GONNA SKULL F-BOMB YOU, YOU F-BOMBING—”

“ROON!”

“—DROP A GRENADE! DROP A GRENADE! OH MY GOD YOU’RE A F-BOMBING IDIOT!—“

I touch him on the shoulder. It’s like I tased him. He rips his headphones out of their jack, unleashing the booming cacophony of online gamers from three continents through his desktop speakers at a level I would judiciously describe as “earthquake”.

Roon is yelling something, I can see his lips moving, but I can’t hear the sound over the  conflagration of f-bombs and vile slang pouring out of his game. I scramble to find the volume button, finally get the thing shut off as bedroom lights flicker on up and down our street, only to have the sudden silence filled with:

“DAD! WHAT THE F-BOMB?!”

My glare snakes up from somewhere deep in the animal part of my spine, grabs my cheek bones, and hauls itself out into the air between us dripping with ruthless malice and dangerous intent.

“Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“FOUR THIRTY IN THE F-BOMBING MORNING!”

“Stop saying F-BOMB”

“You say it.”

“Not at 4:30 in the f-bombing morning.”

“Are you f-bombing kidding me?”

I reach down and slowly wrap my fingers around his power chord like I’m gripping the handle of an axe, fixing him with a neolithic glare.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I said you f-bombing—”

I tense up like I’m gonna pull.

“I’ll shut up.”

A few hours later I’m on the patio with my coffee when my neighbor Bob walks by.

“Morning, Bob.”

“Top of the f-bombing morning, Garlington.”

Oh summer. Oh joy.

---- ----- -------

A fan of DBC who had a similar problem and wishes to remain anonymous sent this in. She put a note up in front of her son's computer instead of telling him to stop swearing because . . . .

. . . the kid was skyping a raid and I didn't want to embarrass him in front of his guild.

That is a super cool mom. Here's to you, anonymous person!

How to Stop Yelling at Your Kids

I yell at my kids.

I used to think this was normal. I used to think that, as father, I was entitled to a wider margin for volume, that I was allowed to turn it up to 11, that yelling at my kids was my right.

But one day, one of my kids rolled their eyes while I was yelling something like WHERE IS THE REMOTE! I SWEAR TO GOD I'M PUTTING IT ON A CHAIN! and my daughter asks me the following: how would you react if one of your friends yelled at us like that?

Well, that floored me. Shut me up tight. How would I react? I'd stop them in their tracks. I'd tell them my kids aren't there for them to yell at. I'd ask them, you don't yell at adults like that do you? I'd tell them they'd better behave themselves or . . .

Oh.

She was right. I'd never let another adult yell at them like that. In fact, I'd had to square off with a couple of grown-ups for that very reason, and I told them in no uncertain terms they could yell at my kids or pick up their teeth. So why in the hell do I think it's ok for me?

Well, it's not. It's not ok to yell at your kids. Words are mighty powerful things. To believe they are invisible, puffs of air, and without physical force is to misunderstand language. You don't yell only with words, you yell with your entire body. [pullquote]Imagine a person twice your size leaning over you with a face twisted in anger and threat, body bent with fury, telling you you're an idiot and you'd better not do it again (whatever it was you did, which may not be clear).[/pullquote]You yell with the look on your face. You yell with the words you choose. You yell with your size. You yell with the power of your authority. All of these things come into to play when you yell at your kids. Your yelling is a blunt force that does real, measurable harm.

Imagine a person twice your size leaning over you with a face twisted in anger and threat, body bent with fury, telling you you're an idiot and you'd better not do it again (whatever it was you did, which may not be clear). It's scary.

Of course, not every yell is so dramatic or terrifying. Most times, a parent is yelling as a matter of course and doesn't even think of what they're doing as out of line. They don't think of it as abuse.

But it is.

Think about your job. You're boss doesn't yell at you (much), you don't yell at the copy guy or the UPS guy or your fellow wage slaves. Why? Well, because it's considered unacceptable. You can get fired. And because human resources science has determined that it is an abuse of power and equality.

But here's the thing. People at work are watching you There's a reporting chain. You can get in trouble. But there's no HR at home. There's no one to look at you like you've lost your mind. There's no one to write you up.

This all became suddenly and embarrassingly clear to me when my girl pointed out that I was being a titanic asshole and a hypocrite when I yelled. And it stung me when she called me on it with such precision. I made a promise to stop, right there.

I have not been perfect. I've slipped. I've backslid. But I am on the road to recovery, I am yelling 99 percent less than I ever did before by employing the absurd.

I decided that every time anyone yelled in this house, the person they yelled at gets to call them on it once. If the person yells again, the yellee gets to wet willy them for 5 full seconds. If they yell a third time (in the same day) they get 20 seconds.

This sounds ridiculous, but if you commit to it, it works like magic. If you don't know what a wet willy is, you don't have kids. For your edification:

willy, wet, n, wet wil' li, UK; the action of placing one's index finger into one's mouth then placing it into another person's ear.

It works for a couple of reasons:

1. Because you have decided that you MUST stop yelling at your kids.


2. Because your kids WANT you to stop.


3. Because it defeats self-importance with absurdity and mild embarrassment


4. Because your kids think it's HILARIOUS and will be just waiting for it.


5. Because having your kids stick his spit slick finger in your ear is disgusting and you WILL NOT WANT IT TO HAPPEN TWICE.


6. It teaches you humility.

I promise you it works.  This principal of defeating stupid asshat parenting habits with absurdity is highly effective and can be applied to other bad parenting habits as well. It is, in fact, the founding principal of my own new parenting philosophy, the Wet Willy Way, a new advice series beginning here at Death By Children.

And it's important for another reason: your kids love you. This is true. They want so much for you to be the greatest, most amazing parent ever. By eroding the facade of self-importance and false authority some parents build for themselves, you allow your kids to love you more, to trust you more, to fear you less or, hopefully, not at all. You remove threat from the relationship and trust me, you don't need it. Most importantly, as silly as it sounds, the Wet Willy Way is an invaluable tool—humor—in developing a real, joyous relationship based on trust.

Learn THE WET WILLY WAY