stuff i hate about other people

More on things that make my skin crawl in the world around me as relating to the care and feeding of small humans – yay!

Today's diatribe: Non-Ironic Parenting and How It Makes Me Dislike You

Now, I am going back and forth on the title "Non-Ironic Parent." I will here admit that the definition of irony continues to evade my truly deeper understanding. I mean, sure, I understand the errors in Ms. Morrissette's popular tune. I know that rain on your wedding day is not irony so much as bad luck. I am more talking about how I sometimes find myself looking into the connections between sarcasm and irony and then looking them up and finding sarcasm defined as the use of irony and then I get more mired than I have time for.

And I don't like Sarcastic Parent as a moniker because it suggests I am a parent who regularly speaks sarcastically to my child. Which I am not yet. I expect to be, because we are Sarcastic Mofos, Wes and I. And Beckett is well on his way to getting this, as his current favorite joke method is to state something is purple when really it is green. This is HILARIOUS. So he is either starting to understand that things are funny when you say the opposite of what is true, or else he is just budding into a solid little liar. But I digress.

For now, what I am looking for is a description that conveys my understanding that my son, perfect and brilliant though he is, is not the center of the universe to anyone but Wes and me.

A non-ironic parent, by contrast, is one who firmly announces his or her child's brilliance and expects the world to leap to attention and action. A parent who expects to get around rules because of his or her child's advanced abilities. A parent who sees his or her child ONLY through the lens of sickly sweet puppy love and never adds on the lens of perspective and vague global awareness.

We run into these types around here. Parents who truly believe that their precious darlings are better than other people's. Parents who fail to recognize the fact that we ALL love our children with a fierce, soul-ripping depth. Parents who develop an inability to see the humanity in other children and instead micromanage their children's relationships, trying to alleviate all pain and suffering that might come from disagreement or exclusion or friendship.

Maybe the irony I am searching for here is implicit. Maybe it is that parents who try to make the world overly perfect for their child are simply creating a more traumatic future as their child inevitably learns that they have been over-protected and under-prepared for the world at large.

Because it's not hard to talk about your kids, express your confidence in their amazing abilities and yet also show that you realize you are but one family among millions. It is done with, I believe, sarcasm. You must simply master this:

"Well, I do wish they would let little Johnny skip 1st grade because he is, after all, brilliant."

The important part is the facial expression and the self-effacing laugh/twinkle in the eye. They come in right where the commas are. Practice in front of a mirror if it doesn't come naturally to you. This simple exercise allows you to communicate a phrase you actually mean quite sincerely but are conveying without being a jackass by showing that you realize the world does not bow to your will and is full of other people.

I say this not to any of my dear readers (I know you must all understand these literary devices if you are hanging around this corner of the Internet) but as a more general public service announcement. In case someone is, you know, searching google for "how not to be the douche parent that all the other parents hate."

Long ago, I proclaimed that I could only be friends with people whose parenting philosophies at least mostly matched my own. That is no longer true. At this point, I simply ask that people have a fricking sense of humor about their children. Preferably a dark one. It doesn't seem so much to ask.