Parenting for DUMMIES
An ExCeRpT from a peer-reviewed guide to parenting
So, you want to parent a child? Fantastic! Raising children can be such a rewarding experience. You will be pushed to your limits. You will question your ideals. You will expand as a person. But not only does raising a child cause personal growth and maturation within parents, it is also a long-term, monetary investment that will pay itself back. So, make sure to calculate the number of rascals you bring into this dying world based on how comfortably you hope to live when you’re 65.
Parenting may seem simple. How difficult could raising a human for 18+ years be? It's been done for generations. I mean look at your parents; they must have done a wonderful job in order for you to purchase this book. Of course though, this manual is for parents of all upbringings. So, no matter where you are in your journey to parenthood, Parenting for DUMMIES will help fill any gaps so you can be the best parent you want to be. By no means is this guide comprehensively exhaustive of the situations you may come across as a parent, but written here are the most universal and fundamental tips that should guide your journey over the next two or more decades.
Disclaimer: This advice may pass along emotional damage and generational trauma to your offspring. Proceed with caution! ⚠️
Part I: Defense Mechanisms
Omniscience is an ability innate within all parents. In fact, it is an ability all humans have the capacity to unlock through the process of giving birth. At the exact moment your first-born child emerges from their mother’s vagina, both the mother and father of that child instantaneously release the hormones associated with omniscience. With this newly acquired wisdom, you can quite literally never be wrong. However, many humans who are not omniscient will often question this power — especially your children. For that reason, you must keep a wide array of defense mechanisms on hand to be sure that you never make a mistake. The first section of this guide will lay out a couple of approaches to ensure that you are always correct.
Assuming this world operates on the free-will we appear to believe we have, agency must be assigned to some party involved in conflict. Since you will be omniscient as a parent, the party to assume responsibility can never be yourself. In actuality, blame should be deflected to the children in every possible situation. For example, let’s say you wanted your child to clean the dishes, but you never told them? Great—express your frustration with their inability to read your mind and preemptively clean the dishes before you ask. Tell them they should have seen the dishes and assumed that you would ask because you sometimes do.
Sticking with this same scenario, you may begin to feel what us non-omniscient people call guilt at some point. But don’t fret, you aren’t actually feeling guilty, this is just a tingle from what you would have felt prior to gaining omniscience. Regardless, if you wish to respond to this pseudo-feeling, bring your child a plate of sliced fruit or ask them “Are you hungry?”1 You shan’t apologize; you did nothing wrong. But in order to extinguish the infamous “guilty” tingle, you need to overpower it with caring and nurturing sentiments. Your child will perceive this as an apology and both parties will come to a completely one-sided mutually agreed upon compromise.
Part II: White Lies and Exaggerations
White lies and exaggerations are techniques that are primarily used for those you care about; you can use these on family, friends, significant others, etc. But for children in particular, white “lies” are a must in order to protect your children from the dark truths of this world. However, do not assume that white lying is easy. It is a skill that requires practice, especially as your children begin to better understand the world around them. So pay careful attention to the examples included within this section. Feel free to take inspiration from them or employ them directly.
The first benefit of the white lie is its capacity to diminish your kids’ struggles. Life isn’t fair, and only the strong persevere. Life is not without turmoil, tragedy, sadness, etc. So, it is really crucial that your child fully grasps just how difficult life can be. Let’s consider the universal experience of commuting to school, for example. The day-in and day-out nature of the US education system for ~15 straight years can feel redundant and tiring. If your child begins to complain about their everyday commute to school, you should resort to phrases such as “I used to walk 10 miles in the sleet and snow” to communicate to your kids that there is nothing to complain about since your commute was objectively worse. Ignoring their personal experience, your child should come to recognize that as long as their parents’ problems were worse, then there is nothing to complain about. Never let your child actually believe their problems are legitimate when they should be grateful for a childhood that is much better than the miserable one you had :)
Another benefit of the white lie is that it can be used to protect your child from harm. For instance, one Black truth2 often told by my own mother was that “Soda is bad for you because of the carbonation.” Now despite whatever research is published discussing the damaging effects of the sugar content of these drinks rather than the carbonation, telling this lie proved to be extremely efficacious. I managed to believe this lie all the way into my adulthood before fact-checking it, and even after, I am more than positive that I have an inherent negative association towards soda because of this. My mother told me this lie at such a young age that the effect has been long-lasting. Just imagine the harm you could prevent by spewing bullshit telling your child white lies at extremely malleable ages.
Part III: Siblings
After having one child, if you still somehow desire to have another one, then be prepared for dynamics to shift with each new member of the family. It is important to be cognizant of the differences — and similarities — between each new child because the behaviors each of them will exhibit will vary. Therefore, you should treat them with individualized care. More specifically, there is a very delicate and specific approach that you should take with the youngest, middle, and eldest child(ren).
To start, it is easiest to provide parental advice for the youngest and eldest child, as they should be parented in exactly opposite manners. Don’t overcomplicate parenting, as it would be taxing to you, the parent. Instead, keep it simple. The oldest is always wrong and must always assume responsibility for both their mistakes and the mistakes of their youngest sibling. Your oldest child is your first attempt at parenting, so you need to set a strict precedent for the younger children to believe that you are strict — or strict in theory. By starting off strong, the oldest child will often be extremely competent, mature quickly, and achieve highly — like myself. This sends a signal to the younger siblings that they have big shoes to fill, and thus, they will look up to their older brother or sister as a model for how they should behave.
On the flip side, the younger sibling must be coddled. They have HUGE shoes to fill, considering the siblings that came before. You don’t want to overwhelm them emotionally because that’s a lot of stress that you put them under. Essentially, the youngest child is the love of your life, even above your significant other — according to some guy named Oedipus. So, treat them as such. Because you’ve already done such a great job with your oldest, there is no need to continue being overbearing with the rest of the children. The amazing effects of the eldest child’s upbringing will trickle down to the other children.
Due to limited word count, we are unable to thoroughly address parenting techniques for the middle child; but essentially, the goal for the middle child is to parent them in the very same manner that they were forgotten in this chapter.
*The following section is solely for the advanced parent that has successfully managed to maintain a strong bond with their child by strictly abiding by the above tips and tricks for eighteen complete years. Please do not proceed until you have reached this point in parenthood.*
Part IV: Adulthood
Parenting does not end when your child turns 18. For the rest of their life, you will continue to have the opportunity to embarrass them. If anything, parenting during adulthood just gives you more free reign on the outlandish …
Advanced tip: Food is not always easily accessible, so instead resort to your words. You as a parent are incapable of apology because to be fair, you can do no wrong. Nevertheless, there are apology-adjacent statements that you can use to force your child to reflect on the decisions they made that led up to your “mistake.” In the context of the described scenario, the following phrase is an example of how you should absolve yourself of being an error-prone human: “What I think you mean to say is thank you because I am teaching you a lifelong lesson: you won’t always have someone else to clean up after you.”
Black truth - this is a double entendre based on the term “white lie.” A “Black truth” refers to white lies from the perspective of Black people but also refers to the fact that as a parent, your word is law, so any white lie you tell is actually the truth. My apologies if this footnote felt redundant, I try to refrain from mansplaining – Mansplaining is short for “man explaining,” it refers to the phenomenon by which men have a tendency to assume other people (often of the opposite gender) are not knowledgeable of the content that they are writing/speaking on.