My 6-Year-Old’s Guide to Proper Parenting

For all the things your parents were throughout your childhood — kind, supportive, loving — they were also wildly unfair when it came to things like discipline. There were rules. So. Many. Rules. And they were unnecessary! I mean, what did you need all those rules for? You were a good kid. All you wanted to do was have a little fun! So why then did everything have to be so serious? Why did the rules matter so much? What were they good for anyway?

These are the questions asked in heavy rotation by my 6-year-old son, BooBoo. As an insatiable lover of life who is all too eager to do, see, and experience every personal whim to the fullest, he’s having trouble coming to terms with the limitations of pesky parenting-imposed rules. In an exhaustive attempt to better understand his position and explain my own, I sat down with BooBoo to discuss just how different parenting would be if he were the one calling the shots.

Take a look at my 6-year-old’s son’s view of proper parenting law, as explained in his own words:

If I was a parent…[read more]