In Lieu of Dr. Spock: Corman's Parenting Tips

By Josh Corman (follow me on Twitter @JoshACorman)

Since I was married at twenty and a father at twenty-three, I have often thought myself uniquely qualified to provide advice, if we’re being polite (unsolicited commentary I’m still doling out despite your obvious disinterest, if we’re being ungrateful pricks), on the subjects of marriage and fatherhood. Experience is the best teacher, some say. Others say that experience is just the name people give their mistakes. I don’t see why both can’t be true, and since many of my friends are now married and have a pretty fair handle on wedded bliss, I feel like I need to use the time that remains before my friends all have kids to offer some particularly helpful parenting tips that might make their parenting experiences better, more enjoyable, and more lucrative... err, fulfilling.

1. Bribery’s downside has been MASSIVELY overhyped

The lobbyists of big parenthood would love you to believe that children need the firm, loving guidance of parents committed to the principles of discipline more than they need another Tootsie Roll Pop or hour in front of the television. They get their information from "research" done by "doctors." They make it all sound very official.

Theory is nice, but I live in the real world.

Do you know how many things upset children? Literally, it’s almost everything. They get mad when they’re tired, hungry, gassy, sick, hot, cold, or neglected. They don’t like loud noises, every little skinned knee or pinched finger turns them into needy, snotty, incomprehensible monsters, and they get totally bent out of shape if they don’t “see” their parents for a “long” time.

Often, this all feels like too much, and as a parent, the overwhelming feeling of not being able to satisfy your child’s most elemental desires and calm their greatest fears can lead you to the brink of despair. Luckily, there are any number of products you can use to stand in for the sort of dedicated, time-consuming parenting that radicals call “basic responsibility.” First off, candy works like a charm, especially suckers. When Benjamin is upset, a sucker will get him off my back no matter what. Sometimes he gets upset when I give him a flavor he doesn’t like, so I’ve taken to just leaving a fresh bag in his room every week, so he can pick to suit his mood.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “But what about when my child is too young for hard candy? How do I distract him then?” While it’s true that those first few months are the hardest (even Tootsie Rolls and Twizzlers give infants a hard time), you must persevere! Around the time a child can reliably hold a bottle (also known to many parents as “The Greatest Day of My Life”), he can reliably hold a sucker. Until that time, small pieces of chocolate—which, annoyingly, they are usually unable to break off themselves—will have to suffice.

If hopping your kids up on wildly unhealthy sugar and high fructose corn syrup sounds like a bad idea, I understand where you’re coming from. Hyperactivity from a sugar overload often just creates an even greater desire in the child to interact with you, often during the most important moments of major sporting events. Luckily, the other great element to successful bribery—television—is here to help.

TV has been around since the early fifties, and parents have been using it as a babysitter from day one. It must have been tough in those early days counting on the Eds (Murrow and Sullivan) for reliable child distraction. Combine dull programming, three measly channels, and a blurry picture, and you're basically begging your child to wander away from the screen in search of you. Luckily, DVD players, Hi-Def picture, and the magic of Pixar Animation Studios has transformed every television in America into a potentially never-ending carousel of high action entertainment. Children love Pixar movies, and, because Pixar has taken merchandising to levels that give even George Lucas pause, children also love the toys, cars, monsters, and robots (but, weirdly, not insects or rats) represented in their favorite movies. Combining these toys with a daily triple-feature makes living the rest of your life as a parent so much simpler. Trips to the grocery are a breeze when you don't have to cart along a two-year old who seems hell-bent on raking every package he can reach into the cart. In fact, if you plan well enough (a bag of the aforementioned candy, four or five sippy cups filled with juice or water, a multi-disc DVD player with every available Pixar title, a webcam, and a fresh heavy duty diaper), an overnight escape to a bed and breakfast is totally doable. Babysitters are running scared. 

Yep, you can get your kids to do pretty much anything for the promise of candy and television. These are your weapons. Use them recklessly.

2. Some Things Should NOT Be Given Out Like Candy

Your kids love you. They need you. Desperately, in fact. You know how dogs beg for your attention and approval? Well, children are like that, only exponentially more so. Use this to your advantage.

We've all read the children's classic If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, the story of a greedy rodent and his quest to bankrupt the people stupid enough to hand over their baked goods without demanding sufficient collateral. That story should teach us a valuable truth about parenting: as a parent, you possess one thing of such tremendous value that to dole it out without prudent, judicious consideration can only be called folly. That thing is your approval.

Let me paint you a disturbing picture. A little girl learns to ride her bike. In her endless excitement over the time-consuming, sometimes painful achievement of this goal, she rushes into the house and begs her parents to come watch her ride without the aid of training wheels. They do, and when they see her ride they cheer and congratulate her and offer her ceaseless, genuine praise. The pride is visible on their faces.

Horrifying, isn't it? We can all see where this is going. Twenty years from now, that little girl will be a layabout ne'er-do-well still living in her room upstairs working the register at Hobby Lobby while she works on her "poetry," all because Mom and Dad poured their praise and affection on her like champagne on a stripper in a rap video. Soon, the girl became complacent and felt entitled to "do what made her happy" and "pursue her dreams." If only they had kept that carrot dangling a little longer, just out of reach, their child could have been successful.

Kids need to be hungry to succeed. The surest way to keep someone hungry? Starve him. Make your kids crave your approval by issuing it in brief, unadorned doses. The other day, Benjamin came and asked me to come look in his room. I went (not right away, of course) and saw that he had stacked some wooden blocks over his train tracks, forming a long tunnel, and he was pushing one of his trains through to the other side. "It's a tunnel!" he said. I was thrilled at how carefully he had stacked the blocks and how much time and creative energy he had spent on getting the tunnel just right, but I had to keep the long view in mind. "I guess," I said. "But not very symmetrical. A real engineer would laugh at you."

Of course it was difficult to watch his little chin drop onto his chest in defeat, but nobody said parenting is supposed to be easy. If you want to be a successful parent, you have to take some lumps. I'll warn you, it takes practice. I've been watching my favorite sports teams without cheering because I know when Benjamin starts playing that I'll have to work hard to look annoyed and disinterested enough to make him outwork his opponents. 

Remember, if you give your children a compliment, they'll soon want constant affirmation and reassurances of your love. Proceed with caution.

3. Culture is a Must

A lot of so-called experts say that reading to your child is one of the best things you can do to ensure strong cognitive development and language skills. Maybe, but who has the time?

Think about it. Kids are exhausting. You already have to sleep a couple of extra hours after they're born because they tire you out so much (DO NOT deprive yourself of sleep; remember, crying won't kill a baby), plus, with all the time you have to spend updating your Facebook page with pictures of them and feeding them, doing their laundry and changing their diapers, who has time for reading?

Still, the fact remains that children need to be exposed to language so that they can enter school on par with their peers. What's a busy parent to do? The answer is simple: rap music. Think about it. If you need your child exposed to language, what better way than the poetry of stars like Kanye West and Rick Ross? High school English teachers have long been using rap as a way to connect with wayward youths, and now hipster journalists from Brooklyn (home of Jay-Z, hip-hop's equivalent to Shakespeare) are writing books about it, imbuing it with a sense of high culture parents are crazy for. Baby Mozart, anyone? And Mozart's music doesn't even have lyrics. How are they supposed to learn anything apart from how to fall asleep more quickly? Crank the Lupe Fiasco, and your child will soon be lost in appreciation of our beautiful language.

Now, I know this one is likely to raise a few questions. First, does it have to be rap? The answer is obvious. While you may be partial to the lyrics of Paul Simon or Neil Young, those guys don't pack nearly as many words per minute into their songs. Remember, you're doing this for your kids. Language acquisition is the goal, and rap music simply suits that goal better than all others. Imagine if every R.E.M. song had as many words in it as "It's the End of the World as We Know It." Rap specializes in that sort of efficiency, and makes itself the only sensible option as a replacement for reading.

But Corman, you're saying, what about all the profanity? Might I suggest that those four-letter words fix more problems than they create? Parents dread the moment when their child comes to them and asks about the meaning of some vulgar word he heard on the street. This way, that crisis is averted, because the child will be so used to the words that he either will already know what they mean (saving the parent an awkward conversation) or he'll be so used to them that hearing them again won't even make him flinch. I was, however, also concerned about the high density of foul language in hip-hop, and I tried to remedy that at first with edited versions of big name albums, but when Benjamin started speaking he left out every fourth word, so I had to revert to the originals. I would suggest you stick to the same. Now get clicking on that iTunes icon!

There you are, friends. A few helpful pointers from one who is daily fighting the good fight, carving out a little space for those parents who care. 

I'll be back in a couple of weeks with a Christmas post (probably about how the lump of coal can be strategically used to elicit all kinds of legally binding promises from your kids). Until then, enjoy!

By Josh Corman (follow me on Twitter @JoshACorman)