I’m going to do Britney Spears a favor.
A judge on Tuesday suggested she hire a parenting coach, citing her history of boozing it up in nightclubs and neglecting her two kids. Tuesday night, Britney promptly boozed it up at a nightclub and neglected her kids. Parent coaching is apparently some kind of industry, judging from the 2,280,000 entries one gets when Googling “parenting coach.” It’s as if a bunch of people suddenly woke up and said “Where the heck did this baby come from?”
I am offering my services, free of charge. I just returned from a week as a stay-at-home dad to pre-schooler and a second-grader, which gives me a unique perspective and an overpowering urge to take hard drugs.
It’s not hard to have fun with your kids. For instance, the highlight of my week with the kids was a late summer trip to the beach. The air was crisp, ripples of saltly surf lapped at the shore and the rats were fighting. We walked out to the end of a fishing pier, which give us a good view of a rock jetty and a swarm of rats. The rats darted in and out of the rocks, some engaged in a tug of war over a scrap of fish.
The kids, for some reason, loved it.
“Dad, you know what my favorite animals are?” my older daugher asked the next day. “Ocelots and rats.”
Another good idea: long hikes in the woods. The kind of late afternooon hikes where the kids’ legs are aching and all they want to do is get to bed early. I love those kinds of hikes.
So there you go, Britney. Parenting isn’t hard, it just takes creativity and guidance. For instance, rats are OK. Ratt isn’t.