Do they think their kids come shrink-wrapped in perfect factory form? Cause they sure as hell don’t.

I told the tale of the Ravaging Ice Cream Brat a few years ago in my article/rant against sugar and obesity. But I’ll briefly tell it again here.

I was in Wal-Mart waiting in line at the return counter for some stupid reason I forget. While there, I saw a kid who looked nine or ten years old or so and his mom waiting in line. Well, the mom was in line. The kiddo, who was adorned in baggy sweat clothes and looked like a pile of laundry sprung to life, was sprawled out on the one bench, legs spread, one hand fiercely smashing virtual buttons on his smartphone. And whining. Whining, whining, whining about being hungry. So he goes to his mom and begs for a snack. She, without even looking, as though she were spreading bread crumbs for an obnoxious park pigeon, digs into a box of freaking ice cream sandwiches and hands her offspring one of them. The kid tears it open and returns to the bench. All the while his stupid phone game jingles and jangles as he plays it with one hand while stuffing his face with the other.

Now, I don’t think this is an overreaction, but I wanted to punt that kid across the room for acting like that. I stood there in awe watching the tragic scene unfold. You could tell this kid knew how to whine his way into anything, and the mother always, always gave in. He was already fat. Fat at nine years old. The mother was fat. Both had that slovenly, insolent look about them that makes your blood boil and hate humanity.

I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was absolutely unacceptable to behave like that for me growing up. Sure, as a little kid I was rambunctious. But once I was old enough to understand the English language and the concept of right or wrong I knew to be on my best behavior in public. I never acted uncouth, certainly not as old as nine or ten or older.

I wasn’t treated like some wild animal that needed to be placated with sugary treats and electronic distraction. I was treated like a person who required discipline and structure, which is what children need if they’re going to have any hope of reaching adulthood and NOT become gigantic useless assholes.

A few years ago I was visiting a former place of employment to fill out some paperwork. While there I had to sit next to a mother and her five-year-old, who was playing some game on his tablet the whole freaking time. I don’t know what this game was, but it involved capturing fruit or something, and so whenever this kid scored points or whatever, the game would loudly chime, “YOU GOT A BANANA!”

This was an office for a mental health nonprofit, mind you. Not the entrance to Disneyworld. Ironically, this kid and his stupid game nearly made me lose my mind. By the hundredth “YOU GOT A BANANA!” I finally shot a polite glance at the mother, who was playing on her phone, too, and she did finally lower the volume. Yes lady, I have ears. I certainly can hear your stupid offspring’s loud AF game.

An old saying goes that children should be “seen but not heard.” I couldn’t disagree more. I think children should be NEITHER seen NOR heard. In fact, I think children should be packed up and sent to one of those mean, nasty English boarding schools. Like the one in that Pink Floyd music video for “Another Brick in the Wall.” Where the guy yells, “How can you have your pudding if you don’t eat your meat?” Then, after they turn 18, those newly minted adults can be sent to college or trade school to become productive citizens.

Oh, that’s completely unreasonable. We should let them explore themselves and just be who they are. Children are magical little beings!

No, they’re not. They’re not. They are ignorant. They are stupid. They know nothing. They are clueless. They dont know “shit about fuck” to be blunt. When NASA was launching that gigantic V-2 rocket into space to land on the moon, do you recall seeing any 12-year-olds in that control room with the guys who had those crew cuts and pocket calculators? When you’re watching the Super Bowl, do you see any ten-year-old boys out there on the field throwing touchdown passes? No, of course not. Do you think Taylor Swift just accidentally wandered onto a stage one day with a guitar and became famous out of nowhere? Do you think her parents had to tell her sometimes, “Get in that room and practice that guitar!” I guarantee you they did.

Everytime I go out in public I see kids in designer clothes. Kids playing with smartphones. Kids acting like zoo animals. Kids that seem to run their families. All the while the parents stand there agape like zombies doing nothing.

NEWSFLASH: Kids will not magically fix themselves when they turn 18. An asshole kid WILL become an asshole adult 100% of the time.

I look around and all I see is parents OUTSOURCING every parental responsibility to someone else who is often just as irresponsible or worse. They outsource education to government schools. They outsource nurturing to daycare centers while the parents go out to work. They outsource time and attention to TV and movies and streaming sites like Disney and Netflix. They outsource all knowledge to social media — YouTube and TikTok. They even outsource sexual education. Do you realize that boys as young as EIGHT are exposed to hardcore pornography on their phones? Think of how much that’s warping their brains.

But you just said you want to send kids to mean, nasty English boarding schools. Isn’t that outsourcing?

In that case it’s okay, because it’s way better than them ending up flailing around like an untethered blimp in a Wal-Mart and munching on ice cream sandwiches for breakfast. There are SOME good places to outsource, and if parents are going to behave like brainless dolts then it’s better the kids go somewhere else where they can actually learn and develop. I’m all about practical solutions here not inflexible ideology.

Anyway, what is the result of all this awful outsourcing? Children in school today outsource their studies and their ability to think to CHAT-GPT. They don’t think critically, they just transcribe whatever the all-knowing all-wise AI computer in the sky tells them, as if they were ancient scribes scribbling out a prophetic vision of the future.

Parents today don’t even seem to really want kids. They regard their own offspring as if they were happenstantial bodily growths. Like talking moles. Something to be looked at curiously, then ignored, or left to the “experts” or “society” to deal with. Parents are letting teachers call the shots. The third grade teacher thinks Johnny should go on Ritalin because he once looked out the window? Better medicate the hell out of our boy. Don’t want to disagree with an “expert.” Some 85-pound woman on TikTok is telling our 13-year-old daughter she should go on an all juice diet to stay thin? Well, we don’t want to interfere. Hashtag telling our kids to eat Tide pods for the lolz? We had no idea that was going on, honest.

Why do you suppose so many young men today have checked out of the dating market and aren’t looking for relationships? What do you think is really powering the incel movement? Absentee fathers. Why do you think so many young women are incompetent door knobs? Absentee mothers who would rather watch some trash on Netflix than prevent their daughters from getting an STD before their sixteenth birthday.

Point is, a lot of social problems these days can be traced back to shitty parenting. I’m not saying good parenting can fix everything. You can’t fix every person. Some kids are psychopaths, for sure. But you sure can mitigate a lot of issues out there.

Oh, but it’s so expensive to raise kids these days. You have no idea how hard it is. Both parents have to work. Inflation, cost of living, double-income households, etc.

Listen, I was born into poverty. I grew up in the lower-middle working class. I started working at 12-years old and haven’t stopped since. I had to pay for my own braces by selling candy door to door. Spare me your lousy complaints. I didn’t turn into some obnoxious hellion adult. Because as a kid I was disciplined and taught there is a right way to act and a wrong way. Not an easy set-up in life, but I made it through and didn’t become a felon or some adult loser who blames “society” for their own patheticness.

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You can call me harsh. You can call me unreasonable. But you can’t say I don’t care. I care that kids today are raised right so they can be successful adults. I care that they have the tools they need to not just survive but thrive in the world.