Wherein My Contradictory Nature Kicks in on Parenting Advice

Through the mangled weave of links that is the web, tonight I ended up at a site called Let's Panic! Basically, it's a web page about surviving and thriving in pregnancy and parenthood. I'll admit, I didn't read a single article there, just the quick teasers on the main page. Just the same, some of the things the authors wrote on the main page were provocative enough for me to write about, but not enough to actually give a rat's ass what their opinion was. So here are my gut responses to incomplete information.

Your husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, sugar daddy, one-night stand, and/or gynecologist all have one thing in common: they want to be more involved in your pregnancy than you can possibly imagine.

I don't even know what that means. I wanted to see my baby in the ultrasound. I wanted to feel him kick. I wanted to take some of the daily burden off of my wife. Typical daddy to be things, I believe. I wanted to be involved in the pregnancy because I love my wife and my child. However, I have no idea how I could have wanted to be more involved in the pregnancy than my wife could have possibly imagined.

It's very important to never raise one's voice above 50 decibels, or, in case you don't have a decibel meter, the level of a half-heard murmur brushing past your ear as you cross a darkened threshold, or the sound of dozens of hooded acolytes whispering the lord's prayer backwards in a room lit only by candles stuck into the skulls of goats.

Seriously, you've got to be kidding me. Even when I'm sweet talking my boy, he doesn't pay attention to me until I hit 75 decibels, and even then it has to be in my deep voice. And that loud, deep voice doesn't scare him; he thinks it is funny. The context of loud can disturb him, but not loud in and of itself. I sing Rammstein in my deepest, darkest, loudest, scariest voice and the kid loves it. It is only when that loud, deep voice occurs in certain contexts that it bothers him. So what I'm saying is, occasionally be loud around your kid unless you want him or her to fear everyone that ever raises a voice in his or her direction.

Here at Let's Panic About Babies!, we believe that passive-aggressive acting out toward your child is the new spanking.

My boy is still waaaayyyy to young for it, but there is a place for spanking. There isn't a place for passive aggression, even though when you are tired and worn out, it might happen. You are the adult, act like it. So passive aggression is not the new spanking. It is probably worse.

That's my only critique of the site (and soon to be book) that I have for now. I could do more, but my boy has exhausted himself in his bouncer, and I have to amuse him with loud sounds before I feed him and put him to bed.