one of three ways

What in the world is wrong with kids these days? I'll tell you, it's their parents. A lot of modern-day parents are raising a generation of sheltered, over-protected, and coddled wusses who have a highly disproportionate sense of entitlement.

I recently read an article posted on The New York Times about how 'safer' playgrounds and may be detrimental to development, because when kids get hurt or semi-traumatic things happen to them, they learn from it.

I have posted multiple times about how my parents have traumatized me and inadvertently turned me into the strange quirky person I am today. Quirky is endearing. But I have realized that it taught me to be a functional, awesome person.

Yeah, my mom may have almost left me in a Wal-Mart and I may have received severe burns on my chest from a time I was semi-unattended by a hot stove. But, my parents raised me to be smart and tough enough to persevere through their few missteps. They were very few (if any), because most of my faults were self-inflicted/deserved because I was a pretty terrible child.

I mean I may have 'accidently' broken my older brother's arm in my attempts to stop him from killing my bounce on our neighbor's trampoline. He got a broken arm and had to bathe with a garbage bag on his arm for a few months, and I got spanked till my father lost feeling in his arm. But I think we were both better for it. I think he even developed this double jointed action that would serve him well should he ever pursue a career as a street performer.

Which brings me to another great aspect of my mom and dad's 'accidental' parenting. My mother was a nurse. She worked in ERs, nursing homes, and hospice. So, the fact that I smashed my head falling out of a tree house or slammed my finger in a car door was pretty much a non-event for her. She knew whether or not I needed to be sent to the ER or if my cries were just early attempts at attention grabbing. For the record, I only went to the ER once, the rest were just The Boy Who Cried Wolf... annoyingly.

Thankfully, this 'tough love' approach is not lost on my siblings' children either. One night while sitting around the dinner table at my brother's, my two nieces were running around the house playing, and we all heard a loud crash that sounded like Ty Pennington just unleashed  wrecking ball in the guest bedroom. We all sat there and clutched our wine glasses and heard my niece yell out.

No. Not blood curdling cries of a toddler who was staring Death in the face. She simply, calmly yelled "NO BLOOD!" and continued defending her American Girl dolls from the oppressive Galactic Empire with her imaginary lightsaber.

THAT, my friends, is parenting.

Finally, I'm 99% sure I shouldn't procreate or even adopt, but I don't know if I want to even raise a child in a world where playgrounds don't have monkey bars. But, if I ever do have children, rest assured, they will be spanked, never go to the movies or restaurants with linen tablecloths until they are old enough to drive themselves, and they will kick all kinds of sweet ass in one of the following three awesome ways:

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