Nigel Latta - How to Have Kids and Stay Sane

Yeah, well, good luck with that.

When my son was born I made a brief attempt at being a good parent. Im a professional, a Clinical Psychologist, and Id been working with families for over a decade by then. I thought it was going to be easy. So off I set, convinced that Id be a very good parent. I was educated in the ways of children. Id spent years being paid to tell other people how to raise their kids. I was qualified, and motivated, how hard could it be?

I tried hard to be a good parent, damn hard, and to my credit almost made two weeks.

The crunch came one afternoon when my wife was going out for a couple of hours to pretend she was still a real person and still had a life. Despite her misgivings, I was left in charge, pretty much by default because there was no one else left. There were lists covering every eventuality from puking to tsunamis. It was supposed to be quality time for me and the boy. That was the plan anyway. To be fair we had at least a good 20 minutes of quality time. I made stupid faces, he made odd facial expressions (mostly I suspect from wind) and that was OK for a while. Then the novelty of quality time wore off. Theres only so much quality time you can have with someone who cant control their bowels.

The next step, obviously, was the television. Wed bought one of those Mozart videos for babies with the interesting visuals that are supposed to make your kids brain grow. I knew it was complete nonsense, but if we hadnt and hed turned out to be a bit of a thicky then Id have never heard the end of it from his mother. We watched it for about 10 minutes. It was dull. Very dull. Then it moved beyond dull into the realms of utter tedium, and finally into the no mans land of just plain annoying.

And heres where we reached the crunch point, my boy and me, because I knew a good parent would soldier on. A good parent would sit and watch the whole thing whilst saying the colours out loud and being suitably encouraging. A good parent would sing, and count, and jiggle. A good parent would STIMULATE their precious little ones BRAIN DEVELOPMENT.

We sat there for a bit, me and my boy. I knew that my next step was important. Whatever I did next would set the tone for the whole parenting experience.

Everything went very quiet.

Finally, after thinking it all through, after reflecting on all that Id learned about infant development and neonatal neurobiology, and all that Id learned from over a decade of working with all kinds of families, I looked down at my infant son whose life and psychological wellbeing his mother had entrusted to me. This would be my defining moment as a parent. This was where I would discover what kind of parent I really was.

Little man, I said, quietly, my voice tender, filled with the soft warm tones of the wise old father, shall we watch Arnie in Terminator 2 instead of this stupid baby crap?

He was as keen as I was, honestly.

So we ditched the alleged brain development nonsense and watched the Governor of California blow shit up instead. It was quality time in the truest sense of the word. My, how we bonded.

From that moment on I promised to forget all that good parent nonsense and just be a plain old parent instead. My parents had just been plain old parents and that seemed to go pretty well for me and my brothers and sister. None of us had died and no one lost an eye, although having said that I do have a scar on my knee from falling off a bike and I also nearly cut off my little brothers finger in a gold sluicing machine. Long story. It should be noted, however, that neither of these two misfortunes was my parents fault.

If you try and be a good parent you will go mad, die, or simply turn into a painfully boring person. The rest of us will find you very annoying. You will show off little Tarquins extraordinary ability to poke out his tongue, and we will secretly wish youd just shut up. We will look at you and, even though we will be smiling and nodding, secretly we will be thinking that you are just a big fat pain in the arse.

We will feel sorry for your children.

Good parents, in the modern sense of the phrase, are just plain painful. So instead of telling you a hundred different ways to become one of the Stepford parents, and therefore a hundred different ways to feel guilty and inadequate, this book gives you the skinny on how to be a plain old parent.

Trust me, its better this way.