The Badass Parenting Manifesto
The idea for this blog started at the swimming pool. Actually, in the swimming pool. Trevor and I brought our kids to our swim school one summer afternoon for free swim. While we were talking, our kids — who have been in swim lessons since they were very young — were having a great time swimming without floaties in the pool.
All of a sudden, we heard a scream and turned around to see someone pulling my 3-year-old out of the water by one arm. “She looked like she was drowning,” the mother said.
My daughter gave me this look of “what did I do wrong?” I quickly grabbed her, thanked the mother, and took my daughter aside to ask, “where you ok?” Her response, “I want to go swim across the rest of the pool, Dad.”
That is when I knew that we had to do this blog. While the concern of this mother over my kids well-being was appreciated…she was perfectly fine. In fact, she was great because she was pushing her boundaries, in a safe environment (there was a lifeguard on duty and I was 10 feet away). She wanted to swim across the pool and I was going to let her try.
I see this all the time as a stay-at-home-dad. Parents who either don’t spend much time with their kids or spend far too much time with them and must protect them from themselves. Parent advocates have been writing about it for years — “helicopter” parents who have coddled their kids so much that they never scrape their knee, never fail at anything (“everyone’s a winner”), or cannot function without an adult watching their every move.
On the other end of this spectrum is so-called “free-range” parenting, which has seen more written about it as parents have been arrested for simply letting their kids walk home from school or the park alone.
The result is something terrible both for parents and kids. Parents who are so afraid that someone will call child protective services on them that they control the every movement of their kids. And kids who never learn that trying is the most important thing they can do.
We are here to say that it has to stop. We are here to show you that letting your kid explore, have fun, and, yes, get into a little trouble. And guess what, parents can have fun too!
Parenting is about having fun, trying new things, and making the most out of this crazy world… despite what others think, what could go wrong, or how our kid could get hurt. We call it bad ass parenting because being a good parent is about being a badass.
This is our manifesto — our set of guidelines for what it means to be not only a good parent, but a great parent by being a badass. This blog is for parents — and not just for dads — who want to be more adventurous or has been embarrassed by another person for having fun with your kids — just because they don’t “approve”.
1. Your kid jumps into a pool with both feet and without floaters (both literally and metaphorically)
2. When your kid asks “can I do that,” your default answer is yes (unless its to eat something sugary)
3. You pretend you aren’t watching your kid do something new when you are really watching them out of the corner of your eye
4. You get as excited about trying something new with your kid as they do
5. When you tell someone what you are doing with your kids, their response is “I have always wanted to do that.”
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