How to Let Things Slide
This guide is optimized for dealing with kids, but it works for other irritating people, too
I am not cool. This is self-evident: I am a dad, and I wear chunky Skechers when I go around town because I have a bad back.
But I am also uncool in terms of temperament — with adults occasionally but especially when parenting. I have yelled at my kids. I have done that thing where you yell at your kid, only then the facts come out, and it turns out you were yelling at the wrong kid. “Oh, you mean it was Jimmy who tracked the mud inside? Well, then it is you who are grounded, Jimmy! Let that be a lesson to you!”
The worst part is that I know losing my cool accomplishes nothing. I’ve read about it. I’ve written about it. And yet I still lose my shit when I get too much attitude from my kids. Especially from the 14-year-old because teenagers know how to be nasty on a level that makes smaller kids look like hopeless amateurs. And if you don’t have a 14-year-old, well, now the entire world has become as nasty as one.
Given that I suffer from residual damage after a terrifying brain hemorrhage I suffered two years ago, there are actual medical reasons that I can become, medically speaking, “disinhibited” at times. But honestly, I got pissy around my kids before that accident.
