Image credit: Photo by -Gerol on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

If you have kids, or if you're planning to have kids, or if you know people who have kids and know you'd do it better, you should listen up today, because I am going to do something I rarely do: tell you all how to do it right.  Yep, I have the one and only secret to good parenting, and I'm about to share it.

After all, none of us want our kids to end up poor or unhappy or addicted or in jail.  We don't even want our kids to end up being that asshole on the freeway who flips people off (although I'm pretty sure that guy fits into the unhappy category).  So we (at least parents in my demographic here in the US) fuss quite a lot about a whole lot of different decisions.  When we have infants we wonder: breast or bottle feed?  Cry it out or co-sleep with them?  At what age and how long?  As our kids get older, we try to balance teaching them to be independent with reasonably protecting them from harm.  We look for the right answer to each: the one that's going to ensure children who are polite, happy and good students, the one that's going to give them a good career and a comfortable life, the one that's going to keep them from robbing anyone at gunpoint in the future.  I know.  I'm there.

Fortunately, I found the answer.  The one answer.  The key that always allows me to make the right decision in any situation without fussing over all the minutiae. It's a mere four words (well, five if you count a contraction as two words), so it's easy to remember.  And while I am (unfortunately) not a god with the ultimate control over every aspect of the universe that will allow me to absolutely guarantee a perfect outcome, I can guarantee that this one tactic will reduce your child's chances of becoming and addict or a serial killer or a petty thief or just an asshole to as close to none as you have the control to get it.  In fact, following this single guideline will increase your child's chances of success and happiness more than every other decision you ever make combined.

What is this extraordinary secret?  It's simple:

Don't abuse your kids.

That's it.  That's all there is to it.  Don't beat your kids with hammers.  Don't force them to eat roaches or their own excrement.  Don't put your lit cigarettes out on their bodies.  Don't choke them.  Don't break their bones.  Don't lock them in closets without food or water for hours on end.  And don't ever have sex with them.

Now some of you are thinking, "Wait.  That's stupid.  And obvious.  Those things are absolutely horrible.  Of course I'm not going to do any of that to my kids.  There must be some key for the rest of us."  But is there?  What are the things we think are making a difference: the things we agonize over and judge each other on?

I was pushing my son in his stroller one day when he was about six months old.  It was early fall and the weather was just starting to get cool.  I'd put socks on him, in this fruitless parental gesture, before we'd left the house, but he'd tugged them off.  One was clutched in his little fist and another was on the stroller handle where I stuck it after I'd picked it up off the ground.  As I was nearly my home at the end of our walk, I passed a woman who looked at his feet and gasped.  "You'd better put socks on him," she admonished, "He's going to get cold!  How can you treat a baby that way?"

I was standing outside my daughter's school the other day and heard one mom whispering to another, "Can you believe how many parents carry their kids backpacks?"  "I know," the second mom replied, "Those kids are not learning any responsibility.  Their parents are doing them such a disservice.  What are they going to be like when they grow up?"

"You have to sign your son up for karate," another parent urged me.  "Kids have to learn discipline and respect and self-confidence.  Kids these days don't learn that and just look at the way they turn out."

I was sitting with a friend who was bottle feeding her baby when a woman walked up and said, "Don't you know breast is best?  Your child's health and future depend on what you feed her now!  What you are doing is just awful!"

A man called back at a little boy bounding through Target several feet to his right.  "Hey, you!  Slow down.  Kids like you have no thought of other people.  You could knock into someone running like that.  Don't your parents teach you anything?  You're going to grow up to be a menace to society."

So, here's the thing.  Yes.  It's nice to put socks on your kids in cool weather and get them to take care of their own backpacks and let them learn karate and breastfeed them and tell them to use their walking feet.  Those are good things to do, but they're not make or break, life or death.  We inflate them to that level.  We like to think they're important.  We pass judgment and parse out these tiny little chances of bad things happening.  We try to reduce the risk of addiction by .000000000000001% by taking our child to karate lessons or reduce our the risk of our kids being "rude" or "entitled" by .000000000000000000003% by not carrying their backpacks or increase their future ability to feed themselves, by, um...  Well, probably nothing.  I mean, come on, what typically developing child grows up to be an adult who actually doesn't go to college or get a job and starves to death alone in an apartment the government paid for because she didn't learn to pack her lunch at age 7?  And do you really think no responsible citizen was ever a kid who bolted away from his mom in a store?

In all that hand wringing over tiny details, we miss the big picture.  All of us non-abusers should be throwing a party because we've already cut our kids' risk of becoming prostitutes or strippers or porn stars to almost nothing just by not having sex with them.  And our children have almost no risk of ending up in jail for murder simply because we give them adequate love and nutrition.  Do you know how many child molesters carried their own backpacks?  Some did, some didn't.  But do you want to know how many child molesters were sexually abused as children?  100%.  Ta da!*

So, you want to make the world a better place?  You want to give kids the best chance possible of having happy, productive lives?  You want to see fewer mean, selfish, unhappy adults?

Don't abuse your kids.  Make sure they get enough to eat, whether it's breast milk or formula.  Love them and support them, whether you carry their backpacks or not.  Help them spend time doing the things they love, and spend time with them, whether that's in karate class or not.  Make sure they are clothed and comfortable, whether they wear socks or not.  And contribute your time, energy and money to causes that help prevent and treat child abuse, rather than worrying about whether or not the mom down the street packs lunch for her kids or does enough to make her child stand still in line at the store.

Lesson over.  There will be a test every day for the rest of your lives.  Don't fail.  And if you need help studying, get it.

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* I'd like to point out that saying "all child molesters were abused as children," does NOT mean all people who were abused as children are child molesters. I've written more about how different people come out of troubled childhoods in a post called Orchid Children, which also includes a link to an interesting article on the subject.