Your child is a wonderful creature filled with intellectual curiosity and boundless joy. She is a fucking delight. No, I’m serious. I bet she is. And you deserve some credit. You are a committed and fully engaged parent who takes great pains to make sure you do things the right way. Your entire family is good, decent, moral and you are champions of the environment. You should be proud.
But can you be proud in a less douchebaggy kind of way? Lemme help you with that.
1. Remember that it’s just lunch and nobody cares.
The answer to what did you guys have for lunch today is not, “Slices of locally-sourced, free-range, organic chicken breasts slow-roasted in my backyard fire pit and then served atop homemade spelt loaf with my own special garlic aioli, and organic watercress and heirloom tomatoes from the farmers market.” The answer is, “A chicken sandwich.”
2. We already know that your kid’s better than ours, so lay off the bragging.
For example, don’t say, “Atticus has made us all so proud by placing first in the regional badminton tournament while practicing for his piano recital at the Royal Conservatory and being honoured with an award for most generous student at school. I honestly don’t how he manages to do it all while volunteering at the retirement home. We are so blessed to have such a talented and big-hearted boy in our lives.” Don’t say that and then plaster pictures of your superstar all over Instagram and Facebook so we can’t even mess around online without feeling inadequate. Try a “Way to go, buddy!” instead.
3. There’s something in the Bible about not posting all your good deeds to the Internet. I’m pretty sure there is.
It truly is wonderful that you’ve donated your kids’ clothing to refugee, single mothers with amputee kids. That you do that on top of making all your own furniture out of driftwood you find while volunteering to clean up the local beach, spearheading the fundraising committee at your kids’ alternative school and running a marathon for ovarian cancer research is actually breathtaking. You should win an award. If we give you an award, will you stop talking about it?
4. You don’t get to dictate what kind of gifts your kid gets, so maybe stop trying.
By all means, dress your kids in head-to-toe organic cotton or nothing but vintage thrift store finds from the 70s, depending on where you fall on the Gwyneth Paltrow-Alicia Silverstone scale. Deck their nursery out in muted earth tones and take a vigilant stand against plastic. But don’t expect the whole world to give a crap. Your kid’s going to come home with half the dollar store in a loot bag one day no matter what you do. Might as well be gracious.
5. Pinterest already takes care of our self-loathing quota on the craft front. So you can give it a rest on Facebook, okay?
I honestly think it’s great that you spend hours a day making stuff out of mason jars, burlap and birch bark with your kids. They will probably cherish those memories forever. I don’t actually know because my mom was too busy working double shifts to do crap like that with us but one time I made a caterpillar out of half an egg carton and some crayons. That was good.
The first four images were taken from goop.com because it was too easy.
Number five (because I’m pretty sure Gwynnie doesn’t craft) is courtesy of this talented photographer on Flickr.