Some Stuff About Kids

I never had kids. Kids are a little creepy to me. Their heads are way out of proportion to their bodies, and they run around with sticky little fingers touching the walls. Their ingratitude is galling. And they seem to crap themselves for a lot longer than they used to.

What’s up with the delayed toilet training? I have known quite a few parents who did not get around to toilet training until forced to by a school rule barring admission to kids who still crap themselves. They can learn to go to the bathroom a lot earlier, as young as a year old even, if parents will bother to teach them. Why wouldn’t you invest a little time and effort early on to avoid years of diaper changes?

I made a few social blunders before I realized that early toilet training had gone out of fashion. I mistakenly assumed that the three or four year olds walking around with pantloads were simpletons, and I expressed my sympathy to the parents. Parents don’t like it when you think their kids are “special”.

Teaching kids to do stuff does smack of effort, I’ll grant you that, but it pays off with less effort in the long run. Teach the kid to wipe or wipe the kid for years. Teach the kid to dress or dress the kid for years. Teach the kid to bring you beer or get your own beer for years.

Oddly, I did my master’s thesis on birth spacing, infant mortality and breastfeeding. I reckon breastfeeding is the way to go, if you can swing it. You could breastfeed until your kid is four or five if you wanted to, but most women seem to get tired of it when the kid starts growing teeth. And it might be weird to breastfeed a kid who could comment on the flavor in complete sentences.

If breast milk is so good for us, why don’t we drink it instead of cows’ milk? You could have teams of professional lactators whose milk you could sell in supermarkets. I bet chocolate human milk would be good and good for you.

I was a bottle baby myself. I was born back when women were anesthetized, and I had to be yanked out into the world with forceps. My father was not in the room. For some reason that eludes me, my genitals were mutilated by removal of the foreskin. I confronted my mom about this a couple of years ago. “Why did you have my genitals mutilated, Mom?” “What are you talking about?” “You had me circumcised. Why?” “It was part of the procedure. We weren’t told we had a choice.” “Thanks a lot for the decreased sensation.”