Piss-Weak Parenting

I’ve never read a parenting book in my life

7 min readDec 7, 2022

This is a short story about weak parents that are setting their kids up for failure. In my opinion.

You probably won't like this post.

You might even think I am some kind of new trendy prejudiced…sexist, racist, agist, childist, parentist, or whatever other ist and ism you can come up with. I don't care.

A short story about a couple of piss-weak parents.

A few weeks back my wife and another mum she knows through our kid's school decided that they would take the group of children away for a few days of canoeing. We have two kids, they have two kids.

We’d learned their eldest had been struggling with some issues recently and the mum explained that this would be a great getaway. Time to reset.

My wife and the other mum agreed that the kids would take no devices. The kids are aged between 6–12.

Our kids took no devices because that was the agreement but also, it's a canoeing trip, their kids brought their iPads and smartphones.

Off to a great start already.

While the mums and kids were away I invited the father around for a few beers and a barbecue. We’ll call him Max. Why should they have all the fun?

Max opened up to me about how their oldest kid was having issues since moving to a new school and how they should have never gotten the kid a smartphone because it exacerbated the issues around the new school and making friends. Max explained TikTok in particular had become an obsession and it was causing all sorts of issues and arguments at home.

Max’s kid was becoming withdrawn, rebellious, anxious, and depressed. The only thing that made the kid feel good was the thing that made the kid feel bad, the smartphone and TikTok.

I didn’t say anything. I thought it was weird that they’d give their 12-year-old a smartphone and allow them to use TikTok, but to each their own. It’s not my kid. So I just did the right thing, I nodded in showing my understanding and I made sure I didn’t open my stupid mouth and say something dumb.

In my view, right or wrong, it's just my view, it’s bad if you know what you are doing is wrong and even worse when you agree to no longer do it but continue.

This is what I have started to define as piss-weak parenting.

They got back from their mini-trip and I found out from my tattletale 6-year-old son that when they weren’t in the water, the other two kids were on their devices constantly so their mother was having to repeatedly tell them off which would cause a big hullabaloo.

I was shown pictures of the canoe trip.

All of the kids looked happy and energized except for one.

This one particular child looked deflated and didn’t want to be there. You didn’t need to be a body language expert to see this, it was blatantly obvious.

Why would the kid want to be canoeing with boring people when there was a whole world of smart, interesting, beautiful people in 30-second, filtered, buzzing, sing-song videos that snap-crackle-and-pop and make all your senses light up?!

Big little problems.

I’ve been thinking about it for some time. I see it everywhere nowadays.

Parents want to try and please their kids 24/7, they want to be best friends with their kids.

But here’s the thing, your kids are not your friends. They are your children. You are given responsibility over these little bundles of energy and it’s your job to make sure they grow up healthy, and happy, and that they turn into solid adults.

TikTok?

No way!

These apps themselves are weaponized to the point adults have trouble putting them down. They hire marketing geniuses and psychologists to design the games and user experience in such a way that it becomes physically addictive. We know this already!

The second thing is, what about the weirdos and creeps that are sitting there somewhere in the world watching or communicating with your kids or worse? Does that not cross these parents' minds?! I am sure that it does, so why not do something about it?

As a parent, you use apps, you know what is on them. Instagram is filled with people that are half-ass naked and TikTok is the same but with dance moves.

Piss-weak parenting is pervasive, it’s everywhere.

One of my buddies and I took our kids away for the weekend glamping. His child at the time had developed some kind of anxiety and was biting his nails and pulling his hair out, from what I understood this was due to a video game addiction that he had developed, or more specifically in my mind, been allowed to develop.

We were about to leave for our trip, I yelled “Hi!” to the kid who was sitting in the front seat of his dad's car, head sunken into an iPad. He didn’t bother to look up.

My daughter saw this and asked if she could use her iPad too.

“Nah” I said.

“Buuuut I’ll be bored” my little one pleaded.

My response: “good, be bored, look out the window, it’ll be good for you”.

She was asleep within 15 minutes of our road trip, after looking out the window, bored.

We arrived and the kids wanted to watch TV, so we decided then and there that no devices or TV would be used until the last night, if the kids were good, we’d all watch a movie together.

We spent the better part of 3 days doing typical glamping stuff, fishing, bike riding, making fires, roasting sausages, and marshmallows, and going to the beach.

My buddy's kid didn’t touch his hair or bite his fingernails once, not a single time, all weekend. And I’m confident of this because we were in a very close-knit setting, we were glamping remember. But also because the kid's father confirmed this and told me how amazed he was. Once we returned, it was the first thing he told his wife too.

Moral of this story?

If you are a piss-weak parent, stop being a piss-weak parent.

Stop feeding your kids McDonald's just because they ask for it.

Stop letting your kids watch weirdos on YouTube that eat garbage and scream like incessant weirdo banshees just because they think it's funny.

Your kid doesn’t need ice cream for dessert every night. Want to give them something sweet, try an apple.

Learn to say ‘no’. It's good for them to hear it.

I’m not saying they need a good ass whooping every time they make a mistake, like my 6-year-old genius who just decided to eat watermelon on our cream-colored fabric sofa and so now it has pink sludge smooshed into it, no, but you gotta teach kids what's right and wrong, tell them yes or no, not just yes because it's easy, but because its the right thing to do.

A final story to those that will say I am an ist or ism. A little more fuel for you.

My daughter and her cousin decided to dress my son up as a girl a couple of years back, he was about 3 or 4. They put a wig, dress, and lipstick on him, the whole kit N’ kaboodle.

He came out, and we all laughed. It was funny.

He looked like ET in the scene from the movie where ET gets drunk and Gertie dresses him up. As I say, it was funny.

My son who takes after his dad and wants to be the class clown realized this was getting a good reaction and so he continued to play along. When it was time to put their dress-up toys away, and for the game to stop, he wanted to continue pretending he was a girl.

“I’m a giiiiiiiirl” he continued, waiting for the roar of laughter from the grownups.

“No, you’re not, take the dress off and go get changed” I said.

“But I’m a giiiiiirl”, trying again.

“Take it off”.

“NO!”.

“Ok then. Let me call Santa and tell him you want girls presents this year for Christmas instead of that monster truck you keep talking about”.

My son ran to his bedroom, ripping away clothes as fast as he could, tripping over himself on the way and simultaneously screaming ‘NO!’, only this time it was a different kind of ‘no’.

The point is that a lot of the problems we are seeing in society today are due to weak parents that want to take the easy route. Let little Timmy and little Suzie do what they want because it's easier to just give in.

Like all things in life, it might be easier in the short term, but not in the long. Short-term pain, long-term gain as the saying goes.

Stop being a piss-weak parent. You know what to do. Just say no.