My husband and I came up with this list for those of you who are worried that you are losing your coolness due to your parenting responsibilities, or that you will lose your coolness if you have kids.
Shannon and Dixon’s Ways to Stay Cool After You Have Kids (First Installment)
Not numbered in order of importance
1) Whatever you do, do not talk about your kids’ bathroom habits outside of your own home. The cool people with kids do not want to hear about this and the people without kids will just be mortified. Cool people want to talk about pirates and politics and Brangelina . If you talk about pee and poop socially, you will be relegated to having uncool friends.
2) This one is going to hurt. The only people who really care about your kids’ sports and intellectual accomplishments are you and your parents, so do not excessively brag about your kids, if at all. That’s not to say that your friends don’t care about your kids; they care that your kids are safe and healthy and happy. But they have their own kids with their own accomplishments. And if they don”t have kids, they really don’t want to hear about it. There are few things less cool than announcing at a social gathering:”Harrison is so advanced, he can say his A,B,C’s, write his name and count to 15 and he’’s only 26 months old!” What they hear: “Harrison blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Seriously. The poor person who is trapped talking to you is mentally going over their to do list, trying to figure out how to get the heck out of there. They are not listening to you.
3) Do not believe that your views about parenting are the only views in the universe. So breastfeeding until your kid turned 4 was the most nurturing experience of your life, good for you. So you only feed your kids organic food, good for you. Your children have never watched TV in their lives and they are 5 and 3? Good for you. Home school, cloth diapers, daycare vs. staying home, the list goes on and on. Sure if someone asks, tell them what worked for you, but know that it’s not the only way and that it’s very uncool to push it on them. If you are this kind of person, make sure to get a bunch of really insecure friends who will lap up all of your wisdom.
4) Get a babysitter when you attend events that are customarily “adult-only”. Even if the invitation doesn’t specifically say it. Weddings that happen at night and involve cocktail hours are generally intended for adults only. Events in general that occur at night are usually intended for adults only. People don’t always put it on the invitation because they a) don’t want to be rude, or b) assume that you know. Ask yourself: “Have we ever been the only people (or among the only people) with kids at an event? Has this happened more than once?” If the answer is yes, then you should not have taken your kids.
5) Don”t talk super-loud baby talk in public. As in, (affect a very high-pitch of voice here), “Oh Tomm-mmy, did you get a boo-boo? Does your boo-boo hu-u-rt? Can I kiss it and make it bet-ter? Oh ba-by, oh ba-by, my little bitty ba-by….” And then there’s the ubiquitous, “Samm-mmy, did you toot? I think I smell a toot! Do you need to poo-poo?” This is very, very uncool. We cannot stress it enough.
