Sound parenting advice can be found on network television

Last weekend was an exercise in parental control. What I'm trying to say is that Jackson was such a little shit that it took all the restraint in the world not to beat the crap out of him. I'm really not sure what caused his undesirable behavior as it always seemed to follow a period of fun. We'd be having a good time as a family, it would approach the time to end the fun and then Jackson's head would start spinning around as he shot lasers out of his eyes and spewed words of hatred. I was very proud of how calmly David and I handled these outbursts; though, on more than one occasion I found myself saying, "I'm walking away now," which was more of an instruction to myself to step away from the child before anything ugly and illegal went down than it was information for Jackson. During one of his more lucid moments I asked Jackson why he behaved that way and he responded that he didn't want the fun to end. Six year old logic: have a good time with mom and dad and then when it's over yell violently at them so that maybe they'll want to keep having fun with you.

After a few days of this I began wondering what we were doing wrong as parents to have raised such a spiteful little child. There are plenty of books out there that give quality advice on such behavior issues; some of these books are even sitting collecting dust on my book shelf. I considered looking through one of these books. Instead I found myself on the couch last night in front of the television thinking, "what would Supernanny do?" I haven't ever actually watched a complete episode of Supernanny but I've heard she has some pretty sound advice. I realized I didn't need her advice after watching about 10 minutes of the family featured last night. The kids were somewhat out-of-control on a daily basis but the parents were complete morons when it came to handling the behaviors. This family would go out to a restaurant and their 5 year old would stand on a chair yelling "I want desssseeeeerrrt!" This was not an isolated event and the parents didn't seem to have any consequences for this type of thing. And rather than ordering in from restaurants to avoid the disgruntled looks from the other diners, they ate out on average 3 times per week! Why put yourself through that torture? Morons. Supernanny wisely suggested they bring along some activities to keep their 2 young boys occupied during dinner. After instigating this plan with successful results the parents bowed down at Supernanny's feet extolling her unprecedented genius. This was all it took for me to realize that our family doesn't have problems. At least David and I seem to have the basic parenting skills down. We just may have to accept that sometimes Jackson's body is switched out with that of a malevolent imp who bears a striking resemblance to our sweet 6 year old.