5 Terrible Things You Can't Stop Your Children From Doing

5 "I'd never let my kid out of the house, dressed like that!"

You're driving through town on a summer day, when some chick catches your eye, wearing an outfit you once saw on a backup dancer in a 90s rap video. As you pass, you get a better look and realize, "Holy shit, she can't be 14 years old!" Then you go home and wash your eyes with acid and attend confession even though you aren't Catholic. Just in case.

Then when you get to be a little bit older, that reaction will be amended with, "Damn, she's only a year older than my kid!" followed by the declaration, "With God as my witness, my child will never leave the house looking like that! She's not wearing makeup until she's 18, low-cut tops will be strictly forbidden and if she wants a skirt, she can buy the kind that goes past her ankles from the quiet Mormon couple down the street."

But Here's the Thing ...

I asked 10 women at random what age they started wearing makeup, and the average answer was sixth grade (about age 11). None of them grew up to be skanks, and none of the mothers who raised them were skanks (though I admit this is a difficult question to get an accurate answer to).

My point is, as a male whose mind is almost entirely filth, it's easy to see a certain type of clothing (when worn on an adult) as an invitation to sex, and to get repulsed when I see those clothes on a kid.

But think about that. At that age, do you honestly think that when they're putting on eyeshadow and picking out jeans, that they're thinking of enticing a fellow sixth grader into bed? Hell no. They want to feel grown up, so they dress like the grownups. The overwhelming majority of women I've asked about this told me the same thing: "We didn't wear makeup back then to attract boys. We wore it to fit in with other girls."

And your kid is going to want to fit in.

I haven't had that argument with my daughter yet (she's only 6) but I've gotten a preview with my sons, who are on the verge of being teenagers. At some point, it's no longer like sticking a sweater on a dog -- kids are eventually going to want to dress themselves. They'll settle in with a social circle, and every circle wants to define themselves by what they wear. If I'm reading the fashion trends right, three years from now my son's friends will probably be dressing like a 1984 era David Lee Roth, and they'll want to do the same. The argument we have isn't going to be between making them dress in sensible sweaters versus spandex, but between making sure they go with the tasteful black spandex instead of the flamboyant leopard skin.

Just to be clear, it's not about just giving in, and it's not that I'm going to be OK with letting my daughter dress like a whore. It's that my opinion of what clothes are whorish will be completely different from what teenagers think whores dress like, and that's going to be even more true in 2017. It's idiotic for me to tell my girl that dressing that way "sends the wrong signals" when, in reality, the signals are completely different than they were when I was in high school. Hell, clothes that would have gotten you called a whore in 1920 can be worn to a job interview now.

So, I'll compromise. And I'll hate every second of it.

4 "I'll never let my kid hang around that crowd!"

Every parent of every fuckup kid says the same thing when the cops call. "I don't know what my little Johnny was doing in the car with those dopehead kids! I told him not to run with that crowd!"

We can't imagine that our kids make their own choices; we imagine that as soon as our kid is out of our sight, they're at a party surrounded by shady characters, probably in tiny leather jackets, saying, "You know what all us cool kids are doing? Injecting heroin directly into our brains. Here, you'll need a drill."

So clearly saving your kids' life means keeping them away from the shitheads.

But Here's the Thing ...

First, don't let me dismiss the effect peers have on a kid. When we're teenagers, we like to think of ourselves as individuals with the mental power to resist peer pressure. We're not sheep. It's not until you're an adult that you can look back and fully realize how perfectly you conformed to your group (and now some experts say peers actually matter more than parents in a kid's development). So, keeping your kid away from the bad apple is non-negotiable, right?

Well, my boys had a friend who for the sake of privacy we'll call "Clusterfuck Condombreak." Clusterfuck was constantly in trouble at school, spending as much time in detention as he did in the classroom. Outside of school, he'd been busted several times for shoplifting. He was temperamental and prone to breaking into fight mode if he didn't get his way. My ex wife and I banned him from the house, and told our kids that they were not to be around him anymore.

But that's when you realize it's like trying to avoid the annoying co-worker who shares the same cubicle as you. These kids go to the same small-town school, they share classes, they all have recess together, they ride the same bus.

So, when Clusterfuck approaches them, what are they supposed to do? It's really goddamned easy for me to tell my kids, "Just say that you don't want to be friends any more." Sure. Have you ever done that? Looked somebody right in the eyes and said, "I can't talk to you because a third party has determined that you're a bad person."

Okay, now imagine being a ten year old boy and not only having to say that, but also having to explain to your group of mutual friends that either Clusterfuck goes, or he goes.

It's so easy to over-simplify those social situations when it's children involved. "Oh, sure, we have social drama and office politics and cliques and alliances, but these are just kids." Trust me, if you think that, you apparently don't retain any memories of your childhood. That shit gets messy. It isn't helping the kid to pretend it's not.

So, no, you don't get to cherry-pick your kids' friends the way you can decide what haircut they get. The only thing you can do is try your best to teach them right from wrong and hope they make the right decisions. You try to give them the tools to see why Clusterfuck is going down a bad road, and hope that they arrive at that decision for themselves.

But here's the scary part: They're not always going to. Especially if part of Clusterfuck's appeal is that he's a badass who shuns authority -- an authority figure telling them not to hang out with him is basically an endorsement. So all you can do is hope that if it all goes wrong, you can be there after the fact to make sure they understand it, and that it goes wrong on a level of setting off some illegal fireworks and not, say, hijacking an armored car.

3 "I'll never let my kids around booze or drugs!"

If anyone has the right to take a "If I catch you with alcohol, I will stab you with the broken bottle" stance, it's me. My kids are not going to go through what I went through.

End of discussion.

But Here's the Thing ...

They'll actually be happy to end the discussion, because that will give them more time to go out and sneak beers with their friends.

By around age 13 about 40 percent of kids will admit to pollsters that they've tried alcohol. Who knows what the real number is. That jumps to 66 percent by age 15. For boys, the average age when they first try alcohol is 11.

About 40 percent% of high school kids will admit to having tried marijuana, and if you expand that to any illicit drug, that number climbs to half. I'm going to go way out on a limb and say the percentage of them who are lying to this pollster is even higher than the booze one, since the law and social stigma are both harder on drugs than beer. Put it all together, and by the time your kid moves out, the odds are overwhelming they've tried at least one addictive substance. If not, don't worry -- they'll have plenty more chances in college.

And there isn't a goddamn thing we can do to stop them, short of chaining them to their bed and eliminating all of the social interaction that's going to help them develop into a non-asshole adult. They're going to attend parties where people are drinking and smoking. They are going to be offered that shit.

All you can do, is educate them. But here's the thing -- you can't just make shit up to scare them off of it.

They tried that with me in the 1980s, the whole "Just Say No" thing that spammed our TV shows and health classes with blatantly exaggerated and sometimes outright false information. They said that marijuana would turn you into a mindless zombie, unable to function in the real world. Drinkers were depicted as wife-beating, unemployable disasters who eventually die in a pool of their own vomit. They taught us that one hit off of a crack pipe would get you addicted.

Don't get me wrong -- crack is awful, but the sheer, honest numbers are that only 7 percent of people who try it become regular users. So what happens when a kid sees that some people try the worst of the worst drugs and come out unscathed? What happens when they see the laughable difference between the stoner at school and the ruined marijuana addict depicted in the health class videos?

Their trust is gone, that's what happens. "Wait, if they've been lying to us about this, what other bullshit have they been shoveling?"

Hell, in many cases, a lot of us tried those things because it was taboo. "I know it's dangerous. That's just the kind of guy I am. Fuck authority, man." Then we'd put on some Rage Against the Machine and talk about how much the cops were holding us down. So why do I think that the same shit that didn't work on me is suddenly going to work with my kids?

No, the only thing we can do is educate our kids on what substance abuse really is. And that means letting them know honestly that there's a huge difference between recreational use and chemical dependence. No, smoking a bowl with some friends isn't going to turn you into a drooling social outcast. But keeping yourself in a perpetual buzz day-in and day-out will not only cost you a fuckload of money, but if you get caught doing it, your ass will go to jail. And no, despite what the stoners tell you, that shit isn't as harmless as candy. Drinking a few beers with friends isn't going to make you beat your wife and kids. But drinking in the wrong situations is a good way to wind up becoming a parent, yourself and drinking and driving is a good way to wind up fucking dead.

In a perfect world, our kids' first introduction to alcohol would be in a controlled environment, chaperoned by responsible adults who could provide transportation home and a safe atmosphere. But the truth is, most of them will find out exactly like we did. In a friend's basement, yelling over loud music, through a thick layer of smoke.

2 "I'll never let my kids touch a gun!"

Some of my European readers are going to be completely lost here; I realize England isn't exactly known for its Free Glocks to Toddlers program. And even in the U.S., you can't just walk into a Wal-Mart in New York City or Chicago, buy a .357 Magnum and be ass deep in your shooting spree before lunch.

But even to a lot of other American readers (or whatever other gun-loving country you're from), the idea of letting a kid use a gun is fucking insane. "What, you want him to accidentally shoot his brother and four of the neighbors, and then himself?"

But Here's the Thing ...

Where I'm from, guns are as common as cars, easier to buy than sinus medicine and many kids know how to fire them before they even learn their multiplication tables. This is a farming and hunting community, guns are used to put food on the table or to keep coyotes out of the chicken coop. Hell, kids here get an excused day out of school on the first day of deer season. That sounds like a joke; I assure you it's not.

Now, here's the thing ... I don't own a gun. And I've seen one of my kids accidentally punch himself in the face, so the idea of him even holding a gun is enough to give me an anxiety attack. But what's in my house is of little consequence when you consider that most of his friends do have them. They're part of the landscape here.

Even if we're assuming perfectly responsible parents who keep unloaded weapons locked inside a gun cabinet, we're talking about curious children here. They know where you hide the Christmas presents. They know where you keep your porn. Unless you keep it inside your own asshole, they will find that key. Even then, I'm not so sure they couldn't get it without you noticing. One of my kids once stole a PlayStation disc from me while I was playing it.

Now, here's where things really start making me nervous. Every contact my kids have had with guns has been on a fantasy level. Playing Halo and Modern Warfare on the Xbox. Playing with their Nerf guns, which are designed to be shot at humans ... the newest set is comprised of Velcro darts that stick to special T-shirts.

I'm not one of those people who thinks that movies and games turn ordinary people into raging psychopaths, shooting up schools while shouting out the Ten Commandments. But I'm also not ignoring the fact that the only lesson they've had about guns so far is, "Point at a human and pull the trigger to make fun occur." In this part of the country, they have to learn what a gun is, what it does and how to handle one without killing or maiming themselves or someone else.

So this year, I went back on my word and got them BB guns for Christmas. Yes, it's not quite the same thing as a 12-gauge shotgun, but it makes me feel a lot better knowing that I can teach them about gun safety without the fear of becoming a newspaper headline.

It's yet another compromise, and you've probably noticed that's pretty much the running theme of this article.

1 "I better never catch my kid fighting!"

You see this one on a lot of family based sitcoms. A kid comes home from school with a black eye, and the parents flip out. The dad awkwardly tries to teach the kid how to fight while the mother protests. The child ends up going back to school and fighting the bully, where he gets his ass kicked again. Then it's wrapped up with an "I told you so" moment from the mother, followed by the lesson, "Fighting never solves anything."

Hell, I've even written about how telling an adult is the safest, most surefire way to get rid of a bully, and I stick by that advice.

But Here's the Thing ...

When I was a kid, I had a guy that just would not let up with his harassment. I told my mom, and nothing happened. I told my teachers and the principal. Not only did it not help, but it got worse. Now, I was the pussy who couldn't fight his own battles, and I got endless torment over it.

Then one day, while watching a friend of mine in a little league baseball game, the guy showed up again and cornered me away from the rest of the adults. I got pretty scared and yelled out for help, but it didn't work because everyone at the game was making enough noise that my voice just sort of blended in. That, or they were all secretly taking bets on how much blood I could lose before going into a coma.

So when he started his shit, I did the only thing I could do ... I flipped out and started blindly throwing punches while screaming and crying. Basically the same thing I do while having sex.

Did I win? I don't know, that wasn't the point. About 20 seconds in, we were both out of breath, and he just stopped. It was the last time he ever messed with me, and I don't say that in a bragging "I'm such a badass" way. I was an awkward 9-year-old kid with no strength, power or finesse. I couldn't have been a badass if I had a genie's lamp that granted three wishes and dispensed free steroids.

My point is, I think every single person reading this has a similar story. Yep, violence is bad. Nonviolence is awesome. But you want to tell me that there's never a time to fight? Bullshit.

The first time my own kids encountered a bully, I had to sit down with them and tell them as honestly as I could that they should never go out starting fights or specifically looking for one. But if they found themselves in a situation where nobody could help, they wouldn't be in trouble with me or their mom if they had to throw punches in order to protect themselves.

No, it's not always the best solution. But, standing there and taking punches while nobody comes to your rescue is the quickest way to tell a bully, "You can do this to me anytime you want. I'm easy prey."

So yes, kids, sometimes the world is an imperfect place, riddled with assholes. And no, we won't always be there to protect you. If we're not honest about that as parents, what good are we?

For good ideas on how to punish your kids for doing these things, check out 9 Toys That Prepare Children for a Life of and 10 Great Books For (Traumatizing) Children.