Category: Worthless Advice

The 10 Best Bad Parenting Tips!

~ K ~ Leave a comment

It is so easy to dispense great parenting advice when you are an awesome parent like me.  However, it is a harder to teach others how to be bad parents.  Frankly, most people don’t listen to my great advice.  Keep in mind: parenting is a lifetime commitment that haunts you for the rest of your life.  Unless your kids turn out to be awesome and without any character flaws, you will most likely have them in your life forever.

That means that with some bad parenting, you can enjoy the journey of parenting  It’s not the destination; it’s the journey that is so darn fun!

10. Don’t Follow Through on Anything!

You don’t want your kids to think you (or anyone else) are reliable.  Empty promises are a surefire way to make your kids understand that the world is an unreliable place.  This gives them a head’s up that when the cable company says that they will be there in morning; that really means you’ll be lucky if they show up by 8 pm that evening.  Sure, take a whole day off from work and enjoy a wasted day waiting for your imaginary cable guy.  At least you can catch up on your Dr. Phil episodes.

9. Don’t Set Limits

Limits are for parents that want to shelter their kids from the pains of failure.  Your kids should be allowed to know that if they screw up; well it isn’t your fault.  How are they going to learn if you limit their creativity?  And if you set limits you might have to enforce these limits.  Jeez, that just makes more work for you.  You are a busy parent; you don’t need extra work on top of your yoga and latte schedule; that is just ridiculous.

8. Don’t be Flexible on Anything!

Sometimes you have to be flexible to be a good parent…nah, I’m kidding.  Never budge on anything.  If you give in on anything or if you are flexible on anything…well, you might as well give up your kids to foster care.  If plans change; too bad! So what if your kid is getting an Outstanding Student of the Quarter Award.  If it is during your favorite TV show; be firm on your schedule and don’t go.  It’s not like you’ll be able to see that show later!

7. Don’t Give in to Being a Good Parent

You’ll get a lot of pressure from your family and friends to be a good parent.  They’ll offer advice (most of it worthless advice) about how you need to “step up your game as a parent”.  Sure, their kids are doctors, lawyers, and other productive members of society…but what does that really prove?  If you are a father, you are even more important to a child’s life.  However, that isn’t going to stop you from hanging out at the football field reliving the glory years and drinking beer behind the bleachers.

6. Make Sure Your Kids Know Who is Boss!

Kids these days run all over their parents.  They are bossy and disrespectful.  You should tell them right off the bat that you are “The Boss”.  As soon as your wife/girlfriend is pregnant you should be telling your unborn child that you are the boss.  Whisper to them that they need to change their diapers at three months old you won’t be taking care of them forever.  You aren’t raising slackers!

5. Use Fear and Intimidation

If it works for 3rd World Dictators; it will work for you too!  If that kid of yours didn’t bother listen to you in the womb, now is the time to introduce fear and intimidate to their plate of feelings.  Allow them to taste how it will be like later in life when they meet the neighborhood bully.  You yelling and scaring him prepares him for what it will be like at school when the really bullies push him down and take his lunch money.

4. Never Be a Friend to Your Kid

If you are a friend to your kid, you make him a loser.  How is he going to make any friends if his parents are nice to him?  Instead, make sure to be mean and cruel.  This will allow him to have something in common with his peers.  He needs a good bonding point.  Nothing makes kids bond together faster than when they can whine about how “unfair” their parents are.  Usually this bonding occurs as they update their Facebook status on the Smartphone their parents gave them.

3. Always Comparing and Criticize

You know what made America great?  It is our ability to whine and complain about how our siblings were treated better than us.  If you don’t compare and criticize your kids, how are you going to make them competitive players in today’s business world?  Are they going to know that only the favorite child is going to win?  Sure, some of the experts out there want you to think that criticizing and public shaming leads to depression and low self esteem.  But we know what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?

2. Don’t Do Anything for your Kids

Do you want your kids to be crybabies?  Are you going to wipe their noses in high school?  Are you going to do their federal income taxes when they are 29 years old?  You think I might be a bit extreme.  But if you help them tie their shoes, you might as well do their do their taxes.  Oh, could you let them live in your basement until they are 40 years old too?  Thanks!  Seriously, let them learn early that having a home cooked meal by your Mom is so phony.  Point to the cupboard and the fridge and say: Have at It!

1. Don’t Pay Attention to Them

Let your nanny or daycare provider shower your kids with love; that is what you pay them for.  Really, have you seen the rates they charge?  They should be paying you for allowing them the opportunity to care for your child and experience the miracle of childcare.  If you pay attention to your kids you are making them think that they will always deserve your attention.  Well, they don’t.  If you pay attention to them, they will think everyone will pay attention to them.  That’s just plain crazy talk.  You want your kids to feel like no one cares; that everyone is just mean and cruel, just like you!

By now, you should have learned that being a parent is hard to do.  Stop trying so hard.  You can’t make water run uphill and you can’t be a good parent overnight.  So don’t even try.  If you have some worthless advice or comments you’d like to share, please leave them below.  They can’t be any worse than my worthless parenting advice.

Psst! I know what is wrong with kids these days….TV viewing is down!

~ K ~ Leave a comment

Why America Sucks: The Average Hours per week of TV viewing is down!

It is with great sorrow I must report that today’s children are not watching enough television.  According to this news report out of Minnesota, the Nielsen ratings reported that kids between the age of 2 and 11 watched an average of 24 hours per week.  Shockingly, that is down from 28 hours in the mid-1970s.

No wonder our country is going to hell in a hand basket!  Our kids are watching four hours of less television per week that my generation.  That is just plain awful.  This is trend that must be reverse for the sake of all America!

The good news that is that television can still screw up your kids!  They just need to focus on what kind of television they watch.

The more violent the better!  A recent study says that the type of television (the quality of television) also affects the child’s development.  To no one’s big surprise, the preschool age children who switched from violent television to more educational shows were less aggressive and more kind than the control group.  In the study, the control group didn’t change their television viewing habits.  The study also reported that the control group and the healthy TV group reported watching slightly more TV after the year-long monitoring project.

But don’t despair about TV viewing going down, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s (2010) report stated that kids spend an average of 75 hours of media viewing per week.

They broke it down into the following:

The average kid sponges in 2.5 hours of music each day, almost five hours of TV and movies, three hours of Internet and video games, and just 38 minutes of old-fashioned reading.  Sadly, that figure didn’t include the hour and a half spent text messaging each day, and the half hour kids talk on the cell phone.

So if your kid isn’t watching good old fashion TV, then they are on the computer or Smartphone racking up those media hours!  Good for them!   Don’t let us down!

Sorry, this blog post is so short….my daughter needed to rot her brain by playing an online game for 8 hours.  I don’t want her to be below average so she is allowed to play her online game for at least six hours. Then I kick her off to watch TV.  It is all about balance here in my house.

Remember: There are no below average kids in my house!

That’s my worthless advice for today!  As always, your comments on my great parenting tips are always welcome!

8 Things You Should Do to Make Your Kids More Self-Reliant at School

~ K ~ 3 Comments

I like to teach my kids one positive thing each day of their miserable little lives.  Going to school is an excellent way to show them how to overcome adversity; the adversity that I help make for them!  Sure, you could home school your kids (and I admire anyone who takes that challenge on…but really I can barely take care of myself and you want me to teach my kids something?  Isn’t that what the TV and the Internet is for?) but then you’d miss out on using these 8 Great Parenting Tips.

I created this helpful list that will make sure your kids learn something at school besides “book smarts”.  These eight great parenting tips will make them learn “street smarts” as well teach them some common sense.  Actually, we live in the suburbs so they might not learn “street smarts” but I would argue it will make them more self-reliant (totally awesome skill to have…especially when their father clearly doesn’t care about them).

  1. Forget to give them Lunch Money (or put money in their lunch account).  Have you ever forgotten your lunch at home or forgot money to buy a lunch? Why not give that same experience to your kids?  Remember how you had to beg others for spare change or maybe get an apple from them so you wouldn’t starve?  Once you “forget” the lunch money, your kids will learn how to negotiate with their friends to get something to eat.  Trade a favorite pen for three raisins?  Great deal!  Is your kid shy?  Hungry is a great way to motivate your child to overcome their shyness, learn to talk to others, and get something to eat!
  1. Forget to Turn in their Field Trip Permission Slip.  I always remembered the poor kid that had to stay behind in the main office while the rest of the class went on an awesome field trip.  Even if the place we were visiting sucked big time (like the sewer plant), we’d still come back and tell that loser kid that it was the best field trip we had EVER been on.  It was great.  We could say things like “Remember that time on the field trip when…Oh, yeah.  You didn’t go on it.  I bet you still had fun back at school, sitting in the main office, doing worksheets, having a school lunch with the secretaries.” Loser.
  1. Forget to pick them up after school.  Kids are always running late and taking forever to do things (like put their shoes on….even after you told them ten times you were leaving in five minutes).  They are always making you late or holding you up.  This is the time to return the favor.  I usually wait until it is pouring down rain and then “forget” to pick them up.  Nothing like spending 15 minutes in a cold downpour to teach them about being prompt and on time.  Which leads us into:
  1. Have them underdress/overdress for school activities (or the weather).  Don’t you hate it when you leave the house, it is nice and sunny outside, then it turns miserable and you are underdressed?  Or you forget your raincoat and it is pouring down rain?  You should always send your kid out in the wrong outfit.  Is it cold out?  Have them wear flip flops and shorts.  Is it blazing hot?  Make them wear a wool sweater and long pants.  Pretty soon they’ll learn to pay attention to the weather forecast and figure out what to wear.
  1. Miss their School Parent-Teacher Conference.  By now, you know if your kid is smart or as dumb as a box of rocks.  They need to learn that you are way too busy to waste time talking with their teacher about how good (or bad) they are doing.  That is what the phone or email is for.  Why do you really need a face to face conference with a teacher who your kid is only going to see for 9 months?
  1. Don’t send them with School Supplies.  Again, if they learned anything from my suggestion #1, they should be able to get by without you wasting any more money on school supplies.  Teachers know that at least one kid isn’t going to be bringing school supplies; that is why teachers ask for so much.  Your kid should know how to beg or borrow or trade for their school supplies.  This builds negotiation skills they’ll when they need to buy a car later in life.
  1. Forget School Photo Day.  One of my personal favorites (since I am a school photographer).  Nothing like being in the school yearbook looking like a clown because your parents didn’t brush your hair and you worn that dirty T-Shirt.  Your kids will love to be used as an example by other parents when their little brat argues with them about what they are wearing on School Photo Day.  They can flip open the yearbook, point to your kid’s photo and say “See?  Do you want to be like this kid?  He looks like he fell out of a garbage can!  I bet he smells like it too.”
  1. Don’t save/pay for their College Education.  Do you want your kids to feel entitled?  This is what happens when you save up for college.  Worst yet, you pay for college without saving for it.  This is probably the worst gift you can give your kids.  They are going to off to college without a care in the world, they are going to party up, and they won’t be paying for it.  Is that preparing them for the future?  Are they going to study harder when they are paying the college tuition bill or when you are paying for it?  Are they going to care more or less about getting good grades when they are paying that huge tuition bill or when you are doing it?  Teach them something about the responsibility by making them pay for college themselves.

Don’t hold back on making sure your kids learn how to be self-reliant in life.  Review these eight simple parenting tips and commit them to memory.  Make sure you are being the best parent you can be by reading my blog for future great parenting tips.

What do you think about 8 Things You Should Do to Make Your Kids More Self-Reliant at School?  Feel free to leave your sarcastic comments.  You know you want to…

Worthless Gifts for Your Friends: Making the Most Out of Christmas

~ K ~ Leave a comment

Christmas is around the corner and I haven’t been good to you.  I haven’t helped you in the least bit in your holiday shopping.  What kind of planner am I?  Everyone and their drunk uncle seems to have a creative Christmas List of “Must Have Items”.  But does that really help you?  Doesn’t it just make you a slave to the latest trends?  It makes you lazy and slow.  My list is much more helpful and productive.

Worthless Gifts for Your Friends:

Napkins from Fast Food Restaurants.

Let’s face it.  Most of your friends are slobs and need napkins.  If they have children the need for a napkin is even greater.  Those little beasts always have messy hands or snot running down their noses.

Mini packets of ketchup, mustard, and that pink sweetner stuff for ice tea.

Do you know how annoying it is to carry around a ketchup bottle?  Well, it is really annoying.  So giving your friends portable, serving size ketchup packets are a perfect gift.

A Cat

They don’t do much but eat, poop, and meow a lot.  My cat is available if you need one.

Beer Coasters

I use to collect these things because I love the designs and artwork on them.  That means since I like them, every other beer drinking man should also like them.  If they don’t, they are slobs and you should dump them.

Cookbooks

They look good on the window sill for the babes.  Of course, after your guests taste the crap you call a gourmet dinner they know the cookbook was for looks.

Video Tapes

This shows you are “Old School” and they are really a cool size for building forts with your nephews while Grandpa snores away.

Traffic Signs (Stop signs, yield signs, etc.)

I prefer the “No Parking” signs right in front of my house.  Keeps the rift raft (like your relatives) away from my nicely decorated house.

Refrigerator

Who doesn’t want an extra fridge for the garage?  I love my friends so much I am willing to depart with my my two extra ones sitting in my garage this very minute!  I have a wine one and a nice black side by side model.

Why You’ll Survive WITHOUT Any Retirement Savings

~ K ~ Leave a comment

Devastation of Debt: Planning for Retirement

Isn’t that a great term?  I was surfing on the internet for retirement planning and came across the term “devastation of debt” which I just took an instance liking to.  It has such a morbid feeling to it.  It also makes you think about debt.  Good debt. Bad debt.  It’s all debt to me!

With credit card debt soaring and the housing market is still nowhere near the bubble highs of 2007, the term “Devastation of Debt” is so comfortable to embrace.  Scary, huh?  What about the looming “Fiscal Cliff” we are hearing about?  Maybe that was the Mayan End of the World prediction?  Perhaps the Mayans knew that a great empire (republic) in 2012 would have 12 trillion dollars in debt and that their great nation was in trouble.

Not everyone you know is in such financial trouble.  Some people are doing it right and we should applaud them.  We also need to keep them in mind later in life when we need a room (or at least a warm garage to sleep in).

 Your Retirement Plan should include:

1.       Successful Friends or Relatives:

Keep in good graces with friends and relatives that have a retirement plan.  Let’s face it; you don’t have a retirement plan that is why you are reading my Blog of Worthless Advice.  I can think of a good friend of mine that has both a pension plan AND a 401k plan.  Now, that’s smart planning.  What is smarter planning? Me being his friend!

2.       Vacation Home:

No, you shouldn’t have a vacation home but your friend/relative should.  Hopefully, it is a home where they don’t visit very often and they wouldn’t mind you using it a lot.  Remember, out of sight equals out of mind.  They don’t see you sponging off of them means they won’t be bothered by carefree leech lifestyle.

3.       A Car with Tinted Windows:

If you need a car, get one with tinted windows.  The darker the better. If you get stuck sleeping in your car, at least the dark tinted windows will keep you from waking up too early.  And when you are sleeping in the parking lot of your local Wal-Mart, the security guard’s flashlight won’t wake you up either.  Now some people would recommend a van but that’s a young/middle age guy’s homeless vehicle of choice.  If you plan to work as a carpenter, painter, handyman, etc., it might be a good idea.  However, if you have to commute to a real job you want a vehicle with good MPG (in case your friend’s house is far away from your place of employment).

4.       Sleep in a Good Neighborhood:

This can apply to sleeping in your friend’s garage or in your car.  By taking my advice, the car with tinted windows will be very handy.

5.       Join a Fitness Club:

I don’t care if you stay in shape but you should stay clean.  For a low monthly fee, you can get a hot shower (with unlimited hot water and free towels).   Most of them are open long hours and closed only a few days a year.  Side note: I’d complain about those two days a year they are close.  Hey, you pay the monthly dues so you can have access every day of the month.

6.       Food Courts:

What a great source of food.  Half eaten sandwiches, free fries, and unlimited soda refills!  Always have a soda cup and a book with you.  This makes it look like you are so bored you come to the mall to have a soda and read a book.  Sit down next to some people who look like they won’t eat everything.  When they are about to leave, offer to take their tray over to the trash can.  They will be delighted you are so nice and you get their leftovers.  Bonus: you are keeping all that food from going to waste!

If you have other Worthless Advice Tips, please be sure to leave them below!

No One Takes My Advice….and For Good Reason!

~ K ~ Leave a comment

I noticed that a lot of people don’t heed advice when it is offered to them.  Clearly, my Blog of Worthless Advice would be much more successful if people would really look at themselves and see what terrible mental shape they are in.  It is quite sad that people don’t following their passion and becoming better people.

In my quest to offer the best worthless advice available, I am constantly reading advice columns, advice blogs, and interest resources like The Onion.

However, Cyndi (my imaginary stalker) and my Mom (my other reader) know that my Worthless Advice Blog is merely a creative outlet for my weird sense of humor.  Sadly, some of the articles and blogs I read actually think that their blogs offer helpful advice.  My 10 year old daughter offers better advice.

I saw one article entitled “Bad Parenting? Parents Should Avoid Bad Parenting Mistakes.”  Really?  You think parents should avoid bad parenting mistakes?  You don’t think I should embrace them and strive to be a bad parent?  I get most of my parenting advice from http://www.reallybadparentingadvice.com/.

In my heart, I know that others could be greatly helped by reading my blog.  The world is in sad shape, you losers really need to be saved from your stupid lives.  With unemployment at 8.2% in Washington State in October 2012, you think more people would be searching for Worthless Advice to better their lives (and find a job!).  On a brighter note, Washington State unemployment dropped from 8.5% in September 2012.

See how I’m improving your life already?  I offer my extremely correct opinion mixed in with a few useful facts to help increase your knowledge about unemployment in Washington State.

Why “To Do Lists” make you a Failure and kill the Tooth Fairy at the Same Time!

~ K ~ Leave a comment

Sunday is a wonderful day in which you wake up with high hopes to get a great deal of stuff done…but you don’t.  That “To Do” List you might have started Friday night (but you really didn’t get started until lunch on Saturday) is never going to get done.  Accept this fact and your life will be a lot easier.

As an unpublished motivational speaker with an imaginary stalker named Cyndi, I offer this wonderful Worthless Advice from my living room: Ditch the “To Do” List.

When you have a “To Do List”, you are setting yourself up for failure.  Do you want to be a failure?  Let’s be honest, you won’t accomplish anything on your list and that will make you feel like a loser, a failure, a worthless individual who can’t do anything.  Is that your idea of being a “winner”?

Let’s say you have ten items on your list.  So you get two done of ten and scratch them off.  Wow.  You finished two items…20% of your list done.  Is that worth bragging about?  You got 20% done.  If this was a math test, you’d have failed.  That’s the big “F”.  Wouldn’t that make your parents proud?  What about your kids?  They could brag….”My mommy (or daddy) finished two things for an “F”…yeah!!!”  Face it; that is a lesson your kids don’t need to learn (let them learn how much of a failure you are later in their lives).

Your kids will learn later on in life that you didn’t take them to Disneyland every year, you skipped half the teacher-parent conferences because you were too busy checking your Facebook status, and the pet bunny isn’t really living out with Uncle Simon on the farm in the country.  These items can safely be hidden from them.  You already killed the Tooth Fairy when your kid lost her tooth on a Saturday night, you went to bed, forgot to switch out her tooth for a dollar.  Then the next morning, you wake up in a panic, grab your wallet to discover you have only a $20 bill left.  So you slide your hand (palming the $20 bill) under her pillow and doing the switch….and she wakes up!

Now you have to explain that you were just “checking” to make sure the Tooth Fairy had stopped by.  She looks at you suspiciously, looks under the pillow to discover that nice $20 bill and her doubt is quickly forgotten.  However, then she thinks you were trying to heist her money and that opens a whole new can of worms.

Don’t be a failure.  Be a winner! Forget the “To Do List”.

Updating your Life with Worthless Advice: Career Changes

~ K ~ 2 Comments

Every once in while, I think I should switch careers and do something else besides photography.  Then I realize that I don’t any transferable job skills. Rather quickly, I give up that line of thinking.  Oh no, you might be telling yourself…Kevin is giving up on his dreams?

Hold on now, let’s have a reality check.  Currently, most of my time is devoted to avoiding work, watching TV, reading about “making money online”, and taking naps.  Sometimes, I do manage to do a little photography work and get paid, but those days are few and far between.

I do a fair amount of daydreaming and thinking that I want a regular 40 hour a week job with benefits.  A few of my friends laugh at this idea (or they maybe laugh at me actually working a 40 hour week).  But it isn’t the idea of having to work 40 hours a week that appeals to me (who wants to work at all?), it is the appeal of the wonderful world of benefits: medical, dental, vision, a pension plan, a 401k plan, etc.

Again, I then realize that these are great things but the chances of me getting an easy job with great benefits is pretty darn slim.  Heck, our unemployment rate in Washington State is currently at 8.6%.  According to Cyndi (my imaginary stalker), I’m a highly desirable individual with marketable job skills that just needs to get out there and give it the good old college try.  But then you know how Cyndi and my mother like to build me up with positive affirmations!  They both agree that I’m wonderful!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Light Rail rider/passenger

Bus rider/passenger

Blogger (everyone is doing it and none of them are being read)

TV watcher

Novel reader

Internet surfer

Talk Show Host

Advice Columnist (Worthless Advice Columnist might be easier for me)

Motivational Speaker (some would say Demotivational Speaker)

Novelist/Writer

Reality Show Star!

Hiker/Wanderer

Hmm, upon further review, this list really isn’t that good.  But again, I don’t have any real job skills so producing a blog worth reading is a bit hard.  But let’s face it, this is a list of things I like to do.  And all the motivational speakers tell you to follow your heart (I learned that on the Oprah Winfrey Network OWN so it must be true!).

Now some of you might say that my list is a cop out of facing the reality of a harsh world; that I really haven’t thought of what I really want to do in life.  The harsh truth is that all I want to do is sit around the house, read a good book, do a little travelling, eat out a lot, and not have to worry about money.  Yes, I’m avoiding the harsh realities of my career change by living in today’s harsh responsibilities of my life.  Oh boo hoo.

Really, what I should do is build up my blog readership writing about making money online offering worthless advice.  Clearly, that would make my everyday responsibilities lessen to such a degree that I would be able to make that career change.  I could blog about my amazing transformation from no name blogger to internet sensation (making hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars online).  My career is set.  Bring on the money!

Worthless Advice Update “Don’t quit your day job: Making money so you can retire!”

~ K ~ Leave a comment

I like how motivational speakers tell you to “follow your heart”.  I would be an awesome motivational speaker because my worthless advice can easily be translated into useful advice.  Most of the advice you hear from motivational speakers is really common sense stuff that we all choose to ignore.  We get comfortable in our lives and forget to keep pushing ourselves.  We get bogged down with everyday life.

I am a perfect example of this (I tend to be a perfect example in a lot of my worthless advice examples) .  I run my small business and I’m dog tired after a day of work.  I want to relax when I leave my office.  I don’t want to think about work when I close my office door.  Yet, I am always thinking about it.  I think about how far I’m behind in getting this order done or that project accomplished.  When will I finish that?  Did I pay car insurance?  Did I get my oil changed?

A small business is like an ADHD kid on a sugar high.  A million things are going on and you want to give your attention to all of them.  You just need to prioritize.

Ha. Ha.  I love that “prioritize” advice statement.  I like it when an expert tells us to set aside a certain day to pay your bills.  Should that be before or after I realize I don’t have any money?

I envy my friends who drive off to work, do their job, and then come back home.  They leave their job at the office.  Sure, I could probably make my life easier by planning better (gee, is that the motivational speaker in me creeping out?) but that would defeat the whole purpose of offering worthless advice.

Another worthless advice statement: “If you fail to plan, then you are planning to fail.”

Oh, touché. I guess this would be a disaster if you fail to buy toilet paper and you ran out.  Does that mean deep down you are sabotaging your own success?  Do you want to be a failure?  What would your mother think?  (Psst.  Your mom is just happy you don’t live in her house anymore.  Remember?)

Yes, you should plan.  Be forward thinking.  See?  My worthless advice is based on useful advice no one cares to remember.

When I have a chance, I’ll come up with some additional gems of worthless advice for you.