Kid screaming? why?
Milk on the floor? why is that a funny thing?
Poop on the ground? (The Dove (Forevermore)) It won’t last. it’s endearing.
No, this isn’t just fanciful thinking - this is a choice. You’ve chosen to be angry at that spilled milk, lost your cool when bro slapped sis, and walked out of the room when you heard that last cry for “more breakfast!!”.
But why did you get overwhelmed? Stressed about all there is to do, and now there’s one more thing? Stressed about “am i a good parent”? Stressed about raising your kids right and you have to instruct them on everything they do wrong in order to do that?
My new philosophy: Kids are kids. They’re optimizers. Anyone in tech knows that an optimizer is a thing trying to find the optimal point of another thing. It’s like battleships - you keep guessing until you find. Then you guess around until you get all the points, until you know where to look.
Kids do this all day. They say something crazy trying to get a reaction. They say a not-funny joke 100 times until it’s funny again. Humans do that too.
So they’re optimizing. Exploring. Exploiting. That’s all their doing - exploring the space, exploiting the emotional signal.
Knowing that, find the fun in the moment. They won’t always be like this. And when it’s gone, you’ll wish it wasn’t. The Dove (Forevermore)
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Bryan lives somewhere at the intersection of faith, fatherhood, and futurism and writes about tech, books, Christianity, gratitude, and whatever’s on his mind. If you liked reading, perhaps you’ll also like subscribing: