Buckle up, folks, this is going to be sappy. I love kids. Not just my own, but kids in general. Even my children that currently hate me? I still love them. I will likely never stop. Even when they’re having grandkids of their own, I will look at them and see the child they were.

And I can just hear the naysayers, of course it’s easy for you to say you love children. You don’t have to birth them. You don’t have to put up with their constant needs. And yes, those are valid feelings. But trust me, I see what happens when people don’t love their children. I deal with that trauma every day.

My mother tried to love me, as much as she could. my father could never be bothered to. He might have finally said it back in my thirties, but deeds not words. And that;s all I’m saying about bad parenting.

I loved, and still love, being a dad. Driving kids all over god and creation? Hell yes. Sleepless nights with them crying nonstop? Hell yes. Would I want to murder them some days? Good gods , yes. But I wouldn’t. Because children are amazing.

Yes, some of them are assholes. But you can generally sus out why and where they’re coming from, Children force you to think, They will make you question everything. And gods knows, we need more of that, not less. Children are bullshit detectors of the highest caliber. You can make them believe in Santa Claus, but don’t think they’ll believe your excuse for alcohol on your breath. Kids know, they can sense when something isn’t right.

I don’t think I knew what love was until I had children, both step and biological. When a child asks to play a game with you, and you say yes, there’s a joy there that people will search all their days for. And having a child fall asleep on you is one of the greatest feelings you can have as a human.

My biggest problem with modern society is how we’ve failed our children, on every level. They’re not safer, they’re not healthier, and we know so much more now then we did before about how to be better parents and adults. And yet we don’t do the things we’re supposed to be doing. We underfund programs to help them. We pay teachers jack shit. And we abandon them to screens instead of just simply talking to them. I’ve been as guilty as everyone else. We must do better, as a species and culture.

I’m going to end this by shouting out my biological daughter, Aubry. I don’t think she’s ever had as tough a year as this last one. Yes, lots of it is due to the divorce. But her bedroom just got destroyed in this weekend’s flood, so she’s staying with me. That alone should cause you to feel bad for her. But she’s amazing. She makes me want to be better. She’s so much more moral than me, tougher than me, and yeah, I pretty much adore the ground she walks on. Don’t like it? Step off. Good night.