How to Survive an Ostrich Attack with James Breakwell

Sometimes you come here for help on your marriage. Sometimes you tune in because you need an encouragement on your walk with God. And, sometimes you need to know how to save your child from ostrich attacks, accidental time travel, and anything else that might happen on an average Tuesday.

Today I’m joined by Twitter comic James Breakwell and we talk about… well, you’re just going to have to listen in and see.

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Show Highlights

Parenting is hard. There are so many things out of your control that you want to change about yourself and so many things that you would shield your children from if you could. Our guest James Breakwell – a humorist and “amateur dad” to four daughters – highlights the importance of keeping humor in your parenting life and being able to not take things too seriously.

James’ parenting philosophy on “bare minimum parenting” started out as a joke: “What’s the least you can do to still turn out a productive human being?” He soon realized that he may have stumbled upon something that really makes sense. Doing less could be beneficial for your child. It makes them more independent while making you less stressed out. It lets you develop together.

In James’ new book “How to Save Your Child from Ostrich Attacks, Accidental Time Travel, and Anything Else that Might Happen on an Average Tuesday,” he outlines what to do in several survival scenarios with kids.

Some of these include defending you and your kids against:

Ostriches – “If you put a broom over your head, it will think you are a bigger ostrich and leave you alone.”
Geese – James calls geese “a real-life menace.” None of us want to admit that we want to fight a goose and look like a jerk in the process. But, secretly we all know that if one of us would just man up and take on that flock of geese and chase them out of here, we’d all be much happier.
Clowns – Clowns teach kids when to run away and when to fight. As James says, “A healthy level of irrational distrust is key to survival. Sometimes your paranoia is right and it’s definitely right in the case of clowns.”

Nobody is a parenting expert. Sometimes we get stuck in a performance-based relationship with our children and we fail to convey “I really love you just how you are and we’re going to work on this behavior together.”

There are no perfect people. We accept that. But then we turn around and ask ourselves, “Why am I not the perfect parent? Why don’t I have a perfect kid?”

Remember, in both our parenting and our faith, the more we stress out about being good and doing good and performing, the worse we become.

If you feel like you’ve screwed up your parenting, keep in mind the silver lining that our bad experiences are just great stories in the making, or if you’re James, material for your next joke.