Don't throw your food or I'll check page 107.

Well, it's another weekend, another way to prove that no one knows what they're talking about. K reads Parents magazine fairly religiously, in the sense of reading it on the occasional Sunday but refusing to consider a career in the parenting priesthood. So this means that I read it, too, once in a while. (Me being me, I read it atheistically.) As the Mystery Daddy has pointed out in his blog, Parents should really be called Mothers, since that's their target audience; actually, to be specific it should be called Upper Middle Class Stay-at-Home Mothers. Oh, sure, they throw a token father's article in there once in a long while, but really, let's not mince words: does anyone expect a man to read a magazine where he can find a half-page ad about relieving vaginal dryness? (Hey, I used the word "vaginal"! Google, here I come...)

Anyway, in this month's issue, there's an article about discipline, where they say, in essence, "Surprise! Every discipline theory we told you about last year is WRONG." They advocate using bribery, loud voices, "Because I said so," and just about everything else that "right-thinking" child development specialists would have a conniption about.

This only strengthens my belief that following child care theory is as futile as trying to predict a fashion designer's new line. It's conformist and cyclical, and by next year the magazines will tell us that what they told us THIS year was wrong.

As for me, I'm going with my instincts. They're a hell of a lot more consistent, and they're easier to remember, too.