Hmmm, the child might have more skills than the tattoo artist!

This has to be the strangest tattoo ever.  Most parents put their kid’s drawings on the fridge.  Some parents feed their children from their mouths when they are too young (and toothless?) to chew their own food.  But this parent seems to have taken the human refrigerator theme to an extreme.

It must be as puzzling as it is spine tingling to raise a healthy happy child these days.  But good parenting should never be about amateurish gut reactions.  Light-headed feelings of mirth and those pains in your side should come from laughing at the wonderful antics of your happy child.  Not scratching her cute little scribblings permanently on your belly.

In his new book, The Ten Basic Principles of Good Parenting, based on top social science research from over 75 years of studies, Laurence Steinberg, Ph.D., has etched out the ten commandments of good parenting.  Number four on the list is to ‘adapt your parenting to fit the child.’  But surely, the good doctor hardly meant this.  This ink stinks of rotten parenting.

“For the most part,” says Dr. Steinberg, one of the country’s most distinguished psychologists, “parenting is something we just do, without really giving it much thought.”

It’s painfully obvious that the parent meant to honor his child by tattooing her artwork on his torso.  However, the most lasting monument of his love for his child should probably be his desire to demonstrate good parenting skills that will last her a lifetime.  To honor a child is to set a good and healthy example for the child to follow.  Maybe this is just me bellyaching, but it probably shouldn’t be the other way around.

In his diary in an entry headed, Nice 22.01.1892, Edvard Munch described his inspiration for The Scream:

Do bad tattoos make you want to scream?

One evening I was walking along a path, the city was on one side and the fjord below.  I felt tired and ill.  I stopped and looked out over the fjord—the sun was setting, and the clouds turning blood red.  I sensed a scream passing through nature; it seemed to me that I heard the scream.  I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood.  The color shrieked.  This became The Scream.

To see this parent’s “expression of love” for his child was shocking.  What was your gut reaction?  Did you want to scream?