NEWTON, MA—Praising the new program for teaching lessons he considers to be absolutely essential, local father Roger Carney told reporters Monday that he enrolled his ten-year-old son in youth soccer because it teaches the kid how to be a good loser, a lesson Carney said he makes sure to reinforce at home on a regular basis.
“Sports teach him that he’s going to lose sometimes and that it hurts. Whether he likes it or not, he has to shake the opposing goalie’s hand and smile. That’s the real world, folks. As his father, it’s my job to get him ready for it,” said Carney, who added how much he appreciates that the coach is on the same page. On Mondays, the kids run suicides if they lose and eat sundaes at Dairy Queen if they win. “It’s a decent start,” admitted Carney, “but it’s not enough.” “That’s why, on the last Friday of every month, I make my son sleep on that sidewalk around the corner. His mom and I are nice enough to walk him over there, but he has to leave his blankets and pillow at home. Because someday his landlord might evict him. How the hell is he supposed to know what to do? Now he’ll know.”
“People thing I’m pretty hard on the kid. But I’m just preparing him,” he continued.
Carney went on to explain that for the last five days of each month, he allows his son to use the bathroom only during two specified five-minute windows each day, a regimen he championed as “forward-looking parenting.”
“Look, this kid might end up working at that big Amazon warehouse in Dallas when he’s 26. How is he going to survive those shifts if I haven’t gotten him used to it now, when he’s in fifth grade?” said Carney, adding that his son “complained a little at first, but kids adapt pretty well.” “It’s also the reason that every couple of months I’ll promise him something — like a trip to the trampoline park — and I’ll make him fill out a little form to request it. Then I make him wait approximately six to eight weeks, and at the end I deny it. Why, you ask? Because he wrote the date in the wrong box. He cries a lot. But that’s good. Because one day he’s going to need something much bigger than that damn trampoline park. He’s going to need a surgery, or some new meds for his anxiety, or a place to live. And you know what? There’s going to be a predatory company whose entire job is to find that tiny box on page nine that he filled out incorrectly and tell him no. How is he going to learn to deal with that company if he hasn’t already gone rounds with it?”
Asked whether making his son suffer now would prepare him for suffering later or if it would just make him suffer twice, Carney said the answer is obvious and did not require an empirical study of any kind.
At press time, Carney was explaining to reporters that he occasionally turns off the heat in February, “just so the kid knows what’s coming.”