OK. If you have children or are even remotely considering having children, I highly, highly recommend The Epidemic: The Rot of American Culture, Absentee and Permissive Parenting, and the Resultant Plague of Joyless, Selfish Children

I'm not a big fan of pop psychology, especially as it relates to child-rearing. I find that most of it is self-indulgent fluff designed for parents who are desperately trying to make up for their own crappy childhoods.

This book is different.

I have read quite a few how-to-raise-yo'-kid books and have been astonished by most of the advice.

Tantrums are a normal part of a child's development and should be handled with a soothing voice? It's OK for your kid to sleep in your bed, thereby completely undermining you marriage/privacy/sex life? It's OK to let your toddler choose what he eats? Children should not be told "no" too often, because it will "dampen their spirits"?

Huh?

To each his own, but I don't agree. I think that children need rules, discipline, and a sense of ethics. I find permissive parenting horrifying on many levels, primarily because I see what it does to the kids. I have never seen so many uncontrollable, rude, and downright unpleasant children as I have over the last few years.

Enter Robert Shaw.

Epidemic talks about the ways in which American parents are allowing their children to become unhappy, grow up lacking morals and ethics, and get away with unholy terror. As a result, the public education system is following suit, not wanting to fail children in order to avoid damaging their delicate self-esteem.

So many of today's parents, still dealing with their own issues and psychological skeletons, have become permissive and over-indulgent in a mistaken attempt to right what was wrong in their own respective childhoods.

Have you ever seen someone praise a kid to the skies for something as simple as eating his meal or picking up his toys? Why? The kid should eat his meal and pick up his stuff in the first place! Overpraise is just as bad as a total lack of praise.

When you complete a task at work, does your boss give you a cookie?

I thought not.

We are setting our kids up for a rude, rude awakening.

The educational standards of public schools drop lower and lower every year, and this is a problem that parents and non-parents alike will have to deal with. The dumbing down of America is going to affect all of us.

Lowering standards aside, most teachers are so plagued with disciplinary problems that they're unable to spend the proper amount of time teaching the kids that actually want to learn. These underpaid teachers are being forced to take up the slack of parents who are too lazy or overtaxed to teach their children basic standards of proper behavior.

This book also dealt with something that has gotten my goat for quite some time - the over-diagnosis of ADHD and the resulting flood of psychoactive prescriptions for young children.

I do believe that ADHD is a legitimate condition, but I do not believe that half the children diagnosed with it actually suffer from it or require medication for it.

Look at the average list of ADHD symptoms, and you will find a neat little list of behaviors that Piss Adults Off. Rather than disciplining the child and trying hard to correct the problem at home, many adults rush Junior to the pediatric psychologist for a quick fix, a Calm Pill, reassurance that Junior acts like an asshole due to a disease, not their lax parenting.

This has also spread to the adult population, but I won't even get started on that.

We are creating a nation of children who are dependent on drugs, unable to take responsibility for their own bad behavior, and completely lacking a sense of what is right and what is wrong.

I got so het up about this book that I was outraged. I can't recommend it enough. I have witnessed so many of the behaviors described in the book that it absolutely blew my mind, and I'll admit that I am normally the first to try to ignore it and walk away.

This book got me thinking in a huge way about personal responsibility. It got me thinking about the code of ethics and morals that I want to live by and teach my son to live by. It made me realize that as a single parent, I am fully responsible for molding my child into a productive member of society, and this is not a passive affair.

It's so easy to get swallowed up in my own problems and allow my easy-going child to auto-raise himself. It's so easy to lie on the couch and sleep late rather than play games, talk, take walks, because I'm often sick and in pain. However, when I made the decision to have a baby, I effectively made the decision to love, mentor, support, teach, discipline, and care for another human being. It's not something to be taken lightly.

When a child is a newborn, it's easy to remember how much care they require because it's in your face all day long - diapers, bottles, spit-up, endless laundry. When a kid gets to be a little older and self-sufficient, they don't scream with need anymore.

I don't want my child to be the next Columbine shooter, the kid that people discuss in hushed tones while asking one another, "But why? He seemed so normal!" I want to know what's going on in my kid's head, and I want to have the comfort of knowing that I have taught him well.

Anyway, that's my little rant. Go out and get a copy of Epidemic - you won't be sorry.