The best day of my life, after me and my wife’s lifestyle brand account hit 500,000 followers, was the birth of my son Brayden. Becoming a father is a life-altering experience, especially when you have to incorporate it into your brand. Chronicling my son’s discovery of the world around him on social media has been so rewarding, both spiritually and monetarily.
One thing I wasn’t prepared for was how I blinked and suddenly little Brayden is now four years old and I found myself saying “Oh fucking crap, I actually have to teach him how to do stuff.”
Having a kid seemed like a good idea at the time! We were like fuck it, nobody is engaging with our vacation photos so let’s pop out a kid, inform our followers that “So, we did a thing…” and then tell everyone our way of parenting is superior. You could only imagine how blindsided we were when he began to grasp object permanence and tried to stick a fork in a wall outlet.
Worse is that he actually shit in the training potty I was going to return after I filmed its unboxing video. Is this like an everyday thing, or can I just teach him to go free-range and poop in the backyard like the dog? Their turds are about the same size anyway.
He’s asking so many goddamn questions and it’s always when my wife is filming a “get ready with me” video. And I have to explain that no, Mommy doesn’t know how planes fly or why the sky is blue because she’s trying to rack up enough views to pay for our next trip. I tried taking him to the children’s science museum but they kicked us out because I was “filming kids without consent.”
OK, don’t panic. This is why Apple invented iPads. I just throw on some weird Russian families playing with toys and I can buy a few hours a day of shoring up our SEO. What are the chances he’ll stumble down a rabbit hole of right-wing propaganda, 60%? I’ll take those odds.
I wasn’t prepared for the fact that my sole responsibility as a parent is to raise a child to be a functioning member of society. Thankfully, there are other parenting social media accounts to do that for me! I guess it’s true that it takes a village to raise a child or in this case TikTok.