The last book you read was Goodnight Moon. The last series you binged was Harry Potter. You know more about the latest scandal at your daughter’s high school than the 2024 primary candidates. You’ve spent so much time in the sun at soccer games and baseball practice that you might be fried inside.

To be honest, your kids have kind of turned you into an idiot. You’re too tired to think. You’re totally out of touch. They broke your brain.…and you’re better for it.

Because the result is a kind of forced focus on what’s actually important and what you actually have some influence over. They have forced you into a bubble, which although strange, is certainly much more pleasant than all the awfulness that’s happening out there in the world.

You can resent them, you can pine for your old life–when you could read the New York Times, when you visited art galleries, when you had long discussions of substance over dinner–or you can embrace the crazy and the silly and the single-mindedness of it all. Enjoy the bubble while it lasts. Enjoy being turned into this type of idiot. Because it’s the only excusable kind of idiot to be.