Maybe before you did. Maybe one day you will again.

But right now? You don’t.

We talked recently about some of the folks who comment on the Daily Dad Instagram (do follow us!) or reply to these emails. Sure, some of the responses are nice, but so many of them are self-righteous and hectoring, judgmental and superior. There is something profoundly sad about these commenters too. Because, whether they know it or not, they are the punchline in that famous old cartoon, “Sorry, honey, I can’t come to bed right now, someone is wrong on the internet!”

These people have children, and what are they doing? Picking fights over parenting advice? The worst part is that it’s invariably over stuff that you wouldn’t think would even be possible to disagree about–supporting your kids, loving them unconditionally, using a light touch, helping them become who they are, not what you want them to be. The most ironic are the angry responses to a video we reposted about not having so many opinions about things your kids do (one of our under-used powers as Marcus Aurelius said).

Tom Segura was right when he said (and we wrote about it here) that having kids means you should not have time for this crap anymore. You should not be getting sucked in. Even if the other person is wrong, even if you do know better. Because if you really did know better, then you’d be spending that energy positively in your own home, not shouting into the void.