Parenting these days, in case you haven’t been keeping track, comes in a variety of flavors. Or styles. Or ideologies. Or pathologies.

We’ve got attachment parenting, authoritative parenting, free-range parenting, nurturant parenting, helicopter parenting, ethical parenting, tiger parenting, not to mention all the variants on those, plus any number of off-brand styles. And don’t forget all the trademarked styles named for the eight million parenting books that come out each year.

There are even sub-disciplines for things like sleep and diet and cognitive development. And every style or sub-style has a raft of scientific studies or scientifish anecdotal reports to support its ideology.

It’s crazy. Like today’s parents.

So here’s what I have to say about all these different, conflicting, radicalized parenting styles: Hooray!

Yep, Captain Dad is an advocate of Crazy Parenting™. (I just invented that style. Patent pending.) You see, all of us stressed out parents with our crazy parenting styles have one thing in common: We are crazy about our kids. We’ll do anything we think might help them be better humans than we are. Our parents did the same. Their styles may have been different, but they were raising us in different times and under different circumstances. They were adapting to their times. So are we. We live in crazy times, so it is inevitable that we will have crazy parenting styles.

Sure, a dash of sanity would be nice. But crazy is nice too, because it is anything but indifferent. It means parents are trying — even when they seem trying to us (yes, I’m talking to you, lady in the park who didn’t want to fight with her daughter about eating blueberries because her “heart chakra didn’t need that”).

They are trying because they truly love their children. And love makes you crazy. So do kids, for that matter.

While we’re at it, so do all those parenting experts soap-boxing their ideologies night and day on the correct way to raise your child.

So I’m working on coffee. The parental performance enhancer. I like the idea of espresso in a tiny cup. One quick shot of it, and I’m good to go. But so far I haven’t found where you can get that little of it, except at a fancy pants French restaurant, of which there are zero in my neighborhood.

I just don’t want to end up like my cartoon here. What’s the point of a performance enhancer if it hampers your actual performance? If my tin foil hat wasn’t in the shop, I’d suspect that it’s all a big conspiracy against parents.

This is my mother, that cute little girl in the middle, with her mother. But for the haircut and the 1930s outfit, she’s a ringer for my older daughter. At least in this picture.

We all know what mothers are to us. They are our tether to this earth. But too often we forget to consider what we are to them and how we figure in their world.

So here is a song from the mothers’ side. It comes from a musical I wrote with Rich Prezioso, one half of the husband-and-wife team Small Potatoes, who are in fact rather huge potatoes on the folk music circuit. That’s Rich on guitar and his wife Jacquie Manning on the vocal.

Irish Mother’s Lullaby (click to play*)

Happy Mothers Day to all you moms. And God bless you every day.

* Yes, I’m sure there’s a better way to post audio on WordPress, but not today. Sorry.

It’s a perfect last-minute Mother’s Day gift, it’s great for new parents and old parents alike. And the more you buy, the more likely it is that my kids get to go to college!

This lovely hardcover edition is filled with fabulous graphics. There is one graphic, however, I am especially proud of. It’s tucked away at the bottom on the back of the book where you might not notice. I didn’t even design it. But I love what it says.

What you’ll get is a horrifying, yet funny, account of how they once left one of their kids at a rest area on the interstate. Or drove away from school with one of the kids not buckled in — or even let into the car. Or the classic Lost-In-The Department store story. That one always has a good punchline, such as the child walking away holding the hand of a total stranger, only to look up a minute later to shriek, “You’re not my mom!” With me, I could always count on my kids hiding in the brassieres at Target; yep, that was real fun having to rummage through all that lingerie without getting myself arrested.

But the point is, everybody has lost a child once or twice. But nobody wants to admit it. The loss may only be (and hopefully was) only a few seconds or minutes. Nevertheless, they are such heart-pounding minutes that they become indelible memories. And if there is a harmless enough ending to the story, it’s something you can laugh about later (despite that residual chill down your spine at the contemplation of a more milk carton-y ending).

So here’s an idea. How about I tell you mine, and then you tell me yours. Then maybe — just maybe — we’ll feel less alone in our lingering guilt. Sound fair? Good.

It happened a couple years ago at the Most Magical Place on Earth. My wife and I had rented strollers to push the kids through Epcot. They’d run everywhere on their own in the Magic Kingdom, but Epcot is not exactly Thrill Central for kids — or adults whose idea of ethnic food extends beyond Taco Bell, for that matter. Anyway, the rental strollers at Disney are actually pretty cool. They are these hard fiberglass shells with wheels. Very maneuverable, very easy to push. And the kids ride very low to the ground, so it’s easy for them to get in and out on their own. It’s hard to imagine a better design for getting around a theme park.

Except for the visibility. You cannot see your child while you are pushing. And so it was that my wife and I were strolling along pushing our strollers, one for our toddler and one for our older but exhausted fairy-chaser. I happened to get a stride or two ahead for a moment. I happened to glance into the other stroller. I happened to inquire airily to my wife, “Do you know that your child is missing?”

Somehow she had slipped away without us noticing. My nonchalance was an affect meant to disguise my howling panic. We spun and plowed through the crowd with the moiety of children in our strollers. My wife and I reassured each other that this was Epcot: There weren’t many places she cold have gone. It’s a big loop, with nothing fun enough to lure anyone off the main path.

It might have been seconds, it might have been minutes. I don’t know, it was a blur. But we found her at a postcard rack at one of the infinite number of souvenir stands there.

We wanted to rejoice, except we didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that we had just lost our child. We had to act instead like we had simply sent our three-year-old to pick out to find a postcard to send back to Grandpa, saying what a magical time we were having. You know, what with kids magically disappearing.

Luckily none of the other grown-ups around seemed to notice how alone this child was in the not-so-small world. Or maybe stray children are so common there that anyone who did notice was comforted by the sight — and by the thought that it wasn’t theirs… this time.

Okay, now it’s your turn. Fess up.

I apologize for the dereliction. But if you’re really desperate for more Captain Dad at the moment, you can read the hype about the book and maybe place an order to have your copy winging its way to you a mere week from today. (And if that’s tacky to mention, oh well.)