When I first picked up “Cap’n Billy ‘The Butcher’ MacDougall’s Guide to Pirate Parenting,” I really had no idea what to expect. I thought perhaps it would be a book that compared raising children to training pirates, and that through the allegories, we would be taught new and vital information we need in order to be successful parents. What I actually got was a book that literally tells you how to raise your children to be pirates, and it’s absolutely hysterical. It’s a spoof on all the other parenting books out there, and makes you step back and realize that we put far too much pressure on ourselves to be perfect parents. It’s hard enough without guilting everything to death.
Cap’n Billy’s theory for the book is this: if your children are going to act like pirates anyway, why not make it official? While they’re running around terrorizing each other, making messes and generally being incorrigible, rather than trying to squash the behavior, you can nurture it and hone it into a skill set they’ll be able to use their entire lives on the high seas.
You’ll not only get ideas for how to feed your pirate (on salt cod, naturally) but how to get him to mop the floor (call it swabbing the deck, and you’ll be more successful) and how to convert your mini-van into a pirate ship. Throughout the book you’ll find quizzes to help you determine just how much further your child has to go in order to reach full pirate status. You will learn how holding a live squid will help prepare you to hold a real baby (they’re about as wiggly) and how you can help your pirate acquire his sea legs by getting him a water bed.
I laughed out loud several times as I read this book. What a refreshing look at parenting and all the crazy things that go into it. I’m half-tempted to give up this traditional parenting thing and dive headfirst into raising my children to be pirates. They’ve certainly got the guts for it, and I think they’d enjoy sailing the seven seas, plundering and looting. It would certainly keep them from plundering and looting each other’s bedrooms, and maybe it would give them more in common so they’d fight less.
I really encourage you to grab this book if you’re in the need of a good laugh, and I think it would make a wonderful baby shower gift for first-time parents.
(This book was published in 2007 by Cold Tree Press.)
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