Have you ever noticed that everyone from the past was an idiot and all the parents were terrible? But also have you ever noticed that the world is going to hell in a handbasket and parenting used to be easier back in the good ol’ days?

Choosing which cliché to blindly agree with can be tough, so what if you didn’t have to choose? What if you could take some of the more effective teaching techniques of yesterday’s morons, and apply them to today’s spoiled brats?

Here are five parenting hacks from past generations that could help all of the awful parents of the future.

Monologuing

Kids these days. I could stop there, but I won’t. Kids these days have no attention span. They’re constantly amused by a ceaseless parade of lights and noise and iPad apps and other bally-hoo that they’ve lost the ability to sit down and listen to an adult talk for hours on end.

Right now I am submitting Dr. Baby to my lecture series entitled “The Many Medical Inaccuracies and Continuity Errors of the Scrubs Universe.” Currently we’re deep into Season 8, where Dr. Cox is unsure if he wants the Chief of Medicine position and J.D. obviously violates his patient’s HIPAA rights.

It is long and it is boring – but so is life, sugarbear, and the sooner you learn this the better. Sure, counting and walking are important skills, but so is sitting through boring ass meetings with a bland smile on your blank little face.

At some point, your kids will be old enough to realize that they can just leave the room. Until then put your DF in their crib, cage, or containment unit, and bloviate. Really hold court. Just filibuster the baby room until you see their eyes glaze over and their face go slack.

This is the posture of submission. Once you see it, you know you’ve won.

Mythical Beasts That Teach Moral Lessons

Werewolves. La Llarona. Akaname, the Japanese filth demon. These aren’t just Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and give each other Goosebumps; they’re mini morality plays designed to teach kids lessons about right and wrong.

La Llarona scared children away from sneaking out at night. That gross creep Akaname licked bathroom floors in order to encourage good bathroom hygiene. And werewolves, obviously, are a metaphor for daddies who drink.

While these figures have terrified our children into behaving correctly for years, they’ve grown outdated as the times have changed and we have a boogeyman-sized hole in our parenting culture.

Wednesday Adams: The Barnard Years

Perhaps there’s a future for Momo – that meme that looks like the inbred love child of the Spies from Mad Magazine’s Spy vs. Spy. I mean c’mon – you know the White Spy and the Black Spy were, at some point, lovers. No one else hates that long and that hard except the truly broken hearted. The only surviving members of some cone-faced people, forced together by fate, pushed apart by hatred, engaged in an eternal battle that continues only because neither one has the courage to say I’m sorry. Twin immortals that can never forget, never forgive, and never die…

Ahem. Sorry. We were talking about Momo. Maybe Momo’s purpose is to warn the youths of today about the dangers of stupid internet games.

Sure, you can tell kids over and over that they shouldn’t snort tide pods or kick the legs out from under another person, but they will not stop until they think that some sexless version of the Kid’s in the Hall’s Chicken Lady will come and… I don’t know… peck your eye’s out? Pull you into the computer forever? Do whatever it is Momo does.

Point is: more monsters.

Choosing Your Baby’s Handedness for Them

Back in the day, everyone hated lefthanders because they were afraid of getting stabbed or stink-palmed. This well-founded suspicion led parents to training all their children to be right handed, regardless of what hands their child “naturally” favored. And it worked great.

So maybe you really want your kid to be a shortstop, and we all know there’s no such thing as a left-handed shortstop. Or maybe you want your DD to grow up to be some creative artsy type, and we all know there’s no such thing as a right-handed poet.

Point is, there’s no sense in settling for the child fate gave you when you can create the child you actually want. Which brings us to…

Psychological Experimentation

Infamous psychologist and behaviorist B.F. Skinner took a lot of flak for raising his second child in a box and performing experiments on her. But here’s the thing: the Box Baby turned out fine. Box Baby, or B.B. Skinner, went on to become a successful print-maker and war crimes apologist with a fucked-up family of her own.

The B.F. stands for Big Forehead.

What I’m saying is don’t be afraid to train your child. Operant conditioning, Skinner called it. Create a hypothesis, perform your experiments, draw your conclusions. Worst case scenario is the experiment fails and all you get out of it is a couple journal articles in some second-tier publications.

Currently, Dr. Dad is training Dr. Baby to change its own diapers. I’ve found that the best way for me to teach it is to wear a diaper myself (you can buy them from Amazon here) and to demonstrate how to do it in front of Dr. Baby.

The thing about psychological conditioning is that it takes time. You have to put in the hours. Dr. Baby has yet to change its own diaper entirely, but it has managed to get it all the way off a few times… and what a clusterfuck those turned out to be. But we’re working on it.

Parental Distance

The explosion of Mommy Blogs has created a pressure to be constantly spending time with your child, if for no other reason than the need to push fresh content. Is this fair though? What do we lose when Mommy and Daddy aren’t allowed to get their Me time?

For one thing, we lose our independence, both in our day-to-day activities and in our rigid self-concept. You used to be a bad ass that could walk into a bar like they knew that they were getting laid that night. Now you’re a god damn clown that does silly voices and degrading dances as you beg your child to care for their own basic biological needs.

Parents today are just to accessible. Where are the family secrets? Where are lies that bind?

Time was a father could lock himself in his study for the night – the week even – and the kids just had to deal with it. They’re be all like: “Daddy’s not around. Guess I’ll have to call the bookie myself just try to pass as eighteen over the phone.” And then they’d be like: “Lakers win and cover against Cleveland for five. Heat win and cover Golden State for five. And Milwaukee wins but Houston covers for eight. Yes, I promise I am eighteen. Look, my money’s as green as anybody’s, Jack – you want it or not?” But not anymore, man, not any more.

Kids today can’t do shit by themselves. Can’t even change their own diaper.