This isn’t coming from some unknown singer/songwriter at a coffeehouse. This was a Billboard number-one song the year after I was born. This is what I grew up with. My parents lapped this shit up.

When I was somewhere in single digits my mom read one of those 1970s parenting books about how not to fuck up your kid. She must have fallen asleep before the end. I guess there weren’t enough pictures. When you’re reading one of these books, it’s already too late. The damage is done. Somewhere in the book it told her not to say, “I don’t like you,” but rather, “I don’t like what you do.” So at one point she used that line on me and I fired back instantly with, “I am what I do.” I must have been seven at the time, but I already knew that she was feeding me a bunch of hippie nonsense.

This is the same “love the sinner, hate the sin” mind-set that Christian conservatives have about the gays. Something I’m sure my uber-liberal mother would be completely against. Moreover, if on that day in the early nineteen seventies I had asked her to separate Nixon or Henry Kissinger from their actions and see them as people, she would have given me a dozen reasons why the logic she had just spat out didn’t apply in those cases.

So I bring the opposite of this message to my parenting. My kids are their actions. I’m never going to pull that “no matter what you do, I love you” bullshit. If Sonny decides to shoot up his college I’m not going to think, “Well, he’s still my son…” By that logic, we all could have been friends with Hitler. “Adolf, I love you man. But I don’t like what you do. The whole ethnic cleansing holocaust thing I don’t like. But you, as a person and a painter. Terrific.”

Among the other hippie bullshit my mom adhered to was her biorhythm wheel. For those of you who’ve never heard of this (and congratulations on that, you were raised by sane people) it’s supposedly calibrated to your birthday to tell you what your biorhythms are and whether you’re going to have a good day. There’d be something called an “extra critical” day when you were in transition from one phase to another during which it was not a good idea to operate a motor vehicle, leave the house or do anything really. At least, that’s how my mom used it. To her, every day was an extra critical day. Or so it seemed. Any time I needed her to do anything, like give me a ride to Teddy Lewis’s house three miles away in Van Nuys, it seemed to be an extra critical day and she needed to continue vegetating in our Valley shitbox. She actually had a twenty-four-hour-notice policy for getting a ride so she could consult the biorhythm wheel. I kid you not.

This thing that ruled my mom’s life when I was a kid was about as scientific as a mood ring. But it allowed her to validate the lazy, downtrodden, checked out, scared-of-life lifestyle she had come to know and love, and thus make no attempt to change it. It was as if for every decision she consulted a Magic Eight Ball with only one fortune, reading, “Fuck Off.”

So growing up in this depressing soup definitely damaged me. And I won’t do that to my kids. My mom is still living this way. I’ve always said that she has three modes: “has a cold,” “just getting over a cold,” or “feels something coming on.” This is a great way to get out of stuff. Once people learn you’re that person, they stop expecting anything. No matter what, I will be there for my kids. Plus I never get colds because I’m not one of those anti-vaccinating, Purell-soaked cowards.

My mother is incapable of admitting or acknowledging happiness. I once bet my buddy Ray that if he called her and she said she was doing “good,” instead of “okay” or “fine,” I would give him a thousand dollars. There was a risk. Ray doesn’t call my mom often, so if he rang she might put on a brave face and lie. But I felt confident. He called her up and asked how she was doing. Her immediate answer was “not so good.” I never even needed to take my wallet out.

Here’s another move my mom had, and still has, that I will never pull on my kids. Whenever you ask her anything, there is a slow, long exhale before she answers. You could ask her something simple like what time it was and when she was finished deflating herself it would be a full minute later than when you asked. Every question is met with a tired-of-life sigh as if to say, “I wish this breath were my last.”

I would rather have been physically abused than lived with the total zeros that my parents were. My house was as lively as a funeral at a methadone clinic.

4. HAVE A PASSION

On that note, one thing I do opposite from my dad is have passion. If you asked my dad for his favorite team or performer, he’d not be able to provide it. He has zero passion for anything. He likes jazz and, if you really pressed him, he might say he’s a fan of Tony Bennett or Dave Brubeck, but he doesn’t have all their records, or autographs or books about them. This is something I cannot understand, and I vow I will not pass on this level of indifference to my kids.

That sends two incredibly negative messages. First, that life is not to be embraced fully and deeply, that it can be squandered. My father lived his life like he was going to live to be eight thousand years old. He didn’t throw himself into anything, the way that I, an atheist who believes you only get one go ’round and that the clock is ticking, does. Second is about identity. I’m “a car guy” and “a comedian” and “a builder.” I could add another twenty to that list. My dad was “.” He later became “a therapist,” but when I was growing up, he was blank space. It’s very unsettling for any kid to have a parent who, as far as engagement with life, isn’t really there. It’s like being raised by a vending machine. You could get from it the minimum sustenance you needed to survive, but you sure as hell weren’t going to go on a zip line with it over the Brazilian Rainforest canopy.

Sonny always sees me get excited about my vintage-car races. I think that’s good. I think as much as you need to participate in whatever your kid is into, they need to see and occasionally participate in what you, the parent, are passionate about. It sends the right message. We’re constantly wringing our hands about tutors and discipline and nutrition. One of the most important things you can show your kids is that you care about something. Show them things that are important are worth the effort: building a business, preparing a car for a race, improving your home, whatever you’re passionate about.

But don’t go overboard. You don’t want your kids to be like those preachers’ kids who get beaten, literally and figuratively, with the Bible. When you make everything a sin, you’re asking for trouble because eventually the kid is going to get a boner, decide that means he’s evil, say “fuck it,” and go get into some disgusting porn. Rebellion is the nature of teens. Well, I rebelled against my parents’ lethargy, so I hopped in a vintage race car and hit the track. If my dad had been into vintage racing maybe I’d be at home doing the crossword puzzle instead. So show them you care about something, about living, but don’t demand that they also get into that particular thing, too. On that note…

5. IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU

The most important lesson I learned from Jim and Kris Carolla, a lesson I choose to ignore, was how to be selfish parents.

I’ll give them credit, they didn’t cram their interests down my throat. But a lot of that has to do with, as mentioned, not having any. My parents were the opposite of those Dance Moms who force their kids into pageants under the guise of “This is her dream; she wants to do it.” Bullshit. It’s clearly about your unfulfilled dreams. I hate those nut jobs talking about their pageant kids saying, “They’ve wanted to do it ever since they were three.” Three-year-olds have no control over their lives. If you don’t want your kids competing in pageants, you hold the power, not them. I sincerely doubt a six-year-old would hitchhike to the banquet room at the Sheraton and compete in the Little Miss Shaker Heights pageant herself if her emotionally damaged Mommy wasn’t pushing her.