Recently my daughter turned our “two car” garage into a “no car” garage when she and two friends decided to open a foot massage business.

The cars themselves were replaced by a waiting room complete with bottled water and reading material.  The front desk consisted of an old lap top, a broken phone, a working calculator and an empty vase (The vase was broken two days later).  

The massage area was located in another portion of the garage and was situated in a pop-up fire engine tent decorated with two lawn chairs, a back porch table, towels and two buckets of water.  The client list was full, one employee had already been fired (hence the broken vase), and I was put on a waiting list despite my willingness to pay $3 to have my feet soaked in a rusted-out ice bucket.  

Exactly how is this protecting my kids?  Glad you asked….

I’ve decided this year I’m going to protect my kids-- from me!

I’m going to protect my kids from the dad who can get a little over-sensitive about having a clean garage, who lets you eat downstairs only after enduring a stream of warnings about spilling stuff on the couch, who loses control when the computer’s search engine gets changed or who thinks tennis is fun when his kids can’t possibly return the serve.

I know plenty of kids whose fondest memories of their dads aren’t so fond.  These are kids whose dads would “never let them do that” when they were growing up, or who’d go ballistic if they even thought about doing whatever ‘that’ was.

You know what-- things could get tough this year with soaring gas prices and an uncertain economy.

So what if your daughter wants to play day spa in the garage.So what if your carpet is 15+ years old and your closed kitchen window is drafty. Your wife and kids didn’t crawl up on the roof and take the shingles down nor did they plant the weeds in your otherwise pristine, manicured lawn.  

It’s just life and it happens.

Don’t take it so seriously that you lose your cool.  By remembering this, you can indeed protect your family.

Did I mention the backyard is littered with cardboard BB gun targets lying all around?

Kids want parents who will keep their cool, not cool parents.