Dad "Roasts Himself" Internally to Not Flip out Whenever His Kids Make Honest Little Mistakes

As this venerated and highly talented actor and coach has said, you should never take yourself seriously, only situations.

Oftentimes when we allow ourselves to just indulge our feelings without weighing them against the situation or looking at ourselves in the third person, we can miss everything going on around us, including how much of a fool we might end up looking like.

And it seems like comedian and TikToker Paul Schissler (@paulyboycomedy) has adopted a bit of this line of thinking himself in dealing with his children whenever they act like...well...kids.

It's often easy to forget that children aren't grown adults who've already been put through the paces of social decorum: like not directly staring at some stranger in the grocery store who is missing an arm, or getting pancake syrup in their hair, or jumping directly into a mud puddle with the brand new pair of sneakers you just laced up on their feet five minutes ago.

So you'll want to frustratingly yell at them to just stop doing those things and, depending on how upset you are, may take things too far and forget that you, too, were once a child honing your fine motor skills much to your folks', and their furniture's, chagrin.

Paul, however, has recently gone viral after sharing a little trick he uses to curb himself from flying off the handle whenever his kids make an innocent little mistake like spilling milk.

His "whoo-sah" hack? He says that he "roasts himself" as a means of highlighting just how perturbed he's going to get over something as innocent and harmless as some breakfast that got on the carpet.

In his TikTok, Paul speaks directly to the camera, holding a mug of coffee, where he shares his methodology: "I will roast myself in my head to keep myself in check from like overreacting to my kids." He then gives an example of what that looks like in action, even donning the self-mockery voice to highlight how petty and ridiculous he's being.

"So like if they spilled their breakfast on the floor for the fifth time that morning, instead of like freaking out and be like NO MORE SPILL I'll like take a breath, take a sip of coffee, and in my head, I'll be like, 'Oh look at Mister Big Bad Spill Police on the scene of the crime!"

He continued his introspective roast session, "You gonna freak out on a 3-year-old for dropping a couple drops of milk on the carpet? Grow up!"

It seemed like there were quite a few people who responded to Paul's post who approved of this method, and some even wrote their own roasts that highlight how silly they thought it was for grown-ups to get on kids' cases about seemingly inconsequential errors.

Like one TikToker who wrote: "It’s also like, 'you’re mad at THEM for spilling a drink when you just impulse bought a kayak on clearance at Bass Pro? You hate water sports'"

Another person said that they do the same thing whenever a group is running late to an event: "I do this so much when we are running late… like YOU’RE the only one who can tell time in this group."

Someone else remarked that they think the only reason most people yell at their kids for certain behaviors is because they are repeating a cycle of discipline for acts that they were yelled at for as children, not necessarily because they have a problem with these behaviors or that they're inherently bad.

"I tell myself, 'it only bothers you because you got in trouble for it' trying to eliminate guilt trips for us both," they wrote.

There have been a number of thought pieces that have delved into the phenomena of folks not taking themselves so seriously, like The Good Trade which states that if you do, you "rob yourself of the peace that comes with self-acceptance."

Psych Central also speaks to this phenomena and says that folks should ask themselves a simple question whenever they're conflicted with a personal issue and it's if that problem, obstacle, or seemingly emotionally cataclysmic event will ultimately matter to them in five years.

Or, you could just roast yourself like Paul does by calling yourself a big baby dorkface for wildin' out over the fact that your kid has neglected to put on their sneakers, yet again, while getting ready for school.