I am a decent parent at this point. I started off pretty crappy though: maybe a 2 or 3 out of 10 (and that's being generous). But I give myself a 6 or 7 these days. I've learned a lot and become a better father.

The biggest learning for me is that the most important thing is to just "fake it until you make it." What I mean is: if you don't feel a bond with your kid, just pretend that you do and put in the time. As the months go by, the baby will respond to the quantity of time you are putting in and start to love you like crazy. That creates a magical bond, and makes it easy for you to invest more time in your offspring. That's when parenting scores jump into the 6-7 range, I think.

My overall score will probably go down though, now that we have a newborn. I am much better with toddlers than I am with newborns. I hope, though, that I will become a better father much faster with baby #2. At least, that's the plan. I will probably start off as a 4 with Olive, and raise my score over the next two years.

However, by the time both kids are 3... I think my parenting score will jump up, for the rest of their lives. I basically think like a child, and kids tend to like me. Unfortunately though, in my career I interact mostly with adults so this life skill is largely useless to me. However, it's been handy when trying to get into my son's head and program him to love me like crazy!

Anyway, I wonder how other people view themselves: do you consider yourself a good parent? I'm curious to hear how you rate yourself from 1 to 10! Feel free to make up random cockamamie theories about parenting like I just did above...