Ad Nauseum: Why Your Old-School Parents Were Always Sick & How You Can Protect Yourself
Also, why they were tired. (Satire)
Ad Nauseum: borrowed from Latin, literally meaning “to the point of nausea.”
History’s oldest pastime for parents is to say the same thing multiple times per day, then per week, then month, seemingly ad infinitum, for decades. Because kids don’t listen. Your kids aren’t listening.
Let’s be real: it’s making you sick.
And tired.
And you have to tell the kids that, ad nauseum.
Remember your own childhood. Did you listen to your parents? No.
That’s why their favorite phrases etched a groove so deep in your brain that you always hear certain things in their voices—even if it’s coming from your own mouth, directed at your own kids.
You know those parental catchphrases:
“I told you to wake up.”
“Who left the lights on?”
“Get that out of my face.”
“Time for bed.”
“You used up all the glue on purpose!”
“Don’t put that on the baby.”
“What happened to your clothes?”
“Let’s not burn the house down.”
“What’s that smell?”
“Not in public.”
“I mean it!”
They weren’t born loving these phrases. No, these gems became their favorites because pre-adult you didn’t listen the first time. Or the second. If you were lucky (or unlucky; I’ll let you decide), you unlocked bonus phrases like: “I am sick and tired of telling you…” or “Don’t make me repeat myself.”
Ad nauseum means the act of repetition made the words on their tongues turn their stomachs.
They weren’t warning you; they were begging for mercy.
If you were especially obstinate, you may have stood in awe at hearing a multifaceted compilation of father’s greatest hits like, “I told you: get that light out of my bed before you burn…don’t glue that on the baby…and where are your clothes?” Or perhaps you missed the last part in your dash to find a hiding place from the red-faced creature who had replaced your dad.
Why Don’t Kids Listen?
The consensus among Pediatricians is that children have a physical blockage in their ear canal that prevents them from clearly hearing anything said with a tone of voice that conveys what they call “parental experience and authority.” (And we know that Consensus=Science, so no arguing or you’re going to your room, mister.)
Combined with this sonic blockade, Psychologists have discovered that children’s brains use this ear jam to accelerate the aging of their parents by literally causing illness. Hence, the fancy Latin phrase, ad nauseum.
Repeating yourself is making you sick, tired, and old.
Psychology tells us that kids’ brains subconsciously turn off their ability to listen so that they can weaken older generations into an advanced state of chronic illness and energy depletion. These young dreaming despots do this to prepare for a future which they and their media sycophants claim is “theirs.”
When they’re young, it’s not their fault, Experts tell us; it’s their developmental stage—which is the psychiatric word loosely translated for normal people as “annoying.”
But as the kids progress to later stages of “development”, these degenerate younger generations flaunt their power. As you’re overcoming the wave of queasiness to dispense dad-isms for the Nth time, these fully grown kids can remove the blockage in their ear canal and answer you with witty and biting quips like:
“Huh?”
Neuroscientists tell us that these retorts go directly to your adrenal gland, which dumps all your stress hormones and ages you by an extra three minutes and twenty-seven seconds. It also hijacks your mitochondria—the powerhouse of the cell—into calling it quits for the day and donning a t-shirt that reads “It’s 5 ‘o clock somewhere.”
Don’t believe it?
Just ask yourself: Did my parents have to repeat themselves when I was a kid?
We’ve already established that fact based on the deep ruts of their voices they left in your brain.
Now ask: Are they stronger or weaker than they used to be? Why were they able to stay up all night driving when I was young to avoid spending money on a hotel, but now they can’t get through an afternoon episode of Hannity without a nap?
Science!
Your youthful “developmental stages” did this to them.
And if you want to avoid becoming like them, time is running out.
How Can Parents Defend Themselves?
Some parents have tried to fight this ancient, debilitating assault with a new method called
Gentle Parenting. This method replaces the worn-out phrases of their own parents with lengthy sensitivity lectures. These lectures attempt to override the child’s natural defense against the “parental tone” by avoiding repetition and speaking with a breathy voice to prevent the accidental escape of testosterone, the authority hormone.
How is it possible for them to NOT repeat themselves? Through the clever use of synonyms and paraphrasing. This technique lets them repeat themselves ad infinitum, while avoiding the common sour stomach so many parents experience.
Many Psychologists and Parenting Experts love this new technique! The only side effects they’ve observed have been that the sensitivity lectures take on the meaningless-word-salad quality of recent humanities textbooks.1 The vapid and breathless lecturing removes the deep grooves of repetition from the children’s memories, perfectly preparing them for futures as smooth-brained Digital Opinion Commissars2, Public Outrage Deployment Specialists3, or DEI consultants. It doesn’t matter that the public thinks those career paths are now a dead end4; they’re not Experts.
But the proponents see these things as side-benefits more than cause for concern.
Traditionalists are doubling down, insisting that the historic practice of repeating yourself until you’re sick is necessary to a child’s education. They claim that early experiences of clear, concise, and repetitive instructions are the best way to train a child toward maturity. Not content to simply parrot their own doddering Boomer parents, they encourage the rutting of the brain through memorization of basic facts, and things written or said generations ago!
Don’t these Classicists see the health risks? Don’t they see the epidemic of parental illness they’re creating? As we’ve demonstrated, this old and tired advice is making you exactly that.
Those who suggest that repeating things to children is as inevitable as death and taxes are ignoring the effect it’s having on your health. You might suspect they’re on the “children are the future” bandwagon and that they’re ready to see you shuffled into hospice as quickly as possible.
At best, they’re rejecting the Experts and the Science. Someone should make them understand. Get them to stop scrolling and listen. Don’t make the Experts repeat it until they’re blue in the face.
MAYBE SAY IT LOUDER NEXT TIME!
Happy Friday. I hope you enjoyed the satire.
If you have famous dad sayings that you remember fondly, please share them in the comments. Especially if they make you laugh.
Updates:
Our Dog Knights Kickstarter backers have gone above and beyond.
There are a few hours left to jump on the dog pile! It ends today at 3PM MTN.
Every backer helps get this book out to more families who want clean and virtuous books for their young readers.
Thanks for the support so far. We want to finish this campaign strong.
Support:
Thank you for reading. Every comment or share is a help. I also appreciate your prayers.
If you also want to contribute to my work, you can support my writing by:
1 - Checking out my fiction.
The Kicsktarter campaign for my kids’ chapter book, Dog Knights and The Orb of Power runs until March 13th. Click the link to join the pack!
Check out my fantasy fiction for older teens and adults here
2 - If you want to support Imago Dad specifically, you can buy me a coffee with Ko-Fi.
In addition to Imago Dad, Brandon Wilborn writes speculative fiction with spiritual themes. Find his previously released books at BrandonWilborn.com
How they’re able to create such a high volume of word-vomit without nausea requires further study.
Fact-Checkers, Misinformation Analysts, Content Moderators, Verification Journalists, etc., aka censors.
Event Actors, Crowd Enhancers, Advocacy Performers, aka protesters for hire.
The dead end was discovered after those who blazed that side-path into the dark jungle of Marxism met a tiger named Reality.