Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes!

In which I discover the pros and cons of gambling on your own child

By Joel Stein Monday, Apr. 15, 2013
    • Illustration by Tomasz Walenta for TIME

    The pros and cons of gambling on your own child.

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    After watching a successful practice kick, however, Cassandra bet that he'd kick four goals. Once the game got going, it became clear that Laszlo was more excited to run after the ball than kick it in any particular direction. I was excited that he was spending 90 seconds kicking a ball. So I wasted a lot of time running with him instead of retrieving the ball myself. The time ended just as the fourth goal was trickling toward the goal line. Then the fighting started. "You blew it! You let him get the ball!" Cassandra said.

    "Well, he really wanted to," I explained.

    She said I had perfectly summed up her problem with my parenting technique. Only she used words that questioned my masculinity and, frankly, I think, shocked the man who came up with the idea for Bet on Your Baby.

    Since we've gotten home and looked back on what we did, we've been betting on our baby all the time. Will he like salmon roe? Will he wake up earlier than normal on the weekends? Will he get through a sentence without adding the word poop? We even bet on him by opening a 529 plan for his college education.

    Because the one thing we do know is that he's not going to get an athletic scholarship.

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