'Off-Grid' Is The New Parenting Style None Of Us Asked For

There’s a new parenting style in town and if it wants to leave town it needs your help

Regardless of how you raise your kids, the Allen family, made up of mom Adele, dad Matt, and kids Ulysses (five years old) and Ostara (15 months), deserves the benefit of the doubt. The couple practices what they call an “off-grid” parenting style, which, as far as styles go, is about as style-free as it gets.

There are so many different approaches to parenting these days, it’s hard to keep track. Not that you need to. With your own kids to take care of and feed and stop from killing themselves and stop from killing each other and stop from making you want to kill them, it’s pointless to worry about what anyone else is doing.

Adele still breastfeeds her five-year-old, which, sure. You do you, Adele.

Did I mention, according to Babble, she didn’t separate the placenta or cut the umbilical cords, and stayed attached to her kids for six days, until those things fell off? “If babies were meant to have their umbilical cords cut at birth, we’d be born with scissors.” Um… okay?

Mom also sees no purpose behind vaccines, or modern medicine. “I don’t really see that there’s any need other than using breast-feeding to supplement them. I don’t see any need to inject any foreign substance directly into the bloodstream. If you use plants and herbs, you target the bad without attacking the good bacteria as well.” Shit’s getting weird now. (TBH, shit was already plenty weird when the placenta hung out for a week, but maybe that’s because I live in a apartment in Brooklyn and we simply don’t have the room.)

As you can probably tell, I’m trying real hard to be the shepherd here. Aside from the ignorant and idiotic refusal to vaccinate, and the other ways they’re risking their kids’ lives by not using basic medicine, their choices don’t affect me. Besides, based on their recent appearance on morning TV, they’re in for their share of tough times. And I’m not even referring to the glaring lack of donations they’ve received thus far.

Oh, right, I forgot to mention…

Matt and Adele are so committed to being self-sufficient and living without the constraints of modern society so they can raise their kids free and clear, they started a “Fund My Travel” page and asked us to pay to enable them to do that. Let’s not even get into the irony of the headline “Help us achieve our ambition of being self sufficient!” or the insane blind-spot behind the entire endeavor, because if we do, I might start breaking stuff.

Off-Grid parenting eschews the normal parenting stuff we spend our days and nights wringing our hands about, i.e., bedtimes, modern medicine, vaccines, and potty-training. Most of this stuff doesn’t concern the rest of us (aside from the obvious “you’re putting the rest of us at risk by not vaccinating your kids, it’s called herd immunity and unless you’re so far off the grid there is no grid, give your kids the shot!“), and again, I’m too busy with my kids to worry about yours. Unless you’re asking me to pay for them.

Actually, despite my distaste for it, I might even go so far as to donate a bit to their efforts. Because there’s almost nothing I’d like more than for these people to be off the grid, as in, get the fuck off my grid, you’re freaking me out and also potentially endangering the rest of us who are still happily on the grid, you lunatics!

But maybe I should calm down. Because in case you missed it, in an appearance on the British TV show ‘This Morning’, little Ostara took center stage when she stared at the camera and let her lack of potty-training rip. All over the floor. On live TV. And Matt and Adele hardly blinked.

I don’t care if you’re French, a Tiger Mom, the type to use a family bed, a homeschooler, or Off-Grid. That’s gotta piss you off.