Big Daddy's Rules

The breakout star from The Sopranos and best-selling author of A Goomba's Guide to Life shares his misadventures in parenting two daughters, a journey that pitted his over-the-top personality against such challenges as boyfriends, birth control and inappropriate teachers.

“Listen, I know Steve. Steve is actually crazy. But his kids are nicer than almost any adult I know. So I thought, maybe it’s a good crazy. Then I read this book. No, he’s actually just crazy. But he figured out how to make crazy work for him and his kids. Which is more than I can say for the rest of us.”

Auteur

Steve Schirripa was a breakout star on The Sopranos. He is the New York Times bestselling author of A Goomba’s Guide to Life and currently stars on The Secret Life of the American Teenager. Schirripa also hosts Investigation Discovery’s Karma’s a Bitch! Schirripa lives in New York with his wife and two daughters.

Philip Lerman is the author of Dadditude: How a Real Man Became a Real Dad and the coauthor of several books, including No Mercy. Lerman is the former co-executive producer of America’s Most Wanted and former national editor of USA TODAY.

Texte du rabat

From world-famous tough guy and New York Times bestselling author Steve Schirripa—a winning mix of wisecracks and wise words on the hardest job of all: being a father.

What happens when a world-famous tough guy takes on the toughest job of all— becoming a father?

Welcome to the world of the Big Daddy.

Steve Schirripa is known for his star turns on The Sopranos and The Secret Life of the American Teenager, but in his own life he’s the father of two daughters of his own—and a self-confessed human volcano. In Big Daddy’s Rules, Schirripa tells all and brings a welcome dose of old-school advice (and new-school humor) to the parenting wars. “You’re not there to be a friend,” Schirripa says bluntly. “You’re there to be a dad.”

Schirripa serves up the heartwarming and hilarious stories of how he and his wife navigated the wild waters of parenthood: from the moment the tough guy’s heart melted when he held his first-born in his arms to what he felt (and did) the time he caught someone looking at his teenage daughter’s butt.

He lays out all the rules for being a Big Daddy— someone who is strong, devoted, and always looking out for his kids’ best interests, even when that means not being the coolest dad on the block. Overprotective? Maybe. Willing to tone it down? Absolutely not. Big Daddy’s Rules is filled with tales of his over-the-top yet heartfelt parenting style—confronting bad teachers, staring down boyfriends, and explaining just how crazy you’re allowed to get if you catch your kid drinking (hint: really, really crazy).

With a mixture of street-smart bravado and selfeffacing humor, Schirripa pulls no punches as he delivers his no-bull stance on what it takes to raise kids today. He’s uproariously funny, but Schirripa isn’t just cracking jokes here; this is also a call to action for dads to return to common-sense parenting and reclaim their role as protector and holder of values to be passed down.

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Big Daddy’s Rules

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THAT’S MISTER DAD TO YOU

Sometimes being a dad is like watching a ping-pong match.

I’m in the dining room the other day, and my wife and one of my girls start up on one of those things mothers and daughters seem to be able to get into with no end in sight:

You’re not going out in that skirt. It’s too short.

No it isn’t.

Yes it is.

But I wore it last week.

I don’t care, it’s too short.

But Gina is wearing a shorter skirt.

I’m not Gina’s mother. I said you can’t go out like that.

Back and forth. I try to hold my tongue and let them work it out.

That lasts about no seconds.

I explode, like the firecrackers we used to toss in the garbage cans on Bath Avenue when I was growing up in Brooklyn.

As loud as I can, with my face getting as red as a can of tomato sauce, I make my point clear:

“Did you not hear your mother! Did she not just tell you you’re not going out of the house with your ass hanging out the back of your skirt! What part of ‘you’re not going out of the house with your ass hanging out the back of your skirt’ do you not understand?”

They both roll their eyes. They’ve heard this all before.

I take a little pause for effect—all those acting lessons weren’t for nothing, you know—and then I ratchet it up a notch.

“I don’t care who else wears what, anywhere else in the world, I don’t care whether you think this skirt is appropriate, and I don’t care about anything, to be honest, other than when your mother tells you to change your skirt, you change your skirt. Does anyone here have a problem with that?”

At this point, they’re looking at each other. It’s a bonding moment for the two of them: Oh, well, I guess Dad’s at it again.

No one gets upset. No one talks back. They smirk, and they wait for the storm to pass.

And then my daughter goes back into her room and changes her skirt.

Welcome to the world of the Big Daddy.

Listen. Everywhere you look these days, somebody’s making fun of dads. You turn on the TV on Father’s Day, and they’re showing all the daddy movies, and in one after another, the dad is an idiot—he can’t make breakfast, he can’t make lunch, he can’t get piss out of a boot if the instructions are written on the heel. He sure as hell can’t change a diaper, dress his kids, or give his teenage daughters advice on anything beyond how to buy car insurance, and even for that he needs help from a fucking gecko that sounds like Keith Richards.

Well, I say, enough is enough.

I’d like to form a club just for fathers. Specifically fathers of daughters. There would be lots of overstuffed leather chairs, wood paneling, dim lights. The works. A good space for sitting around and talking and getting some shit off our chests.

I don’t mean all the time, of course. Just during the commercials.

And instead of a THIS BUD’S FOR YOU sign, there would be a burnt-wood sign, hanging over the good Scotch, reading:

WHOEVER SAYS WE DON’T KNOW

WHAT THE FUCK WE’RE TALKING ABOUT

DOESN’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT

Because all of this talk about what idiots dads are, and how we have to learn to be a pal to our kids, and how we have to learn to be more like moms—I’ve had it up to here with all of that.

I say it’s time for the Big Daddys to take over.

I gotta say, as the father of two beautiful young daughters, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I know for most guys that means you’ve got Lou Gehrig’s disease, but I don’t mean it that way. I mean yeah, being the father of girls is a kind of illness, in its own way—since any guy who has tried to live in a house with a wife and two daughters is, without any doubt, going to go certifiably nuts.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I play this father, Leo, on a TV show called The Secret Life of the American Teenager. He’s the father of a nice teenage boy who gets into more trouble than any kid you’ve ever known (if you’re lucky). A girl he knows gets pregnant, he starts dating her and decides he’s going to marry her, then he gets another girl pr…