kids – BATSHIT PARENTING

Sleep consultants are taking advantage of us

I had the misfortune of birthing not one, but two babies who just could not slumber for longer than two hours at a time. It almost killed me.

Until you yourself go through the throes of sleep deprivation it’s impossible to understand the sheer torture, desperation, and panic it instills. You get to the point where you actually fear falling asleep, because you know you’ll only be woken up again and the horror will begin all over again.

I tried a lot of things to make it better. I read a lot of books, surfed the internet for help, despaired to my GP. But I’ll tell you what I didn’t do: hire a sleep consultant.

Firstly, I didn’t have hundreds of dollars to blow on an initial consultation, let alone thousands of dollars for a full “sleep training package”. I find it astonishing (and, frankly, gross) that there are folks out there legitimately charging hundreds of dollars an hour to tell you what I’m about to tell you now. Secondly, I think the whole “sleep training” industry is a money-grab taking advantage of sleep-starved parents so desperate for relief that they’d do anything just to get some shut-eye.

You want to know how to sleep train? Here it is: You put the kid in the crib, say goodnight—and that’s it. You wait. They cry. You cry. And it is brutal. Oh sure, there are plenty of different “approaches”, with their own cute little acronyms (CIO, PIPD, etc). But listen: it’s all the same shit wrapped up in a different bow.

You can sit in the room while they scream until they (or you) feel like puking. You can leave the room and pop in and out at regular intervals while they scream until they (or you) feel like puking. You can slowly creep out of the room, bit by bit, over the period of week. You can just leave and not come back at all until they stop (or puke).

That’s what worked best with my first kid, who screamed for 45 minutes the first night, 20 minutes the second night, 5 minutes the third night, and started sleeping through the night after the third.

Or, if they’re still screaming three hours into it, you do what I did with my second: you give up. You take them into your bed, lie down with them, let them use you as a human soother, and adapt to sleeping with one boob in a tiny person’s mouth.

What you don’t do? Pay an unprofessional, unaccredited, unlicensed person to tell you to essentially ignore the kid until they nod off.

Sleep trainers do not have a degree in sleep. They’re not neurologists. They’re not psychologists. They’re not counsellors. They’re not medical professionals. They don’t need a license to call themselves “sleep trainers”. They don’t even have to take a course (although some private institutes will sell them).

But they WILL charge you the kind of fees that make you think they do.

The widening gulf between parental intentions and parental reality

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There are two parallel universes of parenting: the type of parent you plan to be—and the type of parent you end up being. One type is characterized by good intentions, idealism, bountiful, endless love and affection. The other, not so much.

As the global pandemic rages on and the kids hit the tween years, the gap between these two universes is stretching into an ever-widening chasm filled with regret, self-recrimination, and a shit-ton of guilt.

So, in the spirit of oversharing, here are some of the sliding door moments of my parenting life:

THE PLAN: Establish clear boundaries, and stay firm. No means no.
THE REALITY: Give in more often than not, as having to endure endless whining, tantrums and tears is often more than I care to take on. My momentary peace and serenity is apparently worth more to me than my kids’ moral and behavioural development.

THE PLAN: Only sugar-free snacks, whole-grain breakfast foods, and very limited (if any) juice on hand. Pop/soda doesn’t even enter the picture.
THE REALITY: In an effort to have kids actually consume their packed lunches, send them to school with those “fruit-juice gummies” (real fruit just comes straight back home again), yogurt drinks, and jam sandwiches. Bribe them to complete their homework with the occasional 7/11 Slurpee. Give quiet thanks for husband’s dental coverage plan.

THE PLAN: No screen time on school days, and no more than one hour on weekends.
THE REALITY: Kids take over my phone, iPad and laptop in order to both online with friends while simultaneously chatting on video and speakerphone. I hide in the kitchen drinking wine and pretending to make dinner.

THE PLAN: Have sit-down dinners together as a family every night, sharing heartfelt discussions about our day, and our hopes and dreams for the future.
THE REALITY: The almost-teen starts demanding food exactly 30 minutes before I’ve started preparing anything, so he fills up on cereal, milk, and the stash of cookies I thought I’d hidden from him. The younger one sees this, and declares that he is entitled to the same. I am tied up making dinner so they they stuff their faces alone. Husband gets home and announces he’s not hungry yet because he had a late lunch. Dinner goes uneaten and becomes a cold, neglected metaphor of dejection. I sneak off into the basement and fill my emotional void with the pint of ice cream I’d hidden earlier in the deep freeze. And… scene.

Listen, I know I’m falling short. But you can’t say that I don’t have good intentions, or that I don’t know better. I do.

I just don’t always achieve better.

When the levee breaks

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Never, ever, trust a television chef.

To be precise: Never trust a television chef who tells you there’s a quick and easy way to make pizza dough right on the counter, without a bowl.

To be even more precise: F*ck Jamie Oliver.

At home with two boys, the youngest in the process of potty training, I deluded myself into thinking I could do three things at once: expertly mix up pizza dough, keep an eye on the diaper-less terror, and retain my sanity.

Had I perhaps consulted a different recipe—one written by a person living in the real world—this may have, indeed, been possible. As it was, I landed on Jamie Oliver’s seemingly quick and oh-so-easy pizza dough recipe, which eschewed a bowl and, instead, encouraged me to simply pile up the dry ingredients on the counter, dig out a little well, and then pour in the wet ingredients into that well.

I even found a video in which Jamie demonstrated how, using a fork, you could gently swirl the flour into the yeasty warm water and create a ball of perfect dough that you could kneed on the spot.

Well, I don’t know what kind of shit Jamie is smoking, but in my world, here’s what happened:

Mountain of flour placed on counter—check.
Well dug out in middle of flour mountain—yup.
Yeasty water poured into flour mountain well—gotcha…WAIT NO!
Yeasty sludge breaches its banks, and the levee breaks.
Sludge creeps rapidly across countertop, and begins dripping down along the edge of the kitchen drawers and onto floor.
Toddler, going commando in a pair of overalls and standing alongside me, begins grunting—the universal sound of a number two also breaching its bank.

At this stage, I faced my own Sophie’s Choice: save the dough, or save the overalls.

With the rivulet of what was essentially papier maché glue threatening to take out my kitchen, and the turd having already passed the point of no return, I jumped into action.

I yelled “STOP POOPING!” at my son (because, yeah, that’s totally possible) and, inwardly screaming “I HATE YOU JAMIE!!!” I launched myself at the sticky goo rapidly encasing everything in its vicinity.

When I came up for air, my hands and arms looked like they belonged to a bog person’s. But I had pizza dough. And a pair of shit-encased overalls to deal with.

So, yeah. F*ck Jamie Oliver.