TIP #6 FOR BECOMING A GUILT FREE PARENT: 

Prep your stink-eye for the constant advice givers

People love to give advice when you talk about your struggles as a parent. Sometimes you might be looking for some advice to put on your “try everything” list but sometimes you just need a space to vent about your problems.  Like when you just shout to the world or talk to the tree in your yard, or the imaginary elephant that appears at 2am when you are being woken up yet again. (His name is Elijah. He wears a onesie and likes to sing Disney songs. We have become good friends.) While people are ultimately trying to be helpful, they somehow believe that they are now the “baby whisperer". The only thing I can tell you to do to these helpful people is to smile and say “sounds like a good idea”. You probably already tried their idea or are not going to try it but don’t bother stretching out this conversation. Even though my last tip said try everything, it doesn’t always mean following everyone’s advice. Follow your own instincts.  I read somewhere that to shut people up about their advice just say “I will bring that up with my doctor the next time I see him/her”. People tend to stop providing their input after that because they know a doctor wouldn’t listen to them either.  

I also don’t want to sound like an a’hole here and say that everyone is providing terrible advice. I am just saying to take advice with some grain of salt. You sometimes just want someone to listen to you and actually talk back. Elijah, for example, is a terrible listener. He just likes to sing Frozen songs all night and steal my wine. A lady once told me to put my kid on a dryer and run the dryer on a full cycle and it put that baby to sleep like a charm. I am glad that worked for her but I have no intention of leaving my kid up on a fire hazard machine that bounces around like crazy, and jack up my electric bill. And what would I do? Just sit on the floor?  Watch the dryer go round and round while it creates a soothing sound that will put me to sleep too?  Oh now it makes sense.

The best advice though is from the old ladies who back in the day had no power and 27 children and things worked wonders for them – well first off they are liars, they don’t remember the first year (or probably many afterwards), and they had 27 kids who likely helped light the candles anyway. And who really wants advice from someone who had that many children – I have some advice for them – try contraception.  I can barely get through two children. I can’t trust someone who clearly got on the crazy train a long time ago. Toot toot.

Try everything but sometimes be rational and instead of saying “your advice stinks”, just smile and talk to Elijah in the morning.  

TIP #5 FOR BECOMING A GUILT FREE PARENT: 

Try everything now (and worry about paying the shrink later)

I am a big believer that not everything works for every kid. It is the same for adults. While I like to read a book for an hour or so before I sleep, my wife can fall asleep within ten seconds and that is not much of an exaggeration. This superpower of my soul mate is something that drives me crazy. Usually after a minute or two of me reading and she is somewhere between a nice dream and full REM, she will say “maybe you should go to sleep now and put down your book”. Then I remind her, like I do most every night, “dear, not all of us are like sleeping beauty.” I need a little coaxing to get myself bed ready. I think it is the same for children. Some like one method to help them sleep, eat, or poop, while others like something else. Why do we think that one thing will work on all children because a book or magazine said it would? My motto – try it all. Something is bound to work. Even if they finally succumb to exhaustion, you can at least say you won! I didn’t realize how competitive I was until I had kids. 

When our first kid was very young, she wasn’t a great napper. That might not come to you as a shock. Why else can I write a blog at 2am after being woken up for the 5^th time and am sitting on the couch debating whether or not to cry, drink coffee (or wine), or do a ridiculous google search that will leave me feeling awful.  Sorry – I got sidetracked which isn’t a shock either – look a squirrel! Anyway we were at a cousin’s birthday party and they had a swing and my cousin suggested we try to put our daughter in it for a few minutes. I was a little hesitant because no other method was working, no matter how many books/websites/magicians I tried.  But the heavens opened up and the angels sang a lullaby and she fell asleep. The next day I was at the store buying the exact same model and set it up as soon as I entered the door. I am pretty sure my wife opened the box in the car and was starting to put it together on our way back from the store. I would have taken the floor model and strapped it to the roof of my Mazda but they said it would be a liability issue. They didn’t understand just how desperate I was. Our first kid slept in this swing a lot and it wasn’t life threatening or morally wrong (remember that blog post from September). So months before our second child arrived in our lives, I had the swing set up. I was ready to put that child in there and have a sleeping kid from day 1. Well she had a different game plan about sleeping. She liked the swing fine enough (it kept the acid reflux under control) but she wouldn’t dare close her eyes. So the swing has 8 different levels of speed. I am pretty sure that level 2 is fast enough but one day I was so frustrated with lack of sleep that I put it on level 5 to see if maybe she likes a fast swing unlike her sister. It was like something out a carnival ride – she was like a blur in the seat. Yet still her eyes did not close. I think level 8 is like Mach 3 and they go so fast that they break the sound barrier and you can’t hear them until 10 minutes later – which is just enough time to finish drinking your cold cup of coffee (which is something you will take a liking to). My long winded point here is that you need to try everything because you just don’t know what might work. You need to have a process of elimination to say at least you tried bouncing, swinging, jumping, driving, singing Celine Dion or AC/DC. My lullaby version of Thunderstruck is worth listening to. 

You do sometimes wonder if you are going to mess them up with all your trial and errors though. A comedian once was talking about how his son had terrible diaper rash and they knew they had to dry it off before they put on a new diaper. They decided to use a hair dryer after a bum change. He said the boy’s face would light up when he would turn on the hair dryer and the crying would immediately stop. He became slightly concerned because he could picture his son in 30 years from now paying a prostitute to blow dry his rear end. Hopefully we don’t mess them up too much but psychologists need work too. Consider it your contribution to the economy.