Modern Parenting Screwing Our Kids Up?

So, according to a recent study,  Modern Parenting May Hinder Kids' Brain Development.

In a nutshell, the "interdisciplinary body of research presented recently at a symposium at the University of Notre Dame," suggests that commonly-accepted modern parenting practices -- everything from cry-it-out sleep training to formula feeding to using a carrier or a stroller instead of holding your baby in your arms -- may be the reason record numbers of American kids are depressed, anxious, aggressive and just all-around fucked-up. That was not, by the way, the language used by sciencedaily to report this, but let's not dither around here -- that's the point. I mean, listen to this:

"Life outcomes for American youth are worsening, especially in comparison to 50 years ago," says Darcia Narvaez, Notre Dame professor of psychology who specializes in moral development in children"

I'm no expert but even I know you don't get more all-around fucked-up than worsening life-outcomes. And, as a side note, what the hell does specializing in "moral development" entail? Sounds vague and nebulous and already, I'm skeptical.

Do I need to pause here to clarify that the conjectures offered by this whole "body of research" pisses me off?

The reason I'm pissed is this: from what I can tell, almost every practice this study suggests as beneficial to kids is stuff parents already know to do. Mother know Breast is Best. Parents know babies need skin-to-skin and to be cuddled. We know that its good to spend quality time with our kids. We know that its good for a child to have a host of "supportive adult caregivers." Even responding to a crying baby is pretty intuitive -- sure, some folks may think its ok to let the baby wait a minute or two before rushing over, but that's probably because those folks have shit to do at that very minute and while they are wrapping that shit up, they reason that it won't do permanent damage to the baby for the baby to hold on a minute.

So I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the reason most parents don't do these things -- don't breastfeed or give their babies "near constant touch" or sleep in bed with their kids -- is that they can't, either physically or emotionally or for whatever reason. Maybe, for instance, a mother has to work. Going back to an office at 3 months postpartum, maybe to secure the insurance one needs to provide medical care for babies, which I've heard also aids brain development --  pretty much precludes doing many of the things advised by this research. Maybe you have a bunch of other kids to deal with. Maybe letting your baby cry it out, or sticking them in an exersaucer or pushing them in a stroller rather than holding them in your arms all freaking day gives you the sanity that allows you to be a good mother.

Because here's something else I know, and I'm pretty sure science will back me up on this but shit, I'm too tired from being up all night with my three kids -- baby with a cold, daughter with stomach virus and son with insomnia -- to find the info for you: Kids with sleep-deprived, angry, resentful parents end up anxious and depressed and aggressive and all around-fucked-up. Letting my baby cry it out for a few nights when she was five months old has made me a better mother, not just to her but to all three kids. Period. And not only that, but despite the fact that it may have damaged her beyond repair according to this new study, an OLD study told me that a good night's sleep is critical for baby's brain development. Critical. Dealbreaker.

Is it any wonder I'm pissed off? Yes, I'm defensive but more than that,  this kind of shoddy science creates a culture of guilt and fear-mongering for parents that I find intolerable. And counter-productive, too. Because guilt and anxiety have never improved anyone's parenting -- and I don't need an interdisciplinary body of research to tell me that.

Less might be more, but that doesn't make it easy

Enough about me and my kids, already! I think its time you get to hear someone else gripe for a change. Which is why I have a very exciting GUEST POST for you today from local fiction writer Kimberly McCreight.
She may write fiction but on a mom amok we only speak the truth, so here is her honest to blog reflections on how hard it is to just let go with your firstborn, even when you've mastered the skill with your youngest. I totally relate -- testimony of which is the fact that my daughter went on the balcony today in a halter dress while my son was wearing a hat. Parenting is baffling.


Less might be more, but that doesn't make it easy.
By Kimberly McCreight

“Why don’t we let her sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor of our room then?” My husband suggested calmly when, one day six months ago, our five year old daughter Harper suddenly refused to sleep alone anymore.

The problem really wasn’t just sleep. Harper wouldn’t be alone in her room period. And even if you sat there with her until she fell asleep, she’d pop awake in the middle of the night, every night, and demand you return. She wasn’t just being obstinate either. She was genuinely terrified, panicked even. I know what it looks like. She’s always been a child prone to fears, though—after months of dedicated Feberiz-ing and Weissbluth-ing back when she was an infant—she had always at least slept through the night.

“Well, how long do we let her sleep there?” I asked my husband. My heart was already speeding up.

He shrugged as he took off his work shirt. “Until she outgrows it.”

Outgrows it? Already, I had visions of Harper at sixteen still sleeping on our floor. I imagined her as a middle schooler, friendless because she couldn’t host or attend sleepovers. I thought of a marriage forever devoid of nighttime privacy.

“Like a couple months,” my husband added, probably in response to my open jaw. “She’ll get tired of sleeping there before long.”

My husband has always been that way, maddeningly unruffled by these child-rearing detours. I’ve come to see it as a malady.

Now, if this had been my younger daughter, Emerson, I’d have been able to take this no-sleeping, bedroom-phobia turn of events much more in stride too. Like Harper, Emerson has had more than her fair share of fears and sensitivities—loud noises, fire, men in general, and bearded ones in particular—and they’ve hit at almost the exact same ages they did for her older sister. But with Emerson, I have remained calm, nonplussed even, convinced that time heals all wounds or will eventually, at least, suggest a solution. With her, I’ve seen it all before. And, so far, it all turns out pretty much okay.

But for some reason with Harper, I am unable to generalize from her own history. Each new speed bump feels in need of direct and immediate smoothing. It must be confronted in all its ugly roughness and repaired, not simply circled around.

So instead of taking my husband’s advice about this sleeping bag nonsense—which was, in fact, gleaned from something I’d read—I tried to push back on Harper, to draw a line in the sand. After all, encouraging her to confront her other fears and move past them had so far been the most effective approach.

“No, you cannot sleep in our room,” I kept on repeating that first night for hours on end. “No, I will not sleep on your floor and no, you cannot sleep in our bed. Everyone sleeps in their own bed.”

It didn’t work, at all. Unless, of course, my objective had been to make Harper panic more. Because that, she did do. She rushed from her room and refused to return. She cried, she yelled. She kicked. My voice got louder. Not firmer either, just madder, as I stood there in her doorway with my arms crossed.

But more than anything, I was worried. Worried that this new bedtime/bedroom/sleep fear might finally be the one she wouldn’t overcome. Harper, of course, mistook my fear for disapproval. Self-recriminations quickly followed.

“I am the most terrible girl in the world,” she whimpered the twelfth time she refused to budge from her spot in the hall where she was splayed like a small animal frantically gripping onto an ice patch.

It made my toes curl.

Less than a minute later the sleeping bag was out on our floor. And Harper came to our room to sleep in it in the middle of that first night. She slept there quietly and happily every night thereafter for six long months. It went on, much to my dismay, until it came time to transition Emerson into a toddler bed in Harper’s bedroom. Now, that they have each other, Harper’s bedroom fears are a distant memory. She’s been sleeping through the night in her own bed ever since.

I’d liked to think I’ve learned something from this. That I now know that the only way to solve some of Harper’s problems will be to wait until time or circumstance allows them to pass into the ether. I hope that I understand now that I will not be able to fix everything she feels.

And, who knows, maybe I even do. Whether I’ll remember it the next time Harper decides to surprise me, well now, that’s a different question altogether.

Killing Off Fairies Ain't As Easy As It Looks

My daughter’s love affair with the pacifier is a story much too long to be unraveled here. Plus, it will be appearing in an article in Parents soon and so I can’t give it all up for free, folks. But what I’m gonna give you is the ending that couldn’t make it into the piece because life hadn’t written it yet.

While I wrote the piece, which was part essay, part reported article, Seconda was a total paci fiend, no holds barred. But in talking to other moms about their binky battles, I began to think maybe I should take action sooner rather than later to boot binky. I mean, I’ve been Binky’s biggest fan, don’t get me wrong. Not with Primo, who never used one, since I was naïve and thought I could prevent him from developing dependencies (Ha!). But since Sec’s arrival, the paci has been a member of our family. We all brake for Paci. Literally. If we start driving somewhere and realize we don’t have a paci, we will stop the car as soon as possible to get one, quick.

By the time I finished the essay, I’d limited Seconda’s paci use to just bedtime, naptime and cartime. That’s a lot less time than you think because we hardly ever use the car and are almost exclusively stroller people. So the gradual weaning had begun.

And thanks to the any parents I spoke with for the article I had garnered a very long list of possible way to terminate paci, permanently.

50 Ways to Leave Your Paci

Cut a hole in it so it’s “broken”

Have your child toss his whole collection in the trash

Tie it to a binky tree in Holland

Send it to Mickey Mouse

Send it to the heavens on the string of a helium balloon

And the popular favorite –

Let the Paci Fairy take care of it

This was clearly the route we’d take. Our family is kind of nuts for fairies. OK, maybe it’s just me. I love fairies . . . and gnomes and elves and all manner of magical, fantastical, generally good but sometime mischievous sprites, Midsummer is my favorite Shakespearean comedy, for God’s Sake. It started as my love for fairies but it developed into our family’s reliance on fairies for our parenting.

Fairies, you see, do our dirtywork.

It all started with the Sleep Fairy, when Primo was about 20 months old and wouldn’t fall asleep even if we rocked him, gave him the bottle, lay beside him, held his hand, or bribed him with large sums of cash. I was in my second trimester with Sec and posted a desperate plea for advice on parkslopeparents and they delivered, as they usually do, with a diverse panorama of suggestions. Someone suggested inventing a Sleep Fairy who visited if the little boy went to bed without crying or calling his mommy back, etc. This fairy would leave a little treat by his door and when he woke (after 7am!!!!! Or no go) he could see what she’d brought him.

We though this was a genius idea. Better than sticker charts because he was too young to understand anything that took several days to pay off. But better, too, then just Mommy giving him a treat if he did well, because, well, you can always argue with Mommy and say, “I DIDN’T CALL YOU BACK! YOU”RE WRONG! GIMME MY TREAT!” But you can’t argue with the Sleep Fairy, now can you, because you can’t ever track her down. She is like an imaginary impartial third party, Perfect! Genius!

So I told Primo, not yet two years old, that I’d read in the newspaper that this famous Sleep Fairy, whose name no one knew, was coming back to NY soon and visiting the homes of all children who went to bed without a fuss. He went to sleep like a dream and the next morning he had a Halloween sugar cookie waiting by his door. The morning after that, it was a little spiral drinking straw. Sheet of stickers, plastic finger puppet. Basically anything that could be purchased for $.50 or less or occasionally a little tasty treat.

The method worked like magic for a few weeks. But it wasn’t as easy as it sounds. I wanted the Sleep Fairy to seem real so I left little notes with the treats, written in curly, swirly letters, which said, “Great job!” and “You’re a wonder to behold!” and “Of all the children, I visit, you are my favorite!” When he got somewhat bored of the treats I threaded in a bit of intrigue to keep him hooked.

“I wonder what the Sleep Fairy’s name is? The newspaper says no one knows.” I told him.

And the next morning, he found a note which revealed her first initial, “M.”

That turned into a big guessing game and night after night, she’d reveal another letter until he discovered her secret name ….. MELINDA!!!!!

The problem is, once you have a fairy for bedtime, you need one for naptime too, or WTF? What’s up with the understaffed afternoon hours in fairy-land? Primo wanted to know? And then once you get a Nap Fairy and reveal her name, slowly, letter by letter (ALINDA!!), the novelty of it all wears thin and Primo starts wondering if she can bring a Sesame Street-themed pencil, why can’t she bring a stuffed Elmo? Which is what he really wants.

The Sleep Fairy becomes permanent. And Santa Claus. And every day is Christmas.

And you explain, with rising frustration, that Melinda is a very small, tiny little creature with wings no thicker than a blade of grass, and how could she possible heave something as large as a stuffed Elmo all the way through the night sky to his door?

“She’s magic.” he replies.

And that’s when it dawns on you that you’ve made a terrible mistake and that this fairy must be killed off. Stat.

But how? These things must be done delicately . . . .

I started to send little hints in her notes which said, “I think I will have to leave you soon. My Mommy and Daddy are moving to Florida.” And “I will miss you very much when I take the plane to Florida on Friday, never to return,” and then finally, “This is my last note. I am at the airport. I have loved you more than all the rest. You are a very good and special boy and you will do great things. Happy sleeping!”

He was disappointed but he got over it. And our house was free of fairies until the great Poop Withholding of 07, when the Potty Fairy was born. Yeah, you heard me right.

Goldilocks

You may recall that a few months ago David and I were deeply entrenched in a stand-off with our crib-jumping two year-old. My husband did not want to resort to the crib tent, which we used with Primo and which worked, marvelously, and led to peace and happiness, Instead he wanted to show his daughter who was boss the old-fashioned way, in a battle of wills. I conceded. After a few days of awful screaming, she seemed to surrender. I say “seemed to” because it only lasted two months or so, and then she started her crib-jumping again. Except this time, she was smarter about it. The months she spent in confinement gave her the opportunity to think up new, nefarious plans for home domination. She realized if she was quiet, she could go and do whatever she wanted.

It started a few weeks ago, when we were putting her to sleep earlier than usual, because she’d taken to skipping naps. So we’d stick her in her crib before her brother went to bed. We’d read him his books and tell him his stories and prayers and then we’d bring him into his bed to tuck him in. Only there’d be a little Goldilocks there.

“SOMEONE IS SLEEPING IN MY BED!” he would shriek, enraged. She is, of course, already the usurper in his mind, and this didn’t help matters.

Of course, we thought it was sweet that she wanted to sleep in her brother’s bed and we overlooked the transgression. Big mistake. Give ‘em an inch . . . .

The other night, we put her to bed in the Pack N’ Play in our room because she was menacing her brother and when David went into the room to grab something a few hours later, he found her in our bed, not asleep, but sitting upright, bleary-eyed, just waiting to be discovered. It was 10:30pm. The child has bionic powers of wakefulness when there’s an act of mischief to be hatched. She just stayed awake silently for over three hours, doing God knows what with my make-up and jewelry in the dark.

So he put her back in the Pack N’ Play and she feel asleep. Then I went to bed a half hour later, creeping under the covers in the dark. When David came to bed he found Goldilocks sleeping in his bed, curled up right next to me. I had no idea.

Since that time, it’s been pandemonium. We put Sec in her crib and we find her sleeping in all sorts of strange places. The other morning she was sleeping with her head on a pillow under the coffee table in the living room. She sleeps in the bathroom. I discovered that one morning when I went to open the bathroom door first thing in the AM and it wouldn’t budge.

“Stuck on a goddamned towel or something,” I muttered, pushing the door again.

Then I realized what was stopping the door from opening was my daughter’s body, which was sprawled out on the other side.

I mean, I know they call these the terrible twos, but really, this is too much.

So I told David the kid was out of chances, we were putting up the crib tent and she’d be stuck in there and I wouldn’t have to worry about stepping on her when I walked into the kitchen for coffee.

The problem is, after only a week, she has figured out how to get out of the crib tent. Primo NEVER figured this out. He was too terrified of the zipping sound which meant lock-up and lights-out to even try to escape.

I have a Houdini baby. That’s what I’ve got. Not to mention an ulcer in the works.

Be kind, unwind

When you have a baby and you read the Baby Whisperer and Dr. Sears and Weissbluth, you find that all these experts spend a great deal of time talking about the importance of creating a soothing bedtime ritual. This ritual is supposed to help your child transition from the stimulation of daytime to the tranquil peace of sleep. I am neurotic and overachieving and always try to do what experts say, so by four months of age, Primo was being bathed at the same time every night, massaged after bath to promote body-mind wellness, read to in the rocking chair, and placed in his crib awake, while the cool chords of Coltrane’s Ballads played on a little CD player in the corner. Same sequence, same time, same place, every night.

Fat lot of good it did us. The Sandman himself couldn’t get this kid to sleep without a struggle. Since he was a baby, he’s had a tough time settling down, and we have tried everything. Everything.

Including, most recently, allowing him to take David’s old Ipod shuffle to bed with him.. Since nightlights and stuffed animals, and good-dream-stories and bribes and threats didn’t work, we figured we’d try letting him relax to his favorite music.

We found however that it is somewhat difficult for a child to unwind whilst his two year-old sister hurls plastic babydolls at his prone form.

I knew something was up when, instead of the usual defiant but jovial yelling, I heard Primo wail. I ran in to find him hysterical and his sister jumping and down in her crib, beside herself with delight at what a terrible ruckus she’s caused.

“She hiiiiiiit me,” he sobbed, “In the heeeeeeead! With her BABYDOOOOOOOOLLS!”

And there you have it, the distillation of my kids’ relationship. Seconda beats Primo down, despite being half his age and less than half his size.

She’s tough as nails, that baby, and ruthless, too. At the playground yesterday, when these 6 year-old boys were chasing Primo around, he ran up to her and pleaded, “Go get those bad kids.” And she did, kicking them hard with her pink Converse high-tops and squawking, “GO AWAY! PRIMO IS MY BOY!” Whenever there’s a kiddie throw-down, I put my money on my daughter and man, does she deliver. But when she turns on her brother, well, action must be taken.

So I had to confiscate her babydolls and move her into the Pack N Play in our bedroom. I mean, Primo was afraid to fall asleep with her there.

Two minutes later, I heard him sobbing again. Back to the bedroom I went.

“What is it now?” I asked.

“I just keep crying,” he sobbed, “and the tears are going into my ears and making my ipod headphones sliiiip oooout.”

Seriously.

“Then just stop crying,” I offered. I mean, its not rocket science.

So, the next time you’re heading into a major pity-fest, and about to stew in your sorry state, just console yourself with the thought that at least your baby sister didn’t beat you up and give you tears in the ears. It should help.

SAHM PTSD, or crib-jumping update

I never thought I’d say this but David has bested Seconda in a battle of wills. My money was on the kid, one hundred percent, but it just goes to show you, two year-olds are not invincible. Although I had a hand-me-down crib tent at the ready, we haven’t had to use it yet because the old-fashioned method, of just sticking the kid back in the crib every time she jumps out, is working.

But Sec hasn’t gone down without a fight – the first night she must have climbed out of her crib at least twenty times in a row, screaming “WHAT WE GONNA DO?” at the top of her lungs. Such is the knack young children have for punishing their parents. They latch onto things you said in moments of weakness and use them against you, over and over again, the kind of retribution Dante was fond of enacting in his Inferno.

“What we gonna DOOOOOO?” she cried plaintively, as if at a hopeless crossroads. .

“We’re gonna stay in our cribs is what we’re gonna do!” I shouted from the living room.

The living room is my base of operations during this sort of showdown. An by that I mean: I'm not allowed anywhere near the sleep-training child. I am a caver. I give up the fight quicker than a virgin on prom night. What can I say in my defense? My nerves are shot. You’d think it would be the reverse, that’d I’d build a kind of tolerance to the insanity, that after four years of non-stop whining and wailing and begging and pleading, I’d be a rock, but no, all of it has actually eroded my store of patience and calm. But who am I kidding? I didn’t have much calm to begin with.

Hearing a baby cry has always hit me like a bowling ball to the guts (I’m speculating here, since I’m not a big bowler brawler, but it seems like it would hurt). On the rare occasions when I can slip out to a movie, and they play that pre-movie segment which tells you all the stuff you shouldn’t do during the show, that baby wail that’s included in the sound montage shocks my system to the core. It’s nothing logical. My body just responds, instantly, like a woman that’s been defibrillated. I’m back! On duty! Whatever the problem, I will fix it! Sorry for temporary lapse! I’m back!

I must suffer from SAHM PTSD. Without the “post.”

Crib-Jumpers

The inevitable happened last night. Seconda learned how to climb out of the crib. If you’re a parent, this will strike a chord of terror in your heart. Or it should. If it doesn’t, it means that you have one of those super low-key children who, in the unlikely event that that they should ever climb out of a crib, would present no danger to themselves, others or your home, the kind of kid who after climbing out of the crib would probably just look through their Beatrix Potter collection until they felt sleepy, at which poiut they’d climb back in the crib or doze off on the cozy shag rug in their nursery. If you have this kind of child, curse you.

I, however, do not have a Stepford child, not even one. Both my children are what experts nowadays like to call “high spirited” which is to say totally unmanageable. Once they climb out of the crib, there is no turning back. The crib-jumping is more or less a declaration of war against David and I. Especially when it comes to the little one.

She’s fierce and wily. She is drawn to electrical outlets and stovetops like a bee to honey. And that’s to say nothing or her uncontrollable oral fixation. I am left in awe of the things she puts in her mouth, even at two years old. There’s the standard set of verboten items like Play-doh and pennies, little accessories belonging to Playmobil guys, small rubber balls included in 4 year-old party bags, handfuls of dirt, sand, lead pencils, and copious amounts of Colgate with whitener. But she also goes for the freaky shit too. Her favorite teething apparatus used to be tampons. If I left her alone for five minutes, that kid would go through a Costco-sized box of Tampax.

“What are you DOING>” I’d yell, “You know how expensive tampons are!”

Seconda gnaws through food packaging like a rat. She’ll just open the fridge, take out a hunk of Jarlsberg cheese and eat it right through the Saran Wrap. When we’re on line at Fairway and I’m busy loading our stuff onto the counter, she will take the opportunity to eat through the Perugina chocolate bars placed next to the cashier, aluminum foil and all. Lipstick, too, the more expensive the better -- you won’t find her devouring the Revlon Toast of New York, but oh, the Nars Hot Voodoo, how tasty! This is not the kind of child you want roaming around the home when you are sleeping. Which is why I had a minor crisis in faith last night when, after placing Seconda in her crib, I heard not the ear-splitting scream of agony I was accustomed to but rather the awful, unmistakable sound of little feet padding along the floor. I waited in the hallway to witness Sec blithely breezing out of her room, announcing, “No sleeping time. Let’s play games!”

“Oh my god,” I gasped. And then, “What are we gonna DO?”

My daughter thought this was just about the finest phrase she’d ever heard and began repeating it over and over again, “What we gonna DO? What we gonna DO, Mommy?”, while the house of cards that is my sanity collapsed entirely.

I will never forget the first time Primo climbed out of his crib. I was about four months pregnant with Seconda, and he was a year and a half old. He has always been a colossally shitty sleeper, and for that, I blame my parents one hundred percent. I like to blame them whenever possible, and usually it’s easy enough to do. See, David and I had read Weissbluth and understood the virtues of sleep training, so at four months, we got started. But a few days into it, my grandmother came over and when she heard the screaming emanating from the nursery, she went balls-out beserko.

“This is child abuse!” she shouted, “I’m gonna call da police!”

Two minutes later, it was, “I’m an old lady! I can’t take dis! I’m gonna have an attaco del cuore!”

And five minutes after that, “You say you love you baby and den you torture him like dis? You no love you baby!”

My father, a professional cardiologist and armchair psychologist, built a careful argument for how Primo would sustain permanent mental damage from the cry-it-out technique, damage which might result in a sociopath.

You will not be surprised to hear that after a week, just as we were making progress, we started to falter and never committed to it again.

Until I was five months pregnant with Seconda and was literally incapable of bouncing Primo on my shoulder for an hour, and then again throughout the night. We’d hit rock bottom and had no choice but to sleep train, which was a horror show. He would stand at the crib railing and scream “MOMMY NICOLE!!!!!!! DADDY DAVID!!!!!!” for - I am not shitting you – two hours straight while David and I huddled on the couch letting the cries lash us in penitence. Or, at least, I did. David just drank beer. Then, a few days into it, just as Primo was settling down without too much fuss, it happened. I put him down in his crib and a minute later he walked right up to me in the living room. I thought I was hallucinating. Then I understood what had happened and that there would be no stopping him, no training him, no sleeping ever again, no sleep, no sanity, no mercy. And I had the biggest meltdown of my life. Up to that point, I mean. That freak-out can’t hold a candle to what I can throw down now. But back then, it was like a 9 on the freak-out Richter scale. I’d never felt so incompetent, so helpless. I called David at work and cried for five minutes without speaking.

“What are we gonna DO?” I wailed when I recovered the power to talk.

Thankfully, David knew what to do. He went directly to Buy Buy Baby and purchased a crib tent. I banned my grandmother from the house and ignored my father’s continuous reminders that I was imprisoning my child and shirking my responsibility to teach him impulse control. I knew with certainty that If I didn’t lock him up, I’d have to lock myself up.

That crib tent saved my life. If I could manufacture bumper stickers I’d make one that said, “I brake for crib tents.” But it became somewhat inconvenient when we spent nights away from our place. We were so terrified about what would happen without the tent that we took it everywhere, and if you’ve assembled one of these things, you’ll understand how insane that is. It doesn’t simply pop into place like a little play tent or a Maclaren stroller. It’s a major production with several poles that must be fit together, Velcro straps that have to be placed properly around the crib railing and a huge amount of mesh netting – all of which we had to pack into our suitcase. With all this wear and tear, the damn thing ripped so I had to darn it, and believe you me, I was never meant to darn anything

So this time around, David has asked that we forgo the crib tent. He wants to kick this habit the old-fashioned way, by breaking the child’s will. Just putting her back in the crib every time she jumps out until she understands that we, the parents, are more powerful and surrenders.

“But we aren’t more powerful,” I whimpered, “It will never work.”

He asked nicely though, and my husband almost never asks to take the reins on parenting stuff. So I gave him three days.

Start the countdown.