YOUR CHILDREN WANT TO RUIN YOU
* CHAPTER 1 *
Road Trip with Your Kids: Multiply How Bad You Think It Will Be by a Thousand, Then Add Ten Million
First, let's figure out how this happened. What series of bad decisions led to this terrible morning, where you are packing the minivan with juice boxes, sliced apples, cheese sandwiches, edible Goldfish, small coolers, chapter books, crayons, and portable DVD players? How could it be that, hours from now, a smart cookie such as yourself will be changing your baby's diaper in a truck-stop bathroom usually reserved for $20 hand jobs?
Did you fail to consult Google Maps before you agreed to go to the in-laws for the holidays? Or Disney World as a family? If you live in Ohio, did you forget that, in order to get to Florida, you have to drive through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia?
That is some brain fart, sister. Here's a few things to try:
* Cancel. And not just this Thanksgiving, but every Thanksgiving, until your youngest is at least six.
* Skype. Hire the Geek Squad to set up Skype on your mother-in-law's computer. It will cost less than what you'll spend on gas.
* Check airfares. It's possible to get reasonable last-minute airfares (if you're not traveling on a holiday). While flying with kids is its own kind of hell, it is at least a shorter one.
If you are already driving:
* Save time, pee on the side of the road. If you have more than one kid, you can't pull into a gas station every time a juice box is digested. Pit stops can add as much as an hour to a trip, when you factor in the tantrums that come from saying no to mini-mart candy.
Find a nice ditch, off the side of a wide shoulder, and teach your little one to squat or pull it out. Being able to pee outdoors is an essential skill that every American ought to have. It's how many of us will urinate in the future, as our nation slides further into debt. Soon bathrooms will become like universities, with the public ones defunded and the private ones hugely expensive.
* Give up and turn around. This is a golden opportunity to let the kids know that Mom doesn't take shit. Because let's face it, somewhere along the way, you've lost their respect.
You've threatened to leave a movie theater when they've acted like brats, but then stayed because it was less a hassle. Over the years, you've become exhausted and predictable. They know how to play you. Your bite is toothless.
Well, today the joke's on them, because you didn't want to go to Disney/Thanks/Christ/Hannu/Flags/Land anyway. This time when you yell, "I swear to God, if you hit your sister one more time, I'm turning this car around," you will actually turn that car around. They will be shocked at your coldheartedness. They will scream and cry, but you will not cave, because this time it's easy to follow through.
And then, they will fear you.
* Make them suck it up. Our kids are unskilled in the dark arts of entertaining themselves during a road trip. They sit comfortably in special seats, with their sippy cups lodged in convenient cup holders. DVD players unfold from the minivan's ceiling, and they are entertained like child emperors in the last days of Rome. If you can handle the whining, turn the radio to your favorite station and teach them how to be alone with their thoughts by providing no distractions at all.
Remember: This time you will "turn this SUV around RIGHT NOW!"
Other Things Your Kid Will Try to
Clean with the Gas Station Squeegee
Oh, the little ones, they love to help out at the gas station. Hold the gas pump, then wash the car with a squeegee that's been sitting in gray water for two days. After your daughter polishes your car, she will only want more. Depending on how attentive you are, she'll hit one or all of these targets:
* The ground
* Other cars
* Your shoes
* Your car's recently conditioned leather interior (oh, she's in the car now)
* The GPS
* The backup, handwritten directions to Disney World
* Her baby sister's hair
* All the orange slices. All of them.
* CHAPTER 2 *
You're Home with the Kid and You Have a Conference Call in Ten Minutes
Whether you're working from home because your kid is sick, you freelance, or you're still looking for a job, there's one thing you must do during a conference call: Get your kid to shut up.
Children hate anyone who takes your attention away from them. Like animals that can sense an impending earthquake, children can tell when you're about to say something very important to a client. They have a superpower, and they use it for evil. You must prepare.
BEFORE THE CALL.
Lock the front and back doors. Make sure your child can't get out of the house. It's possible that, if she has a tantrum, you will be forced to hide in your bedroom closet. You need to know that your daughter won't run into the street while you pitch ideas from under the winter blankets.
Prepare diversions. Set everything up before your child sees you holding the phone.
Food bribery. Now is not the time to avoid corn syrup. Better that your child gets cavities or diabetes than you lose your job. Ice cream, candy bars, chocolate, chips, gum balls, chips, leftover pizza: Any food that seems like a bad idea is a great idea. Ice cream should be pre-scooped into bowls, candy bars unwrapped, pizza reheated, all of it ready to be passed out, mid-whine.
Fill two to three sippy cups. Instead of pouring during the call, grab the next cup on the assembly line. This child will not win.
Eventually, you will train her to love your conference calls.
Put on a DVD. And have four alternates standing by. Even if your child loves her Thomas the Tank Engine DVD, she will demand you put in Winnie the Pooh, just to test your loyalty. (Because having her wasn't enough.)
DURING THE CALL.
Hide. Stay out of her line of sight-let her sink into the food and TV. You have between ten and thirty minutes before she starts looking for you.
Mute the phone. After she finds you, put the phone on mute. She is about to launch her "Mom, I have to go potty!" grenade. It's better that your coworkers don't hear you than they do hear your child.
Give yourself permission to go nuclear. No one is going to call CPS if you end up barricading your kid in her bedroom. In fact, the other people on the call will wish that you'd done it sooner.
Remember: "If my kids are still alive at the end of the day, I've done my job." -Roseanne
* CHAPTER 3 *
Screens Con: Don't Let Your Kid
Become a PDA-hole
Look, you and me-we're ruined. Any parent who's Generation X or younger grew up with computers, laptops, video games, cell phones, and now smartphones. We surf the internet and text while we watch TV. We're always hovered over a screen, tapping and typing, never giving anything our full attention. We're self-centered and awful.
But it's OK, because we're grown-ups. We spent a few of our formative years playing with tangible objects and drawing with crayons. We're allowed to be PDA-holes because we've earned it.
Our kids, however, have not.
Boredom is character building. How else will your oldest child figure out how hard she needs to pinch your youngest child until she cries? Do you want a baby sister who wasn't tortured by her older sister? That's unnatural.
It is the bored child who discovers that boogers are salty, Sharpie pens work on walls, and that a steady hand can tease the legs off of a living fly. It is the bored child who will eventually slide a hand down his or her pants and meets that amazing, soon-to-be best friend that lives just inches below the belly button. Does the boy whose mom has the Cake Doodle app on her iPhone even know he has a penis?
All iPhones, iPads, and iPods (and their non-Apple counterparts) should be kept out of reach, for as long as possible. No one's suggesting you get rid of your devices. That would be ridiculous and unreasonable. It would mean you would have to use a landline. Just keep them away from your kids. Here's a few ideas:
* Pretend the device is broken. It's never too soon to teach kids that, in life, things break. Electronics, televisions, hearts. Life is pain. Later, at your convenience, you can "fix" it. See, kids? Hearts mend. Moms heal. Life goes on.
* Pretend the device is lost. Ask them to complete a chore, and in exchange for a good job, you'll find it for them. Now the toys are put away, and you're a hero.
* Pretend the battery is dead. For when you're tired of pretending it's broken. This only buys you the amount of time it normally takes to charge the battery.
Remember: All these solutions demand that you look into your children's eyes and lie. Be strong.
Ways to Rationalize Your Child's
Increase in Screen Time
You have a bad feeling about your toddler and screens. In the back of your mind something isn't right. Well, there's only one thing you can do about those fears: Rationalize them away.
He is learning how to:
* Count.
* Use a touchscreen.
* Count things with a touchscreen, then kill them.
He is not:
* Putting sunglasses on the dog.
* Making scratch marks on his sister's leg with his fingernails.
* Trying to duplicate the scratch marks, but this time with his toenails.
And, he may grow up to be:
* An app developer.
* A computer programmer.
* An overweight gamer who never moves out of the house. Wait, who said that? Oh shut up, "back of my mind."
* CHAPTER 4 *
Screens Pro: iCan Finally Take My Kid to a Restaurant. Thank You, Angry Birds!
You know how you resist something solely because it's popular? Because you're not a drone that falls in-line with whatever's trending on Google. Then you try that popular thing and it's not too bad. And you're embarrassed it took you this long to admit that, for example, Katy Perry isn't terrible? Well, the preceding chapter was written before its shitty author broke down and tried Angry Birds.
Oh my.
Please enjoy an opposing view on PDAs, held by the same person.
If your kids' screen cherry is already broken, you've lost the war. They've tasted the sweet thrill that comes from killing a pig with a well-flung bird. Now they're aware of a world beyond the woodsy goodness of Melissa & Doug.
They want more.
Luckily, you're not alone. Go to an Applebee's or a T.G.I. Friday's and you'll see whole families eating in silence, enjoying their screen-lit dinner. We've all surrendered to our glowing overlords.
Oh, not you? You've held out, huh? Your daughter isn't going to have one of those things for a loooooong time. Well. Aren't you the cocky one.
For your plan to work, you need other mothers to do the same. And they won't. Your daughter will attend school with their children, and these kids will know she's "different." Her reasonable attention span and ability to read something longer than a text will mark her as Other. She will be ostracized and mocked until, one day, her fingertips will find a classmate's screen. She'll tap once. Twice. A game will open, and within an hour, she'll be at level 16.
Maybe not this year, maybe not next year. But surely by second grade. And then you'll be one of us.
The good news is that the addictive nature of a PDA will increase your parental powers. Your kids will become junkies and you, their dealer.
Imagine for a moment what it must be like to dole out coke to a cokehead. That's a cokehead that you can control. That's a cokehead who will brush his teeth the first time he's asked. Who will be quiet at a Starbucks and engrossed during the aforementioned seven-hour drive.
Don't pretend the iPhone is lost, broken, or forgotten-that makes you look weak. And a good dealer never looks weak. Instead, let your cokeheads know that their connection, Mom, has downloaded the smartphone equivalent of 10 kilos of sweet stuff from Bolivia. And they will get it after they eat their peas.
Managing the flow of demand: This is how nations are built and rebellions are crushed.
You pimp, you.
Remember: We're all going to hell together.
PDA Lies You Tell Your Kids
They see you using it, despite that it's "No Screen Sunday." And they want to know why they can't.
"Mom's just checking her e-mail."
Despite your new rule, there you are, tapping away. And you're not checking e-mail. No one e-mailed you. Well, two people did, but one of them is a "horny MILF" who thinks you are a guy and lonely. The other is your husband and he doesn't count.
"Let's listen to the radio."
A driving quandary. You want to listen to Marc Maron's podcast, WTF, on your iPhone, but it's too dirty for your four-year-old daughter, so you can't plug the phone into the speakers. So you put the radio on and slip the phone between your legs. You stick an earbud in your left ear (facing the driver's side window) and leave the right ear unbudded. As far as your daughter knows, you and she are both suffering through corporate radio together. Enjoy that lie as long as you can. The moment she notices that little white wire dangling from your left ear, not even remotely blending in with your brown hair, she will never trust you again.
"Mom wants to make sure this game is appropriate for you."
Oh really? Then why are you still wearing earbuds? You're not done listening to WTF. Everyone knows it.
