And I’ll admit, in the race to thinking about our next baby, I definitely have a four-lengths lead over my wife. Despite the screaming for hours on end, the lack of sleep, and the inability to find free time, I am so ready to do it all again.
I sincerely hope that the following statement isn’t offensive to single parents, but my hand to the Lord, I honestly don’t see how it can be done.
Obviously, it happens everyday. Single parents everywhere raise beautiful children without a lot of the drama commonly associated with this family dynamic. But between the sleepless nights, evolving feeding and changing schedules, and balance with work, I really can’t visualize how one person does it all alone.
In the three weeks since the birth of our son, my wife and I have snapped at each other no fewer than seven times. We’ve snapped about pampers, we’ve snapped about feeding, we’ve snapped about what makes him so fussy.
The good news is that we recognize the culprit behind the broken communication – mostly, a lack of sleep and a deep commitment to providing good care for our baby. We’ve talked several times about what we feel, what we mean when words are getting in the way, and how we want to better moderate our communication.
The bad part? It’s difficult to create a formula to execute this. When you don’t sleep for more than three hours a night, you can’t pinpoint the moment when you’re going to go off. The best you can do is to monitor your reactions, and to suspend your sensitivities in favor of maintaining good ties.
But there are some do’s and don’ts that we have found make this a little easier.
One of the lessons that took me the longest to learn in my life is how to live an imagination-driven life. For the first 23 years of my life, I mostly fell victim to the fears instilled by a black middle-class upbringing; get an education, pick a stable major and find a job with benefits.
As a kid, I was always imaging to be something more than what I was; not that I was unhappy with my family or my life, but I always felt the need to pursue more, to do something that I had no business even dreaming about. And that path of safety and anonymity almost worked out for me; I grew up, graduated from college, got a state job with a good title and worked with great people. But the common theme that governed my discontent throughout life become more pronounced in adulthood than it was in childhood.
And after I got married, the feeling morphed from a tug and whisper to a slap and all-out shout. My life needed to defined by more than domestic and professional ethics. I needed to find a higher purpose.
Next time you consider how difficult your marriage is, how little time you have to share and how it is filled with arguments and animosity, remember you aren’t alone.
A student at my new job put me on to this video, and lo and behold, some of this stuff works. I will tell you that they aren’t permanent measures to stop a child from screaming; if your baby needs changing or feeding, they won’t work.
But if the baby is just fussy, try some of these methods out.
…well, maybe the situation isn’t quite so bleak, but there is new perspective about parenting that got me thinking as a new dad, and should catch your fancy as well.
How do parents unwittingly encourage kids to lie?
AM: A lot of the time, you as a parent already know that your kid has done something wrong. When you say “Did you ditch school?” you’re setting him up to say, “No, I didn’t.” And then you get angry that he lied and ditched.
PM: Setting them up is one way. Another is parents telling white lies in front of their kids, who aren’t able to distinguish between lies and white lies until they’re at least 7 or 8. The third way is kids hearing constantly “don’t tattle, don’t tell.” But at some point, when a child’s friend might be doing something dangerous, the parents say, “Why didn’t you tell me? You lied to me by not telling me.” There’s a real tradeoff here, because we do want kids to try to work things out on their own before they come to a grownup and complain. But the science says that largely they do [already].
I’ve been a father now for five days, and off top, I can say it is the most honorable and tiring thing I’ve ever done in my life. But I’ve learned some things in between the love, tears and dirty diapers that I didn’t know going into fatherhood. Here’s five.
