March 16, 2008

Bedtime

Once your child is a few months old, unless you are some kind of weirdo co-sleeper or something, it’s time to get them used to their crib. It was a pain to put together; you might as well use it. Although the Ferber-ite types have started to cave in a bit and are saying that you shouldn’t be too hardcore about making kids go to bed by themselves, there remains a debate regarding how best to get children to “put themselves down.” (note that, not for no reason, the phrase for getting a kid to go to sleep and the phrase for killing a suffering, dying animal are the same)

Our get-them-to-sleep approach was to put the three/four-month old kid in the crib, shut the door and ignore any sounds emanating from the room for at least 30-45 minutes: screaming; yelling; choking; crying; she could’ve started talking and yelling "auito mio padre.” It didn’t matter. We weren’t going in. After a week or three, this approach had our daughter falling right asleep about 90% of the time. As for the other 10%, did I mention that she fell asleep very quickly about 90% of the time? This was perhaps our first victory of parenting after a series of early struggles and we were so impressed with our results that started bragging about it to anyone who would listen. We were finally winners.

As a result of all this bragging, someone finally pointed out that if we weren’t going to go in the room under any circumstances, what was the point of even being at home? Essentially, since there was no sound that would make us enter the room, the only help we could possibly provide to the child would be in the case of a fire. And a fire seemed unlikely. The baby didn’t even have matches or a lighter in her room or anything. So we realized that we were essentially giving our daughter the same quality of parenting that someone who tucks in the kids and then goes out and hits the neighborhood bar. But we weren’t actually getting to go the bar. So we were not only bad parents; we weren’t getting to have the fun that bad parents have either. So we weren’t actually winners after all; we were doubled-sided losers.

So the lesson there was when you’re happy with how shit’s going with the family, just shut the hell up and don't muck it up by talking too much. This is a lesson that my dad has been trying to teach me by example his entire life, and I’m finally starting to buy in.

But, anyway, once your kids are 2 years old and definitely sleeping through the night (largely on their own, hopefully), it’s time to set a bedtime. Many new parents think that the reason to have a bedtime is to make sure that your kids get enough sleep.

This is a fallacy.

Secretly, for the last 50 years a small cabal of parents around the world (a cabal that is actually an arm of the Tri-Lateral Commission and being hunted doggedly by Ron Paul) have been paying off researchers to publish studies concluding that young children need 10 or 11 or 12 (or sometimes 14!!) hours of sleep. (ed note: really 14? Dddyfsto: Yup. Look here if you don’t believe me) The number of hours listed in the study varies based upon the size of the bribes made that year. (ed note: Wow; it really says 14!?! Are you fucking kidding me? I can’t believe that even passed the smell test. People believe this? Who could possibly need to sleep that much?). Since most scientists are themselves parents, they have sometimes engaged in pro bono work in this regard and reached these conclusions sans payment. (ed note: I’m still stuck on this 14 thing. Did they do the study by putting the kids in bed and then going outside and timing how long it was before the kids wandered outside to find them? 14-15 hours? I’ve drunk a fucking case and not slept that long) Parents everywhere are the beneficiaries of this group’s efforts as they now have an excuse to get away from the fucking kids for a few waking hours a day. (ed note: if kids sleep 14-15 hours a day, then how fucking hard can parenting be, really? I mean, they’re pretty much sleeping the whole damn time; sign me up!) So you really should thank these researchers when you get a chance. What these researchers have buried (and what anyone who has actually sat and watched a child during the nighttime hours knows) is that kids (once they are 4 years old or so) actually need about 9 hours of sleep. Some need 10, but all kinds of kids are completely fine with 8 or 9 hours a night; some with less.

Now there’s no harm in a kid spending a little time in bed awake. So setting a bedtime is much less about necessity and much more parental choice than most care to admit. And the bedtime you set for your kids says quite a bit about you as a father and you and your wife as parents.

One group of parents sets bedtimes earlier than 8:00 p.m. so they can spend between 8 and 9 p.m. tattooing the words “I’m no fun” or “I secretly fucking hate spending time with my kids” on their asses so they have more time for important stuff, like a daily re-calculating the value of their 401(k) or ironing creases into their khakis or going back to re-shred their credit card bills "just in case."

Another group of parents sets a 10:30 p.m. or 11 p.m. or later bedtime because “they” are a lonely single mom that somewhat pathetically keeps her kids up to keep herself company. Or maybe they don’t ever want to have to be alone with their spouse for too long. Or maybe they live in fear of their children and want to be bitch-slapped around by their kids a little extra each day. Or, my personal favorite, they are still trying to be hip or different or alternative and are rebelling against the conventional wisdom of parenthood out of reflex because rebelling against parental wisdom has been their primary goal in life since adolescence.

A message to parents in this last category: if your kid isn’t going to school yet, and you want them to sleep from midnight to 10 a.m., you should realize that you’re making Li’l Johnny miss the best cartoons, but other than that, it’s your own damn business. I’m ok with that. But can we clarify that your doing that doesn’t make you hip; it doesn’t make you yourself personally cool or some kind of rebel? Can we just clarify that right here? Thanks for your time on that one.

So you figure out what bedtime between 8 and 10 works for your kids and you run with that. But it can still be challenging. First, your children, who normally clam up like they’re in the mob if you ask them questions about their social life, who will break off 90% of your conversations with them with no warning and for no good reason, will, at bedtime, all of a sudden be as chatty as junior high school girl at a sleepover. And chatty in a very good way. Well over half of my best conversations with my children have begun with them in bed and me doing my damndest to escape the room.

Example:

Me: “you have your drink, your blanket, it is totally flat, I’ve tucked you in, I’ve hugged you, I’ve done our secret handshake (and no your sister didn’t see it, don’t worry), your mom kissed you too, I saw it so don’t lie and tell me she didn’t, your nightlight is on, your music is on, doggie is here, the door is open, I’m leaving now, goodnight”

Child: “Daddy… what makes a thing funny? Also, explain infinity to me. And I liked that Pixies you played today; can we listen to more tomorrow?”

Even if they are manipulating me, it is a magnificently skillful manipulation, so it only makes me proud.

Once you’ve escaped the room, however, you probably haven’t escaped. You’ll notice, particularly when you first take the kid from the crib to a bed, that your kid keeps getting out of bed and bugging you and interrupting you when you're trying to get all the swear words out of your system that have built up over the course of the day. So you’ve got a decision to make. Most fathers, thinking the next step is obvious, create a “no leaving your bed” rule. My first child, however, being the child of a lawyer, asked “I can’t even leave my room in a fire?” So we had to identify a number of exceptions to the “no leaving your bed,” including (and these had to be re-explained each night for several months): vomiting, bleeding, pooping the bed, peeing the bed, fire, invasion of house by robbers, water dripping on you from the ceiling, caving in of wall to your room in any fashion, loud screaming from downstairs (this one was later repealed after repeated abuse) or a window breaking. There may have been others that I don’t recall. “If monsters try to get me” was proposed by my daughter but vetoed. My daughter struggled but was ultimately OK with this because she noted that I was “good at tripping people” so she was reasonably certain that if a monster was coming upstairs I would be able to get into the hallway and prostrate myself and utilize my trip skills in the nick of time. (at least it’s good to know that later into life she’s going to be good at making shit up and lying to herself and living a deluded existence.)

Anyway, with these rules in place and well-explained, we thought ourselves all set. The kid would be in bed, wouldn’t bother us unless there was a problem.

The kink in the plan was that now, whenever she needed something, anything, she would scream our names at the top of her lungs “DADDY … MOMMY.” We had no desire to scream in return, so would trudge up to her room to hear the tragedy (example tragedy: "I forgot my hippo stuffed animal. Please get it.") Even worse, after her brother was born, we would have to sprint to her room once the screaming began to shush her harshly before she woke the baby.

So after a month or two, the “no leaving your bed rule” was abolished and replaced with a “no yelling” rule. “If you need something, you can leave your bed and come downstairs or into our room and tell us what you need.” As an entirely unintended consequence, this rule quickly morphed into a “no sex for dad” rule, since my wife thought it possible for our daughter to come into our room at any minute because, after all, we told her she could come find us if she needed something (and she wasn't shy about exercising the privilege). If I waited until I could go in and check that my daughter was actually asleep to "make my move," my wife was commonly asleep (or feigning sleep) already as well, since she was in the habit of going to bed about 30 minutes after the kids did (does any other man feel tricked that his wife goes to bed at 9:30 p.m. or 10 p.m? I feel totally fucking cheated, tricked by my wife into thinking she was cool during courtship only for her, post-nuptials, to unveil her true goin-to-bed-early-ass self).

In any event, it was only several years and another child later (about 9 months ago actually) that we stumbled upon the solution. When our son, at age 3 and a half hit this stage, we left him something in his bed that solved our problems: we left him my cellphone. The “no leaving your bed” rule was reinstituted. If he needed anything or was scared, he could call our land line, and we would address his issue. There was no chance of his walking in at an inopportune moment.

And, as a side benefit, he learned our phone number.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I suppose you're ok for now leaving the cell phone with your kid, but it's only a matter of time before you open your phone bill and have $10K worth of 1-976-HOT-GIRLS calls.....

Ryan said...

Actually, since I no longer have the cell phone with me at night, the number of calls to that number is strangely going down.

Anonymous said...

This was a really funny post! I submitted it to Yearblook.com - you should go and vote on it. Yearblook is a competition to find each day's best blog posts. At the end of the year, the 365 best posts (1 from each day) will be published in a book (a real, printed book you will find on Amazon).