Sh*tty Mom

  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 appro
priate for you.”

  Oh really? Then why are you still wearing earbuds? You’re not done listening to WTF. Everyone knows it.

  SECTION TWO

  BUT

  SOMETIMES

  THEY

  ARE

  AWESOME

  * CHAPTER 5 *

  How to React if You Think Your Child Might Be Gay (Hint: Celebrate)

  Sometimes you can tell. Your son likes “girl toys,” or your daughter doesn’t. Your husband doesn’t want to talk about it, but your Spidey sense is telling you that your kid might be gay. What do you do?

  Pop the champagne!

  Your gay kid may be the best thing that ever happened to you.

  GO WITH IT.

  If you can be fully supportive of your gay child, you will be loved. Loved, adored, and worshipped. (And possibly impersonated in a drag show.) And your gay kid’s gay friends will wish you were their mom. They will remember you on Mother’s Day, and after your death, your funeral will be jam-packed with good-looking men and strong-shouldered women.

  DON’T TRY TO “STRAIGHTEN” YOUR GAY CHILD.

  Not only will she remain gay, but one day she may write a scathing memoir about her childhood. When it’s turned into a movie, the “mom” will be played by someone who is shorter, fatter, and more wrinkled than you are.

  CLOSETED GAYS ARE NOT HAPPY PEOPLE.

  Forcing your gay kid to live a lie will backfire. Kids who repress their homosexuality often grow up to become disgraced pastors (Ted Haggard), hypocritical lawyers (Roy Cohn), insane dictators (Adolf Hitler, according to some sources), or Scientologists (no example provided due to potential litigation).

  Your child deserves better.

  PREPARE FOR BATTLE.

  It’s likely that the five-year-old boy who looks so adorable wearing your sleep bra will, in his teen years, be bullied by an asshole. It’s wrong and it’s unfair, but it’s common. Sh*tty Mom believes that, like Israel, gay kids should be allowed to preemptively strike if they feel threatened. Gay bashing would end quickly if gangs of tough gay kids were allowed to roam the streets, beating the crap out of problematic straight kids.

  Try to interest your kid in some kind of martial arts. If he can enter middle school with a black belt, the school bully might skip him and move on to the kid who’s really asking for it: the nerd.

  (FYI: Nerds should remain closeted until they are accepted into Stanford.)

  ADAM AND STEVE CAN’T MAKE A BABY EVE.

  What the Christian right hates about gay couples is what parents should love: They can’t procreate. Unlike your sister, whose straight daughter will be alarmingly boy crazy when she’s fourteen, you won’t be up nights, worrying that your gay kid is legs up in the backseat of a truck somewhere, getting pregnant.

  Gay people have to go out of their way to have children. They hire surrogates, they adopt. Some of them will even put David Crosby’s sperm in their vaginas (!). All of those procedures are planned and costly. If your gay kid ever does have a baby, at least you won’t be stuck raising it while she’s out partying instead of studying for her GED.

  And what if you are wrong and your kid ends up being straight?

  Better luck next time.

  Remember: Stereotypes don’t come out of nowhere. It’s possible that your gay daughter will attend a Division 1 school on a softball scholarship or your gay son will style your hair. Forever. For free.

  Kick-ass Moms of Gay Kids

  Cher Well, technically Cher’s son, Chaz, is a straight male. However, he started out as a lesbian named Chastity, so Cher gets an honorable mention.

  Stephanie Seymour The former supermodel has an openly gay son named Peter Brant II. As a twosome, they caused a slight sensation when photographed on a beach in what some people described as a semi-incestuous embrace. In a written defense of his mother, Peter mentioned that he is gay. At the time, he was a senior in high school. It’s tough to come out at that age, but we’re guessing his mom made it easier.

  Alice Hoagland Mark Bingham died on 9/11. He was a rugby player and one of the passengers on United 93. He helped overpower the hijackers, and possibly prevented the plane from crashing into the Capitol Building. Afterwards, his mom, Alice Hoagland, exhibited striking composure and grace while speaking to the media about her son. She didn’t make Mark’s homosexuality the focal point of her memories, but she also didn’t shy away from it.

  Betty DeGeneres Ellen’s mom, Betty, wrote a book with her daughter, and they talked about the coming-out process. Betty also appears frequently on Ellen, and she was the first nongay spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign’s Coming Out Project.

  * CHAPTER 6 *

  When Your Kid Is a Different

  Race/Ethnicity Than You

  First of all, scoot over. You have a story to tell and Sh*tty Mom is all ears. As far as we can tell, one of the following scenarios must have gone down:

  YOU HAD SEX WITH AN OTHER-RACE MAN.

  Well, aren’t you the naughty one. Giving your parents a heart attack when you dragged home that black/ white/ Asian/

  Hispanic/ Arab/ Indian/ Jewish/ Native American/ Pacific Islander guy from college.

  You are ahead of the curve. Sometime in the middle of the twenty-first century, America will cease to be a white majority country. Your nonwhite or half-white or Hispanic-but-no-one-thinks-that’s-white kids will be the majority. An added bonus is that mixed race kids are often gorgeous. They take the best features from both parents and chuck the rest. The addition of new DNA is like restarting a frozen family tree.

  America is a small country. This fact is illuminated during almost every election cycle when genealogists discover that the candidates are related. George W. Bush and John Kerry are ninth cousins, twice removed. Dick Cheney and Barack Obama are eighth cousins. Look, if those two are related, we’re all related. Dipping your toe in a new gene pool may prevent you from accidentally banging a cousin. (Because if you’re going to bang your cousin, it should be on purpose.)

  Good for you.

  SOMEONE’S GREAT-GREAT-GRANDMOTHER HAD SEX WITH AN OTHER-RACE MAN AND IT’S JUST SHOWING UP NOW.

  Way back when, one of your grannies got around. The evidence lay dormant for a few generations until, one day, out came your baby with different textured hair, or lighter or darker skin. The difference between you and your kid may not be as obvious, but you’ll still get the occasional odd look when your brown kid shouts “Mom!” at the park, and pale, freckle-faced you shows up, saying, “What?”

  YOU HAVE ADOPTED.

  Hello, hero. Here’s what strangers know about you: You’re patient, generous, and good-hearted. They know you waited for a baby and that one day you got a call that changed your life. More than anyone, they know you wanted that baby. What strangers don’t know is where you got your other-race child and, my, are they curious! They’ll crack open Google Maps and rattle off Pacific Rim countries that are a potential match for your Asian daughter.

  “China? Korea? Vietnam? Cambodia? Thailand?”

  Only you can put them out of their Rand-McMisery and say, “San Francisco.”

  Now you are an expert on a culture that you’d previously only encountered at parades or restaurants. There is only one thing left to learn:

  HOW TO STYLE YOUR KID’S HAIR.

  You might be able to wing it with Caucasian or Asian hair, but African hair is serious business and must not be taken lightly. (See the Chris Rock documentary Good Hair.) Right behind it in degree of difficulty is red hair, depending on the curl. (Sorry to the Gingers that “red” isn’t capitalized like “Caucasian,” “Asian,” and “African.” And it probably doesn’t help that “Ginger” is.)

  Depending on where you live, head uptown or downtown to an appropriate beauty salon. Bring your kid and let a stylist show you what to do.

  Remember: There’s no better way to show your child that you love her unconditionally than to learn how to comb her hair.

  My Kids, My Husband, and I Are the S
ame Race/Ethnicity. Am I from the 1950s?

  No, you are still of this millennium. But understand that Sh*tty Mom’s Mexican-Irish son is coming for your Jewish daughter, and you can’t stop him.

  * CHAPTER 7 *

  It’s Come to Your Attention That Your Kid Is Merely Average

  Your kid is three, maybe four years old. During playdates, you’ve noticed that he isn’t the intellectual pack leader. He’s not dumb, but he’s not as quick with the puzzles. He knows his A-B-Ds. He is able to count to ten if you don’t include six. You’re close to admitting that your child may not be fast-tracked into the gifted program.

  You luck out.

  Based purely on anecdotal evidence, average kids grow up to be normal and well-adjusted adults. Just going by recent high school reunions, it’s apparent that the class fuckups overwhelmingly hail from one of two groups: kids from bad families and kids from the gifted program. In fact, this chapter should be called “What If Your Child Is Gifted?” Because those are the moms who ought to be worried.

  When you tell gifted kids they can be president, they’ll calculate the odds with their big brains and say no. Soon they’ll stop believing anything you say. You’re just another upbeat liar who can’t comprehend even basic statistics. But dumb kids will believe you every time.