Sh*tty Mom

by Laurie Kilmartin

  Ronald Reagan was a C student. Did his mother panic and send him to Kumon four times a week? No. She accepted that he was a charmer with good hair, and understood that was enough.

  But if you’re reading this book, you probably don’t want a C student. You want an A student. You know: like Ronald Reagan’s vice president (and the one-term president) George H. W. Bush. Yes, him. Straight A’s look good on paper, but they don’t always get you a second term. (Or smart kids.)

  Average kids inherently understand that they don’t have the goods. They develop other skills precisely because they can’t get an A-plus on a paper that was begun the night before it was due. They grow into college students who can study for a test and into competent grown-ups who can install a kitchen backsplash and use a slow cooker.

  When an average kid scores 2000 on the new SATs, they are thrilled. Gifted kids are depressed. They think they should’ve scored a perfect 2400, what with all their gifts and Latin classes. Inevitably, they drift into a life of hopeless ennui, overqualified for their jobs and often working at companies started by an average kid.

  How can you recession-proof an average kid’s future?

  * Team sports. Get them involved in team sports—that’s key. Ice hockey, not figure skating. Water polo, not diving. Basketball, not track. The sports team is a laboratory where your average kid can learn how to boss her future employees around. (Note: This advice will be completely contradicted in chapter 12, “Organized Sports Might Be Great for the Kids, but They Suck for You.”)

  * Guitar lessons. Hey, someone has to be the band’s bass player, right? To put it in Van Halen terms, your average kid will never be an Eddie, but he could most certainly be a Michael Anthony.

  Of course, many gifted kids are happy, have great jobs, and make lots of money. Play along, we’re trying to cheer up the moms of average kids here.

  Remember: It’s the dumb kids with trust funds that we really need to be worried about.

  Is Your Child “Slow” or Is He a Boy?

  Moms of boys usually have a stroke when they meet a girl who is the same age as their son. Four-year-old girls speak. And not with guttural tongue-flapping and fart noises, but with language. Girls use words, they create sentences and understand metaphors. Listening to your son after you’ve spent time with a girl will make you wonder when he became Jodie Foster in Nell.

  Don’t panic. Your boy could be quite gifted—just not compared to an average girl. Language disparities between boys and girls tend to even out by the time the boys are in their mid-forties (earlier, if they’ve had therapy).

  SECTION THREE

  STOP

  NOT

  TAKING

  THE

  EASY WAY

  OUT

  * CHAPTER 8 *

  Ten-Second Rule: Pacifier on the Ground

  Ugh. This is one of those mothery tasks that is done for appearance’s sake only. Public streets are not covered in anthrax and cocaine. Your baby will be fine if the pacifier goes right back into her mouth. In fact, she may grow stronger after ingesting the street’s unique nutrients. And while it is never advised to deliberately lick the sidewalk, no one has ever died from it.

  But who has time to explain common sense to strangers? The next time you drop the binky, follow this two-step process.

  Look around. Did anyone see the pacifier fall?

  1. If no: Wipe the pacifier on your shirt. Stick it back in baby’s mouth.

  2. If yes: Damn. You have a witness, who may just be filming it on her iPhone so that she can put it up on YouTube, tagged with the search term “terrible mother.” Well, the joke’s on her, because no one’s going to get you on film being a bad mother. All you have to do is add a second step to number one. After you wipe the pacifier on your shirt, stick it in your mouth. Take the hit, like a good soldier. Then stick it back in baby’s mouth. YouTube disaster averted.

  Remember: If you are the kind of person who thought to bring a backup pacifier, this book is not for you. Sorry.

  * CHAPTER 9 *

  How to Sleep In Until Nine A.M.

  Every Weekend

  Behind your back, the other moms call you lazy. They buckle their broods into the minivans on a Sunday morning, late for a soccer game four towns over. They spot your car, parked defiantly in the driveway. Through your curtains, they see your child sitting on the floor, rapt, watching Dora the Explorer on your giant TV. Anyone resembling a mother is not visible.

  It’s almost as if you’re still asleep.

  Bitch.

  Look. It matters not why you’re tired. You could be a single mom, an old mom, an anemic mom, a works-two-jobs mom, or an “alcoholic who hasn’t hit bottom yet” mom.

  The important thing is that, once your baby started sleeping through the night, you realized that if you didn’t get some rest, you were gonna die. Your kid is four now. In China, four-year-olds have jobs. Surely yours can entertain herself for a few hours while you sleep.

  LEAVE BREAKFAST OUT THE NIGHT BEFORE.

  Friday and Saturday nights should be like Christmas Eve. Instead of leaving a plate of cookies for Santa, you’ll be leaving a plate of something breakfast-y for the kids. Something that won’t go bad when left out during the hours between your bedtime and their wake time. (You can also leave it all in a small ice chest. Put a bow on top—it will be like opening a present.)

  * Whole apples (don’t cut them, otherwise they’ll brown, and then there’ll be a knock on your door about “old apples”)

  * Cheese cubes (in a ziplock bag)

  * Juice in sippy cups—two per child

  * Peanut butter sandwiches, or whatever you use as a peanut butter substitute

  * Cookies. Soon, they will learn the principle known as Sh*tty Mom’s Razor: Mom + asleep = cookies and cartoons. (You can save the nutritional breakfast for weekdays.)

  ENTERTAINMENT.

  Preface: This is a waste of energy, and not Al Gore approved.

  We are assuming your kid knows how to push the remote’s Play button. Leave the TV on overnight (sorry, future generations). Freeze the DVR on the opening frame of a ninety-plus-minute movie like Curious George. Leave the remote in plain sight. If, on his way to wake up Mom at 6:30 A.M., he sees the guy in the yellow outfit on TV, and that big red Play button on the remote, he will forget all about you.

  If you don’t have a DVR or don’t have a good movie saved on it yet, leave cartoons on all night. The downside is each cartoon lasts just thirty minutes. Unless the next one starts immediately, your kid may see the commercial break as a time to go get Mom.

  IF YOUR CHILDREN TRY TO WAKE YOU UP,

  YOU MUST FEIGN SLEEP.

  They might sneak into your room and whisper. Under no circumstances should you look at them, acknowledge their presence with a half-smile, or even move. They might go away. But if they see even the whites of your eyes, they will consider you awake and theirs to torture. This means you pee in a cup so they don’t hear you shuffle off to the bathroom. Always keep a clean Big Gulp cup under the bed.

  “LET MOM GO BACK TO SLEEP” IS NOT IN THEIR VOCABULARY.

  If you give in to one request (i.e., making breakfast), you might as well get up because you are done for. Kids don’t “let” you go back to sleep. Like a band of ’70s-era terrorists, their demands will only increase in scope and impracticality. Instead of unmarked bills and a plane to Algeria, your kids will ask for more toast, then milk, and finally a castle and a horsey. When you point out the latter two are impossible, they will promise to release all of the hostages if you wake up and play with them.

  Your sleep time is over.

  ONE MOM’S “LAZY” IS THE SH*TTY MOM’S “UNSTRUCTURED.”

  It’s not easy—almost no one will support you. But your lack of participation is a rebellion. No lessons, no classes, no games. This is active resistance. You’re like a freedom fighter, in pajamas. Your Monday–Fridays are busy and American, but your weekends are all France.

  Remember: Sh
*tty Mom’s Razor: Mom + asleep = cookies and cartoons.

  * CHAPTER 10 *

  It Only Takes a Partial Village if You Just Have One Kid

  People get annoyed if you stop at one child. They say you’re selfish for not giving your kid a sibling, that your kid could turn out spoiled and awkward. These people are usually called “grandparents.” Beware the grandparent! They are a vengeful folk who enjoy the schadenfreude of watching their grandchild inflict on you the same pain that you inflicted on them. And they want more of it.

  The other second-child evangelists are friends who’ve just had their second child. They are desperate for someone else to sit at their two-kids table, and they’re jealous that you only semi-ruined your life. They look at the wreckage of your present and want you to bulldoze what’s left of it with another kid.

  And they will lie.

  “The kids play together!”

  Yeah? Well, that sure looks like fighting to me.

  “We’re trying for a third!”

  No they’re not—the husband just had a vasectomy. And the second kid was an accident.

  “We finally feel like a real family!”

  Uh, thanks?

  Don’t fall for it.

  ONE CHILD IS DOABLE.

  One kid can be chased after, overpowered, and subdued. One child can be pawned off on a relative, taken to a movie, or hidden under a desk in the office at work. One child will play by herself, quietly. You can nap on the weekends with one child (and a locked front door). Just one child to dress in the morning means you won’t be too late for most things. You are agile and portable.

  You can bring one child to Paris. You won’t, but you can.

  YOU CAN’T AFFORD IT.

  Only two kinds of people have big families: the very poor and the very rich. The poor have limited access to birth control, while the rich have unlimited access to IVF and surrogates. You probably aren’t either.

  THINK BIG PICTURE.

  You can spend the entire college fund on your one kid, instead of splitting it among three kids. And remember that, in the future, you will be an old person who needs help. One grateful Harvard grad will put you in a four-star nursing home, near her house. Three pissed-off community college dropouts will shove you out on the streets.

  Your choice.

  SIBLINGS SUCK.

  How is it that siblings have such a great reputation? Has everyone forgotten how awful brothers and sisters are? They hid your toys, borrowed your Walkman/iPod but then never returned it, told Mom that it was you who drank Dad’s bourbon and wore your favorite blouse without asking. Even now they will mention at the Thanksgiving table that this is your fourth boyfriend-free holiday in a row, and insinuated that your kid isn’t as verbal as theirs.

  Oh, and one of them keeps putting your seventh-grade class picture on Facebook. Who needs these people?

  THE WRONG SIBLING CAN RUIN YOUR CHILD’S LIFE.

  Just ask David Dahmer. Well, you can’t. He changed his last name and went underground after his brother got busted for eating people. As did Paula Hitler, sister to Adolf. Oh, how quickly the “brother who played with me” becomes the “maniac I was never close to.”

  Conversely, what if there was a smart, talented Kardashian sister? A strange sibling to Kim, Khloe, and Kourtney, born with a high IQ and the capacity for shame. A Kardashian who had sex off-camera and worried about doing something meaningful with her life. A Kardashian with the kapacity to komprehend kalculus, khemistry, or psykhology. Imagine the wretched loneliness of such a kreature. Perhaps this kursed Kardashian exists and, like Paula Hitler or David Dahmer before her, she saw the irreparable damage done to her surname and changed it. Maybe she lives among us. A kollege graduate enjoying a kuiet life in the kountry.

  DON’T GET COCKY.

  It’s OK to quit while you’re ahead. Just because you had one great kid doesn’t mean that the next one will be worthwhile. You aren’t special because you made a good one, you’re lucky. Imagine if the Baldwins had stopped after Alec, or the Sheens after Emilio.

  Remember: One kid is a carry-on bag—portable and manageable. Two or more is checked luggage—costly and likely to get lost.

  * CHAPTER 11 *

  How to Leave Your Baby in the Car While You Dash into a 7-Eleven

  Some actions that ought be legal are not. Smoking pot, selling sex, and murdering an ex for not paying child support are but three. And while it’s not “illegal-illegal” to run into a convenience store to pay for gas while your baby stays in the car, it certainly doesn’t feel legal. At the very least, it’s frowned upon.

  It shouldn’t be.

  Before we continue, let’s pause for a moment and consider those poor parents who have forgotten their babies in their car, only to return ten hours later to find that the worst has happened. This is truly awful, and they have our empathy. Most important: It’s not their fault. The real problem here is that babies do not know when to cry. It would behoove them to learn.

  How is it that babies can scream through the night but when you’re about to leave them in the hot car, not a peep? Do they even want to live? Why hasn’t the evolutionary process hardwired an “I’M IN THE BACKSEAT” scream into all babies’ DNA? It is a glaring omission that completely undermines Darwin’s credibility.

  Plus, the only reason these parents forget their baby is that they’re in a fugue state thanks to three A.M. feedings of the aforementioned baby. Let’s face it, babies work against themselves and, like Democrats, are often their own worst enemies.

  Unfortunately, the desire to prevent more tragedy has discouraged moms from engaging in the very practical habit of leaving one’s baby in the car for two freaking minutes.

  WHY IT’S OK.

  To paraphrase Hobbes, running errands with a baby is nasty, brutish, and long. The smallest activities take forever. Each time you exit the vehicle, you have to open the back car door, unbuckle a five-point buckle that would drive even Rubik mad, and pull the baby out. You probably had to wake him up, too. (That’s the real crime.) Now your cranky, just-woken-up baby goes in either a stroller or a sling.

  The stroller has to be removed from the trunk, unfolded, and popped open. One of the metal levers will stick—every time. The stroller’s hippie cousin, the wrap, comes with ropes, pulleys, and a useless instructional video. If you do succeed in securing your baby into your wrap, don’t get excited. You will never be able to replicate that sequence of events. Each time will be as frustrating as the first.

  Then, when you’re done grocery shopping, the stroller must be folded up, the wrap unspooled, and the baby buckled back in to the car seat. Now it’s time to go to the post office.

  And repeat.

  Any instance when you can eliminate this brain-deadening process, do. Even just two minutes of convenience feels like a reprieve. This baby is strapped to you constantly. You are allowed to dart away for a quick cup of to-go coffee and dart back. It will save time and, for a few moments, you will feel light again.

  How can you do it?

  HIDE THE BABY. NOT FROM PREDATORS,

  BUT FROM DO-GOODERS.

  Do-gooders are actually more prevalent than pedophiles. In fact, they deserve their own registry. When you move to a new area, the police should have to tell you how many people in your neighborhood have unnecessarily called CPS. Luckily, at least one-third of all people loitering outside a 7-Eleven are wanted for a felony. They don’t want the cops stopping by any more than you do.

  COVER THE BABY WITH A BLANKET.

  Michael Jackson did it all the time. (By the way, this is the only parenting technique Sh*tty Mom will steal from him.) Now the sleeping baby looks like a load of laundry.

  DON’T LEAVE YOUR KEYS IN THE IGNITION.

  Oh sure: You live in the Midwest and that’s how you do things in Minnesota.

  You are begging to have your car stolen. Stop being selfish and think for a second about this poor carjacker. All he wants is some wheels. He doesn’t want your baby.
He can’t even afford to pay for his own babies—that’s why he’s stealing your car in the first place. He came to this 7-Eleven for a Slurpee and someone else’s car, and now he’s looking at kidnapping charges. That’s a potential death penalty case. Nobody wants that.

  Remember: You are dashing into a convenience store, not checking out reference books at the New York Public Library. This is a three-minute operation, tops.

  Never Wake Up a Sleeping Baby

  This is one of the oldest parenting axioms, and it should apply to more than just babies. Let’s face it, the only time people of all ages are tolerable is when they are asleep. They can’t make demands, point out flaws, or act on their worst desires. When he was asleep, Cambodian dictator Pol Pot didn’t look like the kind of guy who executed people for wearing glasses. In fact, he probably looked like a cute little baby.

  Riding in the car puts your infant to sleep. Taking her out of the car wakes her up. That is the only thing you tell the police when they arrest you. A woken-up baby speaks for herself, and if your lawyer can’t use that argument to get the abandonment charges dropped, he should be disbarred.

  * CHAPTER 12 *

  Organized Sports Might Be Great for the Kids, but They Suck for You

  Like whooping cough, organized sports are highly contagious. You can vaccinate against them by not signing up the two-year-old for soccer classes. (If we can agree that the two-year-old at soccer practice is a two-year-old running on a field, then we can agree that the same thing can be accomplished by driving the two-year-old to any old field, and at your convenience.)