Sh*tty Mom

  Eventually, your kids will come in contact with other kids who swim, run, or play base/foot/soft/basketball. And they’ll want to join the team, too.

  Uniforms. Equipment. Early mornings. Other parents. Goddamnit.

  Look, you can’t completely slack off on extracurricular activities. Remember, you’re not just raising a child, you’re raising a person who may one day be granted power of attorney over your finances.

  You need her to have a few fond memories of her childhood.

  But beware of organized sports: The governing bodies will seduce your young child with colorful participant ribbons and shiny competitor trophies. Before long, your daughter will be obsessed. There are only three possible outcomes to this scenario and they’re all horrible.

  YOUR KID IS NOT A TALENTED ATHLETE.

  Sucking feels shitty, and at some point, your kid will want to quit. At this point, you’ll have to decide which coffee mug platitude to teach: the John Wooden standby, “Quitters never win and winners never quit,” or the easier to implement “Cut your losses.” Try to conceal your ecstasy that the eight A.M. T-ball games may be coming to an end.

  YOUR KID IS AN AVERAGE ATHLETE.

  She gets third place just enough times to make her think first place is within reach. If this keeps up into her teenage years, you’ll be putting in the same hours and expenses as an Olympian’s mom, but with no scholarship to make it all worthwhile. For every “Michael Phelps’s Mom” there are a hundred “For Ten Years, I Sat on the Bleachers Next to Michael Phelps’s Mom” moms.

  YOUR KID IS AN EXCEPTIONAL ATHLETE.

  Even worse, your kid could be talented. That’s the end of family dinners and summer vacations. Casually mention your family’s trip to the Grand Canyon at a swim meet, and two hours later the swim coach is at your house, wild-eyed. The league championships are held over Labor Day weekend, and your daughter is the backstroke leg of the medley relay.

  At the high school level, committing to a time-intensive sport doesn’t allow your teenager to have a normal childhood. Three-or four-hour workouts each day means that she’ll miss out on classic American experiences like getting a job at McDonald’s, getting high before going to the job at McDonald’s, and getting fired for being high while on the job at McDonald’s.

  MAKING ATHLETES THE MICHAEL LANDON WAY.

  The Loneliest Runner was a semiautobiographical 1970s made-for-TV movie written by Michael Landon about a teenage boy who was a chronic bed wetter. To shame him into stopping, his mother would hang his pee-stained sheets outside the window. Every day, the boy would run home to yank the sheets down before any of his friends saw them. Eventually, these daily peesheet wind sprints led to the boy becoming a track star and an Olympic gold medalist.

  Is it true? No. But just because it’s fiction doesn’t mean that, in our overstructured era, you can’t long for the days when terrible parenting created a great athlete.

  Remember: Some moms make athletes, Sh*tty Moms make fans. Somebody’s got to yell at the TV on Super Bowl Sunday.

  * CHAPTER 13 *

  How to Feel Nothing When You Dump Them at Grandma’s for the Weekend/Week/Month/Summer/Ever

  It should be an easy decision. Your baby is exhausting you, and your mom or mother-in-law wants to help. She’s offered to take care of your baby for as long as you need. A night. A weekend. Whatever you want, honey! You can sleep late … take a shower, uninterrupted … have a date night.

  And yet, you can’t.

  You have worked so hard for this baby. You suffered through some miscarriages, or you IVFed five times before the egg finally took, or you flew to China and adopted, or you gave up on IVF, decided to adopt, bought a plane ticket to China, and then got pregnant. The point is, your baby is finally here, totally yours, and you feel compelled to spend every possible moment with her.

  You don’t know it yet, but you’ve lost your mind.

  BABIES WERE DESIGNED TO BE PASSED OFF TO STRANGERS.

  A baby is chubby, cute, and helpless. That is precisely so someone will take her from you for five minutes. You’ve become like the hoarder who can’t see that her house is full of mice. You need a reality show to unhinge the baby from your arms. Give her to grandma and draw yourself a nice, hot Epsom salt bath.

  YOU ARE NO PRIZE.

  Good God woman, look at yourself. Or better yet, rent Sweeney Todd and check out Helena Bonham Carter. Cause that’s you. Ratty hair, crazy eyes, making questionable food choices. Now think of your poor baby. She spends all day staring at you, wondering if this is how she’s going to look when she grows up. Of course she is crying.

  Your baby needs to see how rested adults behave. If she goes only by you, she’ll think it’s normal to shout, “I can’t do this anymore!” and storm out of the house to sit in the car and eat cheese.

  Knowing you aren’t the only kind of person on Earth gives your baby a ray of hope.

  OLD PEOPLE HAVE SOMETHING TO CONTRIBUTE.

  Grandparents possess a unique wisdom that comes from being near death. They remember wars, cheap coffee, and your “asshole phase” that started at around age fourteen and hasn’t quite ended. Your mother is eager to share her knowledge, and since you stopped listening to her the day she said you could stand to lose a few pounds, your baby is all she has left. And after being disappointed in you, her expectations are more reasonable. Whatever she did to you will be diluted considerably by the passage of time and arthritis.

  GRANDCHILDREN ARE A DO-OVER.

  Unfortunately, your mother can’t go back in time and not grab your back fat when you tried on a bikini. That, along with your sister being “the talented one,” is in the books, forever. But your baby is a blank canvas—she’s you, minus the resentment and the memory. And your mom has about thirty years’ worth of emotional paint that’s about to dry out.

  Remember: You look like hell. Get some sleep and wash your hair.

  Things to Do in Your Own Home While You’re the Only One in It

  OK, the baby is gone. You have four days. You may assume you’re supposed to go to a spa or spend lots of money. Well, sure. But for one of those days, Sh*tty Mom prescribes the following: Lead your exact same life, but without the baby and/or kids.

  You won’t appreciate how much your kids have altered your life until you blaze through a to-do list, by yourself.

  Take a shower.

  A long one, with the bathroom door closed. Oooh, look! There’s shampoo in the bottle because your kid didn’t dump it out all at once so that she could make a bubble mountain.

  Go grocery shopping.

  It’s amazing how quickly you can buy everything you need when you aren’t telling the five-year-old to stop licking the apples, or asking the seven-year-old to find his brother, who you last saw running down the cereal aisle. Take time to look at foreign cheeses, organic spices, and fruit hybrids. Look how quickly you can morph from tired mom into pretentious foodie. Brooklyn, here you come!

  Walk to the park.

  The same one you take your kid to. But now you can be that strange lady on the bench who reads books without looking up every minute to scan the sandbox. See those moms in high-waist jeans, tennis shoes, and sweatshirts? Most days, that’s what everyone sees when they look at you.

  Sobering.

  Walk home at an adult’s pace, without carrying a tired three-year-old in one arm and pushing her tricycle with the other. So light, so breezy. This must be the reason people enjoy taking walks.

  Make dinner.

  Sit where you usually sit, and eat the entire meal, by yourself. How does it feel to keep all the good bites for yourself, no sharing? No insisting that the vegetables be eaten … no making threats that you don’t have the energy to enforce. Just chew, swallow, and relax.

  Now you’re ready to party like the wild, single woman that you are for the next six hours. Pull the childproof covers off the electrical outlets. You can do it—there’s nobody in the house who wants to stick a wet finger in there. Then, go t
o the kitchen, take out a knife and … leave it out on the counter … within the reach of a child … so unsafe, and so close to the bleach that you didn’t put up on a high shelf.

  Hell, yeah. You wild girl, you still got it.

  * CHAPTER 14 *

  Free Gear: Get It from Your Selfish Friends

  The three biggest wastes of a new mom’s money are new clothes, new baby furniture, and every single toy.

  CLOTHES.

  Admit it, the outfits are for you, not the baby. No judgment—dressing a baby in coordinated clothes is inexplicably satisfying. They do look cute. But toddlers are like grandfathers—they don’t give a damn if their clothes match.

  FURNITURE.

  C’mon. Who are you impressing with the Bellini nursery set? Your single friends can’t tell a new crib from a large UPS box, and your mom friends will praise your taste to your face while silently thinking you’re a rich jerk.

  Don’t be fooled by furniture ads with the lovestruck new mom breastfeeding her newborn in a mahogany rocking chair in a peaceful, green nursery room. That will happen exactly twice—then Operation Breastfeed will move into the family room, or wherever you keep the big-screen TV and the comfy couch.

  TOYS.

  You can’t predict what your kid will play with. The Melissa & Doug farm animal puzzle will go unsolved while your kid snaps rubber bands for two weeks.

  You need to get all of this shit in the form of hand-me-downs. In olden times, moms were generous with their old clothes. But now, thanks to fertility drugs and certain celebrities, everyone thinks they can have twins when they’re forty-five. Women knee-deep in perimenopause are holding on to all of it … just in case.

  So, what do you do if you see a toy or a doll or a jacket that your friend’s child is no longer using?

  1. Take it. If she’s like 99 percent of the moms, she won’t notice it’s gone. If she does, she’ll think it’s somewhere in the garage or that her husband lost it. Obviously, your kid can’t wear it or play with it in her presence, so be an organized thief and keep track of your stash on an Excel spreadsheet. Of course, this only applies to items that her kids have outgrown (according to you). You can always sneak it back into her house when your child ages up.

  2. Borrow it. This is the same as taking it, except you’re doing it with her blessing. You both know that you aren’t returning the train station roundabout. In fact, you’ll probably lend it to another friend, and so on and so forth, until it falls apart. Then its final owner will donate it to Goodwill and write it off at its original price.

  3. Ask for it. But only if you don’t have the balls to take it. If she says no, you are screwed. You have tipped your hand. She has something you covet. She will notice when it’s missing, suspect you instantly, and never invite you over again. And then how will you get your hands on that Emily train?

  Unfortunately, asking is the only way to get furniture. Unless you are the kind of person who can smuggle a changing table in your purse. Then you should’ve written this book.

  Remember: The Velveteen Rabbit only became Real after he was used up by a Boy. You aren’t stealing, you are making things more Real.

  Hey, How Do I Get Rid of All This Crap?

  Your child has accumulated too many toys. He doesn’t agree with this opinion. In fact, he believes that every toy is necessary. Especially if he hasn’t played with it in nine months and forgot about it until he saw you throwing it away. Those toys are most important.

  Now you must use the skills you honed while building your toy chest. Take a toy and hide it. If your kid doesn’t ask for it within a week, he has forgotten about it. It is tossable. Do this once per week until you have a sizeable stash, something worth the trip to a Salvation Army or a church. (Of course, you can’t give it to anyone your kid will see at a playdate.)

  If you are in search of a “teachable” moment, tell your child that he is going to donate his toys to poor kids. When you explain that some little boys have no trains, your son may tap into some newfound empathy and be happy to share his fourth Thomas the Tank Engine with someone less fortunate. Or he may decide that poor people are assholes who take his stuff. Be careful, you are shaping the political thought of a generation.

  * CHAPTER 15 *

  This Tradition Must Die: Handwritten Thank-you Notes

  There is no greater waste of time in the final months of your pregnancy than the writing of thank-you notes. Instead of enjoying your life’s final eight-hour stretches of sleep, you’re looking for stamps, picking out cards, and remembering how to write in cursive. You’re trying to match gifts to givers—and you’re down to the last two friends. One gave you a box of Huggies, and the other, bedding from Pottery Barn Kids, and you can’t remember who gave what.

  Factor in the energy-suck that comes from months of procrastination, and you will regret ever getting pregnant in the first place.

  DON’T EXPECT YOURSELF TO WRITE THEM, AND DON’T FEEL GUILTY.

  The minute you open a gift, thank your friend profusely in person. Tell her that she will go unthanked in print. That is your gift to her, because receiving a thank-you note is almost as torturous as writing one.

  How long are you supposed to keep someone’s thank-you note? A week, a year? Until you feel thanked? Where does one keep it? In the living room, on an end table, next to that figurine that gives you the creeps, or on the refrigerator, beside the Ambien prescription? Or should you keep it forever, in hopes that its sender is implicated in a sex scandal, or wins American Idol? It’s too much to worry about.

  Furthermore, the thank-you note is a class divider. In an era when an e-mail would suffice, the author of a thank-you note reminds her recipient that she has time on her hands and a nanny to pick up the kids. She’s not ending her days in an exhausted heap, watching Friends reruns and falling asleep with her makeup still on. Thank-you notes are the modern-day equivalent of pale skin and uncalloused hands.

  This tradition must end.

  Remember: It starts with you. Do your part by doing nothing.

  The Journey of a Holiday Card with a Photo of the Giver’s Children on the Cover

  * Open a card from your friend Sarah.

  * See that the cover is a photo of Sarah’s kids, in holiday outfits.

  * Realize that Sarah has dressed up her kids, hired a photographer, taken pictures, selected one, had it printed, and then addressed, stamped, and mailed each envelope so that the card would arrive before the holidays.

  * Remember that you totally fucking forgot to do that.

  * Wait—you put your daughter’s picture on a Christmas card a few years ago. You have some leftovers in the garage—maybe you can send one to Sarah?

  * Whoops. Your daughter was a one-year-old when those cards were made, now she is nine. Never mind.

  * Place Sarah’s card on your fridge.

  * Put two photos of your daughter on the fridge, so the refrigerator photos of your family outnumber Sarah’s 2:1.

  * Invite Sarah over for coffee, so she can see her card on your fridge.

  * Throw it away.

  * CHAPTER 16 *

  How to Leave Your Kids to Go on a Business Trip

  After you have kids, business trips suck. In addition to packing your things, you have to sort out theirs. Sitters are arranged, grandmothers are flown in, phone numbers are written down, clothes are washed and folded, car pools are covered, and food is prepared. You are a warden leaving inmates in the care of a substitute.

  If you’re heading out of town, it must be important.

  In this moment, as you try to make up for your absence, you are vulnerable to guilt. And your kids know it. It’s probably some evolutionary crap, with babies doing whatever they could to convince their mothers not to leave them, vulnerable to a dingo attack. But we don’t live in huts or squat in caves. We have mortgages, and we pay them with jobs that might require travel.

  Do kids care? No. If kids had their way, you would quit your job and the gym and hang out wi
th them all day, eating Goldfish.

  As you zip your suitcase closed, they are doing anything to make you stay. Cute and cuddly one moment, hysterical the next. Children truly are shape-shifters, deserving of their own show on HBO. When the cab pulls up, your kids will say horrible things like “Don’t leave, Mama, we love you.”

  DO AS MUCH BUSINESS AS POSSIBLE WHEN THEY ARE INFANTS.

  Contrary to popular wisdom, a baby’s first year is when you should double down on the hard work. Make partner, go to conventions—shove it all in before he can ask you to stay home.

  YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL.

  When your kid says, “I love you,” she means it as much as she did yesterday, when she said it to an Elmo doll.

  THEY HAVE AN AGENDA.

  Kids know that guilt, like Santa Claus, brings gifts. When you feel like a Sh*tty Mom, they get a present. It is in their best interest to make you feel terrible.

  THEY ARE DISLOYAL TO A FAULT.

  Within five minutes of your departure, Dad will give them ice cream and they’ll be like, “Mom who?”

  DAD IS THEIR FAVORITE.

  Unless their father is the Great Santini, a week alone with Dad is spring break for kids. It’s a vacation from brushing their teeth and taking baths. It’s M&M’s for breakfast, frosting for lunch, and sugar cubes for dinner. And a ten P.M. bedtime.

  AND YOU AREN’T EVEN NUMBER TWO.

  Not only does Dad occupy first place in their hearts, but second place goes to anyone who lets them watch TV. As you sob in your hotel room, unable to enjoy quiet and solitude, your kid is telling the babysitter that she’s prettier than Mom.