Advice for the Children of Divorcees
I’m reading a book about baby sleep. “What is there to know?” you ask (those of you without children, that is. Those of you with kids know exactly what there is to know–anything and everything). I thought the very same thing: “The kid sleeps when he sleeps, right? They come pre-programmed, just like a cell phone.” This couldn’t be more inaccurate, and just goes to show that this whole modern-day non-communal living thing leaves us metropolitan loners in the dark when it comes to babies and things like how they sleep.
So I’m reading a book about it. You get a car, you read the manual. This is the same thing, I figure. There’s a helpful section on great ways to get your tot to sleep without resorting to tears and misery for all members of the household, and most of it seems like practical, non-smarmy advice. But my irony alarm beeped when I read the section about creating a “Sleep Book” for the tot, a book about him and the sleep goals you envision, complete with photos of him, etc.
The author writes: “You can also use this idea to wean Baby from the pacifier, or for that matter, to help Baby adjust to any major change in her life, such as introducing a new pregnancy, or dealing with a divorce.” [emphasis mine]
I tried to picture what such a book would look like…
Timmy’s Little Book of Divorce
One day, Timmy came home and Daddy was packing up his suitcase. Timmy said, “Where are you going, Daddy?” Daddy said, “Ask your Mother, the harpy.”
“Mommy, where is Daddy going?”
“Straight to hell, for all I care.”
“Daddy, Mommy says you’re going straight to hell.”
“That’s great, as long as it keeps me far away from that monster!”
“Mommy, Daddy says you’re a monster. That’s not true, is it?”
Daddy packed up and moved in with his life-guidance coach, Vivian. Mommy went to live at an ashram, and Timmy got to play out back with the goats in the shed. Timmy got lice, and was dipped in Rid for a week.
Vivian is a witch. Timmy hates Vivian.
The End.
Well, that was helpful, wasn’t it?
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Hi Q, I’m not sure if I read this before–I think probably not given its date. Anyway, it’s heartbreakingly funny–how’s that for an oxymoron? I so apologize that the grownups in your infant life were incapable of suspending their own ego-trips long enough to see the impact their actions, or non-actions, or reactions would have on little groogies and oodzies. We were even “civilized” in our partings, and still on good terms. But I still take note of the fact that the years surrounding my own parents’ divorce are mostly blanked out of my memory bank, though if ever a marriage needed to be dissolved it was that one! We’ve created a world that seems increasingly impossible to live in. I’m sorry. Love, Dad
I’m moved and surprised that it affected you so deeply; one never knows what will make someone else stand up and take notice. Of course it was intended as a satire against the self-actualizing, child-empowerment crap that so much of the child-rearing books espouse; that it would hit the mark a little close to the bone came as a complete surprise.
But it is a moving reaction none-the-less, and I’m glad to have affected you, though not as I usually like to, in the silly center. Ah well.