Excerpt from Clean Your Plate! (Bayardelle) - Introduction

 

Introduction

Parenting is hard. 

It’s not “I would rather be hiding state secrets in a POW camp” hard, but it’s definitely “my most cherished fantasy is about taking an uninterrupted shower by myself” hard. It’s hard because you are a parent 24/7 without coffee breaks or vacations. It’s hard because it isolates you away from your friends, sometimes your family, and occasionally any semblance of adult human companionship whatsoever. It’s hard because you always put the needs of others above your own, often without thanks or even acknowledgement. (If all three of these statements are true at the same time, it’s called “having an infant.”) Even worse, not only is parenting diabolically challenging, but it also has the outside appearance of being easy, fun, and less challenging than a “real” job. 

Yes, many non-parents attempt to compare the act of childrearing to any other job. However, until they find a job where it is impossible to quit, you aren’t paid, and your boss is allowed to wake you up at 3 a.m. by repeatedly kicking you in the face, I would like to heartily request that they kindly mind their own biscuits. 

Despite all of this, the very hardest thing about parenting is that you love your kids more than literally anything else in the world, so almost every choice you make as a parent is accompanied by a crippling fear that you aren’t doing well enough by your kids. You want to be the most fun parent ever so that they get the most out of their childhoods, but you also have to be strict enough that they learn discipline, respect, and priorities. You want to buy them everything under the sun, but you also want to teach them to earn their own way. You want to let them learn to make their own choices, but you would happily throw that awful new kid they just started hanging out with off the nearest cliff if you were certain enough you could do it without getting caught. 

Yes, welcome to parenting. 

As a parent, you now have the unhappy pleasure of second guessing every statement that comes out of your mouth because you so badly want to be a perfect parent for the kids you love more than life itself. 

This book is aimed at helping you dissect the pros and cons of some of the most common parental statements. Its purpose is to give you more research to back up your parental decisions, to bring to life some of the common pitfalls of these frequently-spouted phrases, and make you snort-laugh (hopefully in public) at least once along the way. 

What This Book Is 

The “ruin their lives” part of the title is simply a humorous way of saying that even some of the most well-intentioned advice can backfire. These backfires can be due to age-old wisdom not standing the test of time, the fact that often parental advice comes more from our own fear than anything else, that something gets lost in translation, or merely because kids often hear whatever they want to hear (if they’re even listening at all). No matter the reason, it’s important we think through the things we drill into our kids’ heads. 

I can tell you first-hand that, as a 30-something woman with three kids of my own, I still hear my mother’s voice in my head when I do (or don’t do) certain things. We parents are a huge part of who our kids will grow up to be so it’s a good idea to take the time to think through the words they’ll probably still hear in their heads, even as adults, every time they forget to pick up their socks. 

With this in mind, an alternative name for this book could have been The Overthinker’s Guide to Parental Advice. Basically, you’re in for an in-depth look at a lot of the expressions our kids hear coming out of our mouths (often with the same frequency as swear words at a Raiders’ game). 

As You Read This Book 

First and foremost, I hope you get a kick out of this book. We parents have little spare time so if you’re choosing to spend your precious “me time” reading this, the least I can do is make you giggle embarrassingly to yourself while stand- If a mother giggles alone, does it make a sound? 

Second, the purpose of this book is to help bring up some of the important grey area points of contention in these common statements. I’m not actually advocating stopping saying most of these things, but if you have already considered the research, questionable interpretations, and problems behind each of these common parent-isms, then you’re more likely to say them in a way that helps your kids (instead of scarring them for life...no pressure). 

Finally, some of these I consider to be legitimately necessary Public Service Announcements (like Chapter 4, for example). If my writing this can save even one toddler from being forced to kiss the cheek of their inebriated uncle or perfume-wafting aunt at a holiday gathering, then I’ve done my job as a human being and can go to bed happy. (Ha, ha! Like my kids let me sleep!) 

Most of these chapters are standalone enough for you to skip around. However, I do refer back to things every once in a while so if you don’t have a pressing need to skip to a later chapter, it might make for a more seamless reading experience if you go through the chapters in order. 

Skimmer’s Tips: The Basic Structure 

For those of you who tend to skip around and skim, let me make your life easier. Each chapter follows the same basic structure: 

• Title: This is the thing you say that is going to (hypothetically) ruin your kid’s life. 
• Doctor’s Warning: Just like prescription drugs have an intended use and a whole load of unwanted side effects,2 these parental sayings have what you want to convey to your kids and what message you actually end up sending. This doctor’s warning stamp is a basic summary of how things could go terribly, terribly wrong. This is great if you want the uber-short version of a chapter in just a few minutes. Just don’t operate heavy machinery afterward. 
• Why We Say It: Each of these sayings is common for a reason. Yes, the premise of this book is that you’re ruining your kids’ lives...but you still have a point! This section covers the actual objective of each phrase we discuss. 
• Research Says (What They Hear): This part is a research-based explanation of the message your kids are actually getting when they hear these words come out of your mouth. This is an empirically backed summary of how a well-intentioned message can go very far off the tracks.
• What to Say Instead: Most of these things are, as you can guess, based on messages you absolutely should convey to your children (despite the title). The problems lie in the delivery. This section will help you refine that delivery and sidestep as many of the potential issues as possible. 
• Cheat Sheet: This section takes into account everything discussed throughout the entire chapter and gives you clear, tangible, bullet form, hands-on advice about how to convey the desired message without any of the undesirable side effects. 

Parenting: Now a Team Sport 

Before I let you get to it, I want to address one more key problem with our current model of parenting: isolation. 

One of the biggest problems new parents (actually all parents) face is that your social network is forcibly ripped away from you just when you need social support the most. That’s why you end up rocking a sleepless baby aimlessly around Costco at 6:15am, looking like a homeless person, wearing several varieties of bodily fluid stains on your shirt, and muttering to yourself in full sentences about cheese. 

We parents have to focus all our time on our kids, but this has the unfortunate side effect of depriving us of adult social contact. Well, it’s more that the luxury adult conversation is forcibly ripped from you by a screaming baby seemingly hellbent on turning your life into a psychology experiment on sleep deprivation. 

The last thing you need as a parent is another person telling you all the things you should be doing better as you fumble your way through trying to raise functional children. So, given every parent’s deep-seated desire to just talk to another adult human for a few minutes without being shouted at, punched, or asked for a snack, I thought it might be nice for this book to come with a built-in network of sarcastic parents. Consider them your imaginary friends. (Goodness knows, I do.) 

The following two women are real parents of real (loud) kids. As you read the book, you’ll not only get my perspective as the step-mom of a teenage girl and the bio-mom of a 4-year-old and a 6-month-old, you’ll also get the perspectives of a few other (equally sarcastic) parents of different pack configurations. 

As you have probably noticed, as you read you’ll occasionally see little comments in the margins, a “mommentary” if you will. These are the comments of other real life parents just as sleep-deprived as you are. Meet the team: 

Crystal, Adoptive Mom of a 4-Year-Old Ninja 

Crystal is the adoptive mom of a 4-year-old boy who will most likely be a Navy SEAL or civil engineer (or both). Her hobbies include not sleeping, binge stress-cleaning, and hiding behind the sofa to consume chocolate. Her adult human persona (outside of being a mom, if such a thing exists) is an interior designer by day (inspiredhaven.com) and a mom blogger by night (designfulmama.com). Multitasking much? 

Kristine, Mom of a 5-Year-Old and a Toddlernado 

Kristine generally spends her days trying to keep her two little people alive, keep her businesses running (with screaming in the background), and keep her sanity in check through much needed consulting (otherwise known as therapy). Her motto is that parenthood is a guessing game with a million handbooks. In “real life,” she’s a blogger (KrisBeeMama.com), WordPress website creator (KitBlogs.com), doer of all the things, and a self-proclaimed Chaos Coordinator (Can you tell?). 

How It Works 

These real-life moms went through an early draft of this book and, as you can predict, had some pretty hilarious comments, questions, and stories as they read. I felt immensely selfish keeping these witticisms for just myself, so you get to team read the book with your tribe of imaginary friends. Just pretend you’re sitting at a coffee house (or more likely in the viewing room of a preschool gymnastics class), talking to other adults that were similarly crazy enough to procreate. 

With that being said, I’ll leave you to it. Happy reading!

Excerpter's note: pull quotes and footnotes omitted.

For more posts by and about Liz Bayardelle and her work, click HERE.