Daily Excerpt: Parenting in a Pandemic (Bayardelle) - Bouncer (Crowd Control)
The following excerpt comes from Parenting in a Pandemic, an award-winning book by Liz Bayardelle. Although the pandemic is past, thankfully, at least for now, some of the topics in this book are generic and apply at any time.
Chapter 3: Bouncer
Parenting is filled with many moments of
intense emotional connection. Other times you get to watch your precious little
flower unfold as they learn new things and master new skills.
There are other times when it’s really just
crowd control.
Don’t get me wrong, I firmly believe that
parents should be as engaged as possible and attempt to make every moment into
a learning experience, but show me a parent who swears they’ve never just
wanted their kid to sit quietly for a few minutes, in one room, without
wrecking anything and I’ll show you a darned liar.
Newborns are stationary for a few blessed
months, but after that kids are irritatingly mobile. Babies crawl everywhere
and possess a mystical ability to find the single solitary lego left on the
floor of an otherwise-babyproofed house and put it in their mouths faster than
you can say “choking hazard”. Toddlers can and will open every drawer in your
bathroom and dump all the contents into the floor in the thirty seconds it
takes you to wash your hands. Younger kids can find your Sharpies no matter how
well you hide them, older kids develop an alarming taste for hot glue and sharp
objects, and teenagers must be watched constantly to make sure they aren’t
trying the latest YouTube challenge to hang themselves by the ceiling by their
toenails (or something).[1]
Under completely normal circumstances[2]
it is challenging to keep kids doing what they’re supposed to be doing in the
place they’re supposed to be doing it. Now, with many parents having to work at
home, it has become even more essential that we retain some ability to contain
our kids and their noise, toys, and mess in the appropriate areas of our homes.
In the crazy new normal that has found many
adults working from home, we have to keep our toddlers from walking naked
through the backgrounds of our Zoom calls, teach our teenagers to hold their
requests for food, rides to wherever, and spending money until after we get off
our phone meeting, and figure out just the right camera angle so we can
breastfeed while on a video conference.
This book has many chapters on how to educate,
nurture, and ensure the psychological and physical health of your kids, but
this one is simply about containment.
The Job Description
The basic job of a bouncer is to keep the
patrons of a particular bar, nightclub, or other establishment in line and
where they’re supposed to be, ensuring they adhere to a very low bar of social
decorum (read: please don’t kill each other), and facilitating the basic rules
of the establishment.
Sound familiar?
Yeah, I’ve personally never been a bouncer
(largely due to the fact that I’m a five-foot-something female without
significant martial arts skills...yet), but I have done a decent amount of research
on what the job entails and have spoken to some people who’ve been bouncers for
years, and it still sounds a lot like parenting. In fact, the top answer on Quora for the question “what is it like
to be a bouncer”[3]
actually compares the job to being a babysitter, only for drunk people instead
of children.[4]
This Quora
article actually contains the wisdom of many bouncers and consequently lays out
a basic framework for what you can expect to see, do, and deal with throughout
the course of the job:
●
Expect to neutralize a bunch of
fights.
●
Expect to get blood and/or puke on
you.
●
Expect to deal with gangsters or
thugs.
●
Expect that some people might view
you as an enemy.
●
Expect to depend on your partner
to make your job easier.
●
Expect to function as a
pseudo-psychologist at least some of the time.
●
Expect to be exposed to a
multitude of different personalities.
●
Expect to have your patience
tested beyond what you thought possible.
●
Expect that you’re never “off
duty”.
Bouncer, Parenting Edition
If you read through the previous list again,
you will see how each item bears an eerie similarity to the job of the average
parent:
●
Expect to neutralize a bunch of fights. This
sounds like my life every day since my second child was born. Kids just love to
fight with each other. They fight over big things, over little things, over
nonexistent things, over who said what or sat where...kids fight a lot. We have
a 14-year-old, a 4-year-old, and a 9-month-old, so I am rapidly developing the
conflict resolution skills of an FBI hostage negotiator.
●
Expect to get blood and/or puke on you. Yes. When
you have a baby (or potty training toddler) for more than a few weeks it
somehow becomes normal to walk around with other people’s bodily fluids on you.
I personally don’t bother changing unless it’s two different types of bodily
fluids or that of two different species. If I didn’t abide by that rule we’d
have to buy stock in Tide.
●
Expect to deal with gangsters or thugs. Your
toddler may not have joined a cartel just yet, but any toddler parent (or teen
parent, for that matter) can tell you they exhibit many of the same tactics. Fear,
intimidation, threats, posturing...it all checks out. My toddler was once
playing with scissors (intentionally...as part of a craft project…), looked me
dead in the eye, and said, “That’s a nice shirt. It would be a shame if someone
cut it.” Yes, kids are tiny mobsters.
●
Expect that some people might view you as an enemy. Are you really even a parent until your ungrateful child has spitefully
yelled, “Mom, you’re ruining my life!” at you? Despite having our kids’ best
interests at heart, we are often cast in the role of the bad guy. I mean, who’s
to blame them? Who are we to make sure they don’t subsist entirely on potato
chips, stick their head in the hot oven, or accidentally get catfished on the
internet. Monsters, that’s who we are. Absolute monsters.
●
Expect to depend on your partner to make your job easier. Preach! Especially in quarantine, the fine art of tag teaming is the
only thing keeping most of us sane. Dad takes the kids for a long lunch while
Mom frantically tries to condense her usual 8 hour work day into six,
consecutive 20-minute Zoom calls, Mom enlists the kids to “help” her cook
dinner while Dad attempts to answer 8,374 emails in half an hour, Dad puts the
kids to sleep while Mom cries quietly into a box of contraband Oreos in the
back of her closet...it takes a village, right?
●
Expect to function as a pseudo-psychologist at least some of the time. This one also checks out. Parents are expected to fix everything from
broken bicycles to broken friendships and broken hearts. Basically, we are in
charge of installing and maintaining our kiddos’ personalities in a way that
turns them into palatable adults. No pressure.
●
Expect to be exposed to a multitude of different personalities. Oh yes, huge check mark here. Kids can go from your adorable angel baby
to the reason scientists created birth control in 0.06 seconds. They
demonstrate this unique talent at least once a day.
●
Expect to have your patience tested beyond what you thought possible. I won’t speak for all parents, but I know for a fact that my
college-aged self would have crumbled like a Jenga game in an earthquake if she
had to walk in my current parental shoes for even 20 minutes.
●
Expect that you’re never “off duty”. Parenting
is the only job where your boss is allowed to alternate regularly between
hugging you and physically assaulting you. The shifts are roughly 23.7 hours
long. Your boss can (and will) wake you up at 2am to demand snacks, advice, or
other services. The compensation is an annual salary of exactly zero dollars. Expenses
are not reimbursed.
Tricks of the Trade
Now that we have the basic understanding that
bouncers are apparently just parents for large groups of drunk adults, here are
some basic strategies that leverage the wisdom of bouncers to help your kiddos
in check.
●
Be consistent. Your kids need to view you as
an absolute authority. This doesn’t mean you have to be authoritarian, overly
strict, or a jerk about anything. It does
mean that you need to be true to your word. If you say you’re going to do
something, do it 100% of the time. This goes for rewards as well as
consequences. If your kids know that what you say is going to happen no matter
what, you’ll get a lot more “street cred” than if you show weakness or the
potential for wiggle room.
●
Create a system where you and your partner support each other in
helpful ways. Having the kids underfoot constantly
without school, friends, or extracurriculars can be exhausting, especially when
you’re also trying to run your entire career from your laptop in between making
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and playing the floor is lava. Figure out a
way (that will be 100% unique to your family, your situation, and your
preferences) to give your spouse a break and for them to give you one. This may
be something as simple as making a rule that you alternate going to get takeout
for dinner and whoever goes takes the kids with them so the “at home” spouse
gets 15-20 minutes of peace and quiet. Whatever it is, make sure you’re each
actually getting a break every once in a while. This pandemic is a marathon not
a sprint, so stay hydrated!
●
Expect that your kids are tiny crazy people...and that that’s okay. When they’re babies, toddlers, and teenagers, kids have almost as many
hormones as women do when they’re pregnant. Remember pregnancy? That time when
you (or your wife) alternated between weeping uncontrollably at the Subaru
commercial and going on absolutely violent rage binges at inanimate objects
that had the audacity to be placed where she wanted to walk? Yeah, that’s your
kids’ states of nature all the time. Of course they’re going to be moody and
unpredictable. They’re kids...hormone-filled, cerebrally-undeveloped,
inhibition-limited kids. It’s normal, so don’t blame them too hard, be patient,
and buckle up.
●
Acknowledge that it’s a 24/7 job. Humans are
capable of almost anything if we get a break every once in a while to regroup. Yeah,
parents don’t. At least, we aren’t given breaks.
We have to create breaks for
ourselves. If you want to make it through the day, make sure you do what you
have to do to take care of yourself. Don’t neglect your kids, but take an extra
two minutes in the shower to cut your toenails. Drive an extra lap around the
block before you go home. You are no good to anyone if you are frazzled and
worn out by 9am. You have to purposefully maintain your own sanity.[5]
In a Nutshell
There are times when your kids will need to be
contained. It is possible to do this if you are consistent, patient, and not
emotionally or physically drained yourself. Find ways to fill your own
emotional gas tank and make sure you and your partner give each other support
and breaks. Overall, expect the unexpected because children are basically tiny
drunk people.
[1] Yes, the existence and popularity of the Tide
Pod challenge did erode a huuuuuge amount of my faith in Darwin’s theory of
evolution, thank you for asking.
[2] A phrase we definitely haven’t come close to
fulfilling since late 2019...
[4] Even though we all know children are really
just tiny drunk people anyway.
[5] More about this in the last chapter.
winner, Literary Titan gold award
For more posts about Liz and her books, click HERE.
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