Maybe I'll understand when I'm a parent
I'm very zombie-eqsue today. I haven't developed a horrible hunger for brains yet, but I feel like I'm walking in a daze, I'm grunting and moaning alot and drooling just a little. I wouldn't be like this if I'd slept last night. And it's not like I chose not to sleep, that choice was made for me by the infant across the street.
I understand that babies cry and I understand that there's a point where you have to let the baby cry it out as part of growing up. I think, however, that this child across the street has night terrors. That's honestly the only explanation I can think of because this child's was screaming bloody murder at the top of her lungs for a good 45 minutes. And since it's summer and everyone has their windows open, I got to listen to it for start to finish.
I thought for a little while that it was a baby, maybe one with colic or a headache or something medical that would explain the wailing, but then I heard it articulating words. This kid could talk!! It could communicate with words. It could tell you why it was screaming and screaming and screaming.
Normally I'd be pretty understanding of screaming children, but since this is the fourth time I've been kept awake by someone else's child. Someone else's child who is in so much distress that it's breaking my heart across the street. It wasn't hungry crying, or I need to be changed crying, it was all out total misery crying and that's crying that cannot be shut out.
I'm sure for allowing myself to be bothered by this and for thinking "why the hell won't her parents just pick her up and comfort her. She sounds like she's in agony" and thus committing the sin of criticizing a parent when I'm not one I'm dooming myself to have the most ill tempered baby in the world one day. Mmmmm, more Zombie Mondays.
Today's sing-a-long song: "Rock myself to sleep" by April Wine
HRH
posted by Her Highnessness at 11:18
2 Comments:
Nope. I don't think so. I criticize "bad parents" all the time. And I know, in my arrogant, non-breeder way, that if I were to have kids, they would have rosy cheeks, cheery dispositions, and would be practically perfect in every way.
In fact, I'm pretty sure singing to them while they're in the womb or fresh out would take care of it all in one fell swoop.
Really, it has to do with respect. I don't criticize people for using or not using disposable diapers, for breast-feeding or not breast-feeding, for staying at home or for using daycare. I criticize people for treating children as if they will NEVER be adults. As if their feelings and questions didn't matter. Of course, if they continue to treat them as if they'll never be adults, the kids WILL never be adults.
Chelsea, if you go that route (and you do have ALL that quilt space), you will be a fine mother. In fact, maybe you should go rescue the kid across the street and raise him (or her)to prove it!
8:58 PM
Oh lord, this is bringing back memories of my youngest sister having a complete meltdown when we were kids. She screamed and howled for well over an hour. I didn't even know a three-year-old was capable of making that much noise, let alone for that long.
Now we were all trying to comfort and reassure her, but it just wasn't doing any good. She was, as they say in books, utterly inconsolable. However, just as things were starting to calm down, a lovely elderly neighbor came knocking at our door and seemed very determined that my sister come over to her house to play. I think she was worried my mother was either abusing or neglecting poor Sara -- who did in all fairness sound as distraught as if she were watching puppies being killed. And obviously I can't know what your neighbors are or aren't doing with their kid, but my point is that children can and do cry inconsolably sometimes despite every effort to make them feel better. (Or, if you're really lucky, they throw temper tantrums so violent that the adults are forced from the house. I believe Em knows something about the latter.)
That said, I totally feel for you. As Mike says, the sound of a baby crying just goes straight to the most primal area of your brain and makes you want to do anything, ANYTHING in your power to make it stop. Unfortunately sometimes there is no stopping it.
Add going mad with helplessness as another worry about becoming a parent... [twitch]
11:24 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home