Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Why I am a Bad Person, Part 1

If I could fix just one parenting issue with a magic wand, it would be to get the Baboo to sleep through the night.

If I could fix one more parenting issue with a magic wand, it would be to get the Baboo to eat proper meals at regular intervals. I thought I had it bad, until...

Another Mom was telling me that on many days her child just wouldn't eat OR drink milk all day. I found this hard to believe, until she told me the next part: at the end of the day, she sits her child next to the stove, tells her that it's hot and that she's going to burn her unless she eats. It was clear she was doing this out of sheer desperation.

My first thought: I am SUCH a better mother than you. I would never do that to my Baboo!

And then I felt like a bad person for being so proud of feeling better than her.

My second thought: Really? Even if he hadn't had anything to eat or drink all day and he was hungry and cranky and I knew that just a bottle of milk would make him his happy self again? Would I ever do something that crazy/desperate? I hope not. But... who knows?

And then I felt like a really bad person.

2 comments:

mummyjaan said...

Come on now, Muslim Mom in the US of A. I bet you're not a bad mom or a bad person at all!! :)- been reading your blog for some time now but never commented.

All moms go through this thing. Might it help you to know that you are not alone?

I have 2 kids, and with both of them, I struggled to get them to sleep. At one point, I found myself saying (to myself, of course) that I will never have another child because I DREAD BEDTIME SO MUCH - I cannot *cannot* CANNOT go through the torture that is our bedtime routine all over again with another child.

But, alhamdulillah, it got better over time. The thing that helped most was sticking to a familiar bedtime routine (dinner-brush teeth-pyjamas-story-dua's-goodnight) and not changing it.

The older one's nearly there (at 4 1/2 years!); the younger one, I know, will be better by the time she is 2 - hopefully.

And eating; I don't know what's going on in that lady's house or how a pattern of not eating all day and eating under a threat of being burnt got established, but I would hope you're not going that route :).

I think we, as parents, get too worked up about our children's eating patterns - we tend to forget the simple fact that no healthy child will starve himself.

Neways, good luck with both your parenting issues. Dunno why I decided to make my first comment such a long one :), but I did anyway.

Dua's for yourself and the Baboo.

Muslim Mom said...

Thank you Mummyjaan!! It sure does help to hear that I'm not alone. Alot.

I tell myself that when he's hungry, he'll eat, but the problem is that if I don't make sure that he eats before he sleeps that just gives him one more reason to wake up and cry for milk in the middle of the night (and I never given in to that. Almost never.)