Everything Happened | vol. 238

A Slacker's Guide to Flying Solo with Kids (for short periods)(not airplane flying)

And I’m not talking about the ska band

I’ve been a parent for nine years tomorrow which makes me feel at once as well-seasoned as my former roommate Brian’s cast iron pan before I scrubbed it with soap to be “helpful,” and so wet behind the ears that I shouldn’t really be allowed to hold the mic.

My eldest, born August 21. Nick was a student without formal parental leave. We had a few weeks together before his semester started, and then he was right back into the furnace of grad school. That semester, he was teaching a night class that met once weekly from 6-10 p.m. on Wednesdays. Before we actually had the baby, we thought that was a brilliant assignment! His teaching responsibilities would be compressed to one day a week rather than spread out over a M-W-F or T-Th schedule. Also 10 p.m. wasn’t even late because we went to bed at midnight or 12:30 and were sustained by an everlasting Gobstopper of youth.

What we didn’t know, sweet dummies that we were, is that the hours of 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. when you have a newborn represent one month of normal person time. Every Gobstopper must come to an end. You’ve been operating at a catastrophic sleep deficit, you’ve been on your feet jostling the baby all day to keep them from screaming at you, you probably didn’t “sleep when the baby slept” during the day because every freaky sleeping baby agonal gasp sent you shooting into the ceiling like a champagne cork, and it’s now been 12 hours since you “woke up.” You’re so very tired and you know you won’t sleep tonight either. And now you have to confront a difficult truth: babies are allergic to the sunset. It turns their skin purple and makes them howl.

Those Wednesday nights sucked until I stopped resisting them and started accepting them as my reality. Then, they still sucked but I wasn’t doubly exhausting myself by dreading them for days and then panicking while trapped inside them like a bat that got into your living room.

I am not grateful for this experience; I wish Nick and I had both been able to take extended leaves from work, together, after each of our kids. But it did plunge me pretty quickly into accepting that I can do things for myself, because sometimes I have to. Any OGs remember when Nick went to Australia for a month when Desi was a baby? I’d link but tinyletter is dead :(

The following does not represent advice for anyone who is getting divorced, or has been widowed, or someone whose spouse is deploying, or facing incarceration. Above my pay grade as that’s a major life shift as opposed to a temporary aberration.

However, if your co-parent is taking a new job that requires a lot of travel, or has elder care responsibilities out of state….basically, if you’re expecting a lot of stretches of solo parenting in your future, I have some thoughts about making it doable.

Ask for easy help from peers/friends/neighbors
Most people like to be asked small favors in my experience. You feel important and useful when you are needed! I’ve also found that fellow parents are eager to help out someone who is solo with kids as a sort of protective charm against them finding themselves in the same situation as you. Ask someone to take your kid to soccer practice.

Or cancel everything
There’s a balance to strike here. Sometimes I find that having a lot of stuff scheduled out of the house makes the time go by faster. Other times it’s like, I will die if I have to go to this thing. So bail! Did you know that you don’t have to do things? They can go to soccer next week. I even mean cancelling doctor appointments. Your kid can have their five year well visit at five years two months, I promise.

I want to be careful here because I do not really think you should cancel things that you were looking forward to! You’ve suffered enough! It’s really hard to get in with my hair person and if I had to cancel, I’d be so bummed. It’s legit to hire a sitter so you can go to a hair appointment. Or ask a friend for help so you can go to a hair appointment. A friend will feel honored to serve you in pursuit of getting your hair done. Your happiness is actually very important.

Accept (real) help offered
I don’t mean the clowns that say “well, let me know if you need anything!!!!” as a sort of incantation against having to do anything at all while still feeling like a good person. I mean, if your friend says she is going to DoorDash you some food, do not make a show of refusing this??? You guys have this figured out I’m sure but just in case some of you are still deprogramming.

Accept family help….maybe
It’s a huge flex to have living, capable parents or in-laws who are available and want to help. But I want you to take a really clear-headed look at the capabilities of the person who is offering to help. Their behavior is a language, so look beyond what they are promising you verbally to what you know they have shown themselves to be capable of.

It is ok to reach the conclusion that it’s actually tidier for your brain to not accept their offer. There is something beautiful about getting through the day with kids and getting them down for the night and not clocking in for the third shift of: sneaking your weed pen, reaching consensus on what show to watch, having to entertain a conversation about whether it’s good for kids to have phones in school that is really just a cover for an opportunity to share an anecdote that is almost definitely disinformation, especially when you really just want to sit in silence with your dog and check if that person from high school is still making cringe Reels.

I know that for some people, intergenerational living is the secret sauce that makes their life work. But if it feels like you might just be taking on a needy intern who was in the control booth for every recording session of Childhood Wounds the EP? Turn down the offer guilt-free. And by the way, turning down this version of help does not mean you are not allowed to complain about your situation. Your friends have parents too.

Dinner is a construct
I’ve made it no secret that feeding my kids is not a ~nourishing activity for me. I hate it! I would estimate that we eat at the table as a family of 5 around twice a week. And it’s not because we have busy evening activity schedules that preclude this. Nick and I don’t work late and our kids don’t have a life. It’s because, I don’t know, sometimes it’s just not that serious.

There was a 2006 study about family dinner took hold of our collective 2000s-era farm-to-table mason jar-pilled psyche. The problem with these studies for me, or really with how these studies turn into a single bullet point in the news, is that when we find out that a certain behavior or activity might have correlation with good outcomes, there is an implication that doing “good parenting” is adding these behaviors to our baseline MO. Shouldn’t we be building a world that makes it possible for a thoughtful sit-down for a meal to be a breezy attainable thing, rather than individually hustling harder in our siloed kitchens to make family dinner for our kids? Now maybe you are thinking, okay but why not both? Can’t we fight income inequality and also prioritize the family meal? To which I say, um, you can. But I don’t feel like it.

And then, stepping off the soapbox here, we’re making dinner carry a lot of functional responsibility that it just has not earned. My kids tend to front-load their calories and aren’t super hungry by the end of the day. And practically, it’s odd to fill up their tanks to fuel them to…..rest all night.

But they do still have to eat this “dinner”
So we’ve established that dinner is overrated and thus you do not need to let it terrorize you while you are flying solo with kids, right? Ok, so what to actually feed them.

goals

Here are some things that absolutely count as “dinner” and will make you their god:

-Cereal. Vitamin-fortified. Use whole milk. They can have multiple bowls. Cereal for dinner is goated.
-Freezer waffles with syrup or their preferred topping. Would you believe that my little sickos prefer their freezer waffles…..frozen? Serial killer shit.
-Yogurt parfait. I like the FAGE 5% that tastes like ice cream, layer with jam or frozen or fruit and granola. Chocolate chips. Coconut. Whatever your kids like. You can do a million layers and put it in a pint glass and give them a long sundae spoon.
-Ice cream. Toppings bar if you have a bunch of leftover sprinkles and things in the spice cabinet. Give in to this immaculate option.
-Kid charcuterie / girl dinner / “share plate” in Jane’s parlance. Any of the jarred things in your refrigerator door that your kids will eat. Any dried fruits / nuts in your pantry. Cheese, crackers. Potato chips. Raisins. Pretzels. Cut a Clif bar on the bias and arrange with care. It all goes on one big plate. Best eaten, obviously, in front of the TV.

Be casual about everything but sleep.
It’s probably clear by now that my standards are not punishingly high, but even so, I encourage you to ease off the reins during this time. Solo parent rodeo is lawless, it’s international waters, it’s a loophole, it’s a casino hotel at 6 a.m. Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.

Sleep is the exception. I encourage you to be so rigid about sleep for your kids and yourself. You can’t be letting them scam you into late bedtimes because you feel too wiped out to scrape together the momentum to initiate their bedtime. Set timers for yourself if you have ADHD like me, or even if you don’t and just enjoy having the shit scared out of you by whatever dystopian virtual assistant you’ve invited into your home. These jabronis HAVE to go to bed. And so do you.

Take PTO.
Take a sick day or a planned PTO day (only if your kids are in school or care during the day, obviously.) Even if work is “crazy right now.” You will not be able to remember most of your coworker’s names in ten years and you will forget most of what you were even responsible for in your current role. However, in ten years, you will still have a relationship with yourself and you will often be reflecting, “I was doing too much. Why was I doing too much?”

Get a massage. Read a book. Go swimming. Anything that allows your ghost to briefly slip out of your mortal form and feel a little silly.

Another version of this is hiring a sitter. You just made it through a whole day, why not pay a capable teen to do dinner and bedtime while you go to a bar or just, walk around your neighborhood at dusk thinking about something someone said to you in 2009.

THE END, for now. I might need to do a part II.

I took this photo on August 21, 2015 in my hospital suite bathroom at 10:57 p.m. Desi was a few hours old and I wanted to get a look at myself. The most terrifying thing I learned giving birth is that no one can really help you. The most surprising thing I learned is that you can be your own help.

A little commotion for the adult diaper

yr mate,
Evie
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