Something’s Fishy

INall the parenting books filled with commiseration, encouragement, tips, and advice, nobody ever mentioned to me the very frequent parenting hazard of stepping on broken toy cars. There’s talk about the pain of child rearing, the difficulties of pregnancy, the endless years of sleep deprivation, but not one word about broken toy cars placed randomly around the house, or the upside-down steering wheel of the Playmobil ice cream truck that your son was searching for in tears all afternoon, and that you were lucky enough to find right after you took off your shoes. They call themselves parenting gurus while willfully neglecting the most painful and unavoidable parts of raising children and running a household? Thus, I now take it upon my rather frail shoulders to enlighten you about those things nobody thought you should know when you set out to raise the next generation of mothers and fathers. You’re welcome.

The good thing about stepping on the underside of a broken toy car is that you can now trash it guilt-free. Did you think you might still find the second half of the toy car? Rest assured that once you have stepped on it hard, barefoot, said toy car has fulfilled its duties in this earthly world and can be disposed of properly. Housekeeping might not be my strongest point, but there’s an organization tip right there.

Here’s another piece of hard-earned advice: Always wake up before your kids do. I cannot overemphasize the importance of this. Having 15 minutes of quiet time before your kids wake up transforms your day. To be honest, this advice is not completely my own. It is the up-to-the-minute advice of every self-respecting parenting expert with four letters following their name. The difference is in the practical actualization of this ideal. I’m a mother, too; I know how difficult this is. I also get stuck at two a.m., trying to decide if the new line of Belati sweaters is worth grabbing. (The decision is made for me when all sizes and colors are sold out before I can even put them in my shopping cart.) But I’m here to tell you that you can make it work.

From experience, everything that can possibly be done in the morning can also be done the night before — down to the farina in the pot. I prepare my children’s clothing, schoolbags, and snacks at night. (Sometimes I even eat their snacks in advance. Not recommended.) I line up their shoes, make sure raincoats have working zippers, and none of their socks have holes. After all that is done, I take the recommended 15 minutes of quiet morning time for myself — at that point it is practically morning anyway. The beauty of doing this at night is that I can easily stretch the 15 minutes into two hours without immediate consequence. The one and only thing left to do in the morning is drink a coffee, and that takes just five minutes, so I can jump out of bed seven minutes before the bus. There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?