He is brutalizing me!
Malcolm is a wild beast right now. The sleep deprivation accumulated over the weekend has really caught up with him and he is a mess. He is whiny, violent, and seems to really enjoy making other people feel bad. Of course, if you try to do any real parenting and enforce some rules, he falls apart and throws a tantrum. I left a brewery in a rainstorm on Monday because he refused to listen to me and insisted on running around the place screaming at the top of his lungs. We had to cut yesterday’s play date short because he wouldn’t stop antagonizing our neighbor’s kid. I have cuts on my arms and face from him attacking me with his claws of death. He is really out of control.
I did some internet research on sleep deprivation in kids and found some interesting results. I learned from real life doctors that sleep deprivation leads to irritability, temper tantrums, crying and fussiness. No shit? Thank you parenting websites! I now feel like I can be a good parent. I guess I learned that most internet “experts” are little more than out of work weather forecasters. Trust yourselves, parents out there. You know how to handle your kids better than the “experts” out there. (This doesn’t apply to a narrow range of subjects like, “What is Lyme Disease?” or “My child’s foot has been severed. What should I do?”) Of course, you are probably reading this advice on the internet, so if I am correct, than you should disregard the advice and listen to the experts. Sadly, I am an “expert” and you need to listen to my advice, which means that you should disregard my advice. Holy crap! What are you going to do now?
Armed with a new sense of confidence, I turned inwards to figure out what to do with Malcolm. I decided that the best course of action was for me to leave town and visit my friends in Boston. So, I am leaving on Friday and letting Amy deal with the mess. Good luck with all that, Amy! (In the meantime, I am going to maximize his sleep opportunities by forbidding him from drinking lattes at night and by giving him a steady stream of boring lectures on the importance of behaving well.) I am hoping that more sleep will take him out of the “Potential Sociopath” bucket and return him to the “Not Very Well Behaved Three Year Old” bucket.
I guess the worst part of this is that represents the peaks and valleys of parenting. Some days are pretty cool, you child will perform a mathematical computation, or spell your name, or sing you a song that you have never heard before. You smile and think to yourself, “this is why people have kids.” Other days, you want to stick them in a sack with nothing but cough medicine to eat and dream of what life was like before you had kids. So, you book a trip to visit your friends in Boston and let the cards fall where they may. That’s my advice!
Tags: Malcolm misbehaves
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So much for sleep-over weekends, huh?
It gets easier every time eh? How was Henry this week?