As You Like It: Don’t Let the Bedbugs Bite

I couldn’t stop laughing. Steve called out from the living room wanting to know what was so funny. All I could do was point to the article in Sunday’s Boston Globe about a new book by Adam Mansbach aimed at sleep deprived parents called, “Go the F**k to Sleep.” Although it looks deceptively like a children’s book, it is aimed at parents with offspring who will go to any lengths not to go to sleep at night. According to the article’s writer, Beth Teitell, the book:

Hit the top spot on Amazon’s bestseller list in May — five months before its original publication date. It pulled off the incredible feat of going viral before it even came out, after author Adam Mansbach gave a reading in Philadelphia in April at the Fourth Wall Arts Salon, and parents in the audience told their exhausted friends, who told their exhausted friends. The book leaked online, and many parents reported having it forwarded to them by multiple friends. The intense interest prompted Akashic Books to move up the official release to June 14 — in time for Father’s Day. Akashic initially planned to print 10,000 copies but ended up printing 50,000 in the first run. By the publication date there will be 275,000 copies in circulation.

Can you imagine that? The book hasn’t even hit the bookshelves, yet 275,000 parents are laughing exhaustedly, hysterically, probably with feelings of great relief that they are not monsters. Because let’s face it, who among us would ever admit to another parent that we would like to tell our dearest children, “Just go the f**k to sleep already!” We may think it in the depths of our mortified psyches, simultaneously beating ourselves up for being horrible parents and for using such “descriptive” language to our beloved progeny, but let’s face it, every parent who has ever faced a child who refuses to go to sleep has thought it at one time or another.

Mansbach, an otherwise serious writer and poet and the father of a young child who wouldn’t go to sleep, said he thinks his latest work resonates because it lets parents know they’re not alone.

And that’s the crux of the matter. The fact that many of us are raising our children alone with self-help books taking the place of supportive families. We all feel that failing at parenting is a shameful thing — after all, we had this child and so we should automatically know how to raise it.

I’ve been there. When Lisa was born, Steve’s dad had just died and his mom lived in Florida. I have no siblings and my parents lived in Israel. I had been working full time until Lisa came, so all my friends were working women and none were parents. When Lisa was born in December, we spent our days alone with just each other. Still, we were doing okay with the exception of one thing — Lisa was not a sleeper. She hated to nap, hated going to sleep at night and, unbelievably, also woke up in the middle of the night. I was so sleep deprived that when I was driving and came to a red light, I would think to myself, “I’ll just close my eyes till it turns green.”

Our pediatrician blamed me. She told me that I shouldn’t feed her at night, I shouldn’t rock her to sleep, sing her to sleep, cajole her to sleep, but should  just put her in her crib, walk out the door and let her sob herself to sleep. I hated the woman.

Eventually we did tough it out, and after two nights of crying, Lisa caught on and slept. Miracles did happen. But then the champ appeared — Mariel. Compared to Mariel, Lisa was a lightweight. Mariel would wake up every night, her yells waking us all. Every night my little angel would sob, scream, and worst of all, call out pleadingly, “mommy, daddy!” I was a wreck. Steve bought me a Walkman to plug up my ears, but even locked in the bathroom with the fan’s noisy whirring and the music at top volume, I could still hear her. I felt like the lowest scum on earth. And the only advice we kept getting was, “She’ll just have to cry it out.” Light years later I read that, according to Doctor Rosen, associate medical director of the Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders at Children’s Hospital Boston:

About 1 out of every 4 children age 10 and under have sleep issues. These range from night terrors to sleepwalking to “behavioral insomnia’’ of the type described in Mansbach’s book. Despite the prevalence of sleep problems, Rosen said, less than one-quarter of parents with affected children seek medical help. The rest, apparently, are just toughing it out — or are self-medicating now with Mansbach.

I could have used that book back then for a laugh and the realization that I wasn’t a horrible parent, just an exhausted one. Mansbach’s book may seem extreme to some, obscene to others, but it does a good job of reducing the guilt monster. If anything, it seems more obscene to beat yourself up over normal life stuff. We’re all just doing the best we can. And if it takes a shockingly funny book to jolt us back to normalcy, then I say bring it on and goodnight moon, goodnight guilt, and goodnight guilty parents everywhere.

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Posted by Joan Florek Schottenfeld on Jun 22 2011. Filed under As You Like It, Featured Content, Opinion. Both comments and pings are currently closed.