Parenting and Lying

And now a tip from my upcoming book,
Parenting Success by Choosing Easiness Over Honesty

Tip #43: How to Get Rid of Complaining About Bedtime

Set a fake bedtime for your child. Make it an hour before you will lose your shit if they are not in bed, let’s say 7:30. Tell your child this “bedtime” you set, repeat it to them a lot, it will seem more official that way.

Then every night at 8:00 tell them “Oh my gosh, it is 8:00, you got to stay up a half hour past your bedtime, we better get you to sleep.”

Success.

You will be left with no complaining cause children love to think they won something, like fake “going to bed lateness.” This victory is especially awesome for them because they think not only did they win, but you lost at putting them to bed on time. Children love nothing more then you losing, but the jokes on them, cause there is something you didn’t lose. Your shit.

So they go to bed “a half hour late” wink wink, and you still have 30 minutes of not losing your shit, which I also refer to as my “half hour of eating food I just told my kid was not a healthy choice for them to eat before bedtime” time

For more tips like this, buy my non-existent book.

Thank You Princess Leia

wishful_art


It’s not what you’re given, it’s how you take it” Carrie Fisher

You know you are a real improviser when you start finding improv in anything.
“Oh marriage it’s just like improv, you have to ‘yes and’ your partner.”
“Business is just like improv, you have to take risks and get out of your comfort zone to succeed.”
“Getting a Prince Albert piercing is just like improv, you have to go through the discomfort to reach the moments of true pleasure.”
And on and on.
The Carrie Fisher quote above can easily be viewed as perfect improv advice, and it is. Don’t blame your scene partner, rather make brilliance from what they give you.
This is not what was meant though. Recently I have been reading Carrie Fisher’s memoirs. I am drawn to them partly because of her ECT experience and partly because when your son digs Star Wars, it is really enjoyable to bring home books that have fun cover art like Princess Leia surrounded by drugs and alcohol. In saying the above statement, Fisher was referring to the fact we can’t blame our parents for our faults, we need to own them.This is a lesson I have learned, albeit late in life, and I credit it to the combination of good therapy and having a child of my own.
Any therapist who knows what they are doing will encourage you to take responsibility for your life. I must admit the choice to listen is on you and I might have required multiple attempts.
Having a child kicks this realization into overdrive. One day you reprimand them a little louder than you should or let the TV babysit them and you get the scary image of them one day yelling “I am totally messed up and it is all your fault.”
I have realized I was raised with an ounce of stuff that can mess you up and a pound of all the stuff that adds to your life. And as hard as it is to accept, you can’t complain about one without being thankful for the other. I know everyone is not so lucky and I am sure they have legitimate gripes.
I, on the other hand, am a grown adult and would be a complete ass-hat if I did not own my shit. Coincidentally, another lesson that is also true for improv.