If I Were Writing a Real-Life, In-The-Trenches Sleep Book For Parents, This Would Be the Intro
A Book About Sleeping And Not Sleeping For Human Parents of Human Children
By Me
Introduction
If you’re reading this, you probably have at least one child. And it’s also probably true that said children don’t sleep the way or the amount or the times that you want them to sleep. Maybe they never have, or maybe they did and then abruptly stopped. Or maybe they did and then slowly got up earlier and earlier each morning until suddenly the toddler who used to sleep til 8 a.m. is getting up at 5 a.m. and you’re left wondering “wtf just happened??”
Whatever the case may be, I too have touched the depths of insanity that can only be reached by months (years) of struggling to convince an irrational tiny human to sleep, all while being sleep deprived yourself. That makes us comrades in a way that only people who have been to battle with the tiny humans they created can understand. So welcome to the club you never meant to join.
I should probably take a moment to introduce myself. As a mother of three tiny humans, I should first tell you that I am in no way an expert on this subject matter. In fact, based on my own observation, it seems that I got progressively worse at teaching my children to sleep with each child. In response to my growing parental inadequacies, I compensated by reading All The Books on sleep and parenting.
From my small successes, grand failures, and excessive amounts of reading when I probably should have been napping, this book was born. In it, you will read about how there are a variety of different “sleep training” theories, some of which may work some of the time for some of your children. You will also come to learn that every child will be completely different than the next, so even if one child happens to be a sleeper (a.k.a. miracle), don’t expect it to happen again. The book will conclude with the knowledge that sometimes, regardless of what you do, your child won’t do what you want them to, in sleep or in any other part of their life. Strategies for getting over this lack of control will appear in Book Two. The one thing you won’t find in this book is all the research on why sleep is so important, and the lasting cognitive damage that lack of sleep can cause. Because let’s be honest, that would just be mean.
Before we dive in, I will conclude this introduction by acknowledging some of the people that made this book possible. First, thank you to all the people before me who have tackled this enormous subject matter in writing. Regardless of whether or not I agreed with your approach or if anything you wrote actually benefited my children’s sleep, I often clung to these books like life rafts of hopeful logic in a sea of insanity. Reading them got me through some of my most confusing parental challenges and I’ll always be grateful. Next I’d like to thank all of my readers, of this book and of my blog, where for the last several months I have written about nothing but sleep deprivation. Even through my lack of creativity and topic diversity, you continue to read and offer support. Some of you have even been following my work since this blog started, back when I only had one child and thought I knew something about parenting before my children stripped away the last of this false confidence. You all are the reason I continue to write this nonsense, and I’m surprisingly grateful for that motivation.
And, of course, I have to thank my husband, without whom I would be dead and not writing this.
Last but not least, I have to thank the three tiny humans who are truly the masterminds behind this work. Without your confusing and often infuriating resistance to sleep, I never would have known the true depths of this topic, nor would I have been sleep deprived enough to believe I could write about it. I look forward to the day when you grow to appreciate the true magic of sleep and are robbed of its joy by your own children.
Love,
Mom