At what point did we decide that the best way for us to reach perfection was through spending money on countless self-help books?
Last time I checked we have evolved to be the intelligent species capable of crashing atoms (just for the fun of it and scientific advances), launching ourselves into space (just for the fun of it) and spawning the likes of Justin Bieber (just for the …?).
Yet when it comes to fairly important matters of our lives like our bodies, children and relationships we don’t trust ourselves, our friends and thousands of years of innate human experience and intuition that enabled us to survive the Ice Age, sabre-toothed tigers and the 80s. Instead, we turn to an army of pound-hungry publishers, expecting them and their products to fix us.
Don’t get me wrong, in my time I have popped a few self-help happy pills books. When I wasn’t happy with a few extra grams of fat around my ankles I reached for “French Women Don’t Get Fat Because They Drink So Much Coffee And Smoke So Many Fags That They Shrivel Like Prunes”. Too much coffee makes me feel sick and when it comes to cigarettes, well, yes, I’m sure heart or lung disease may make you look skinny but it’s not the look I want to go for.
Instead, I decided that walking to a lovely cafe on the other side of town to have a jumbo slice of their juicy carrot cake would tick the boxes. Exercise – check. Carrots (aka one of your five a day) – check.
Are you stuck in your search for the meaning of life? You can unstuck yourself and discover in amazement, after you have parted with £9.59, that “The Secret To Your Happiness, Perfect Homes, Perfect Jobs, Perfect Lives, Perfect Sprogs, Perfect Molars Is Here” and if within a nanosecond of applying the Secret Rules you don’t win the lottery, marry a gazillionnaire and wake up looking like a supermodel it is because you haven’t been using the power within you correctly.
So if you are too daft to magnetise yourself, reach out for the “Power” written by a leading professor in the field of mind-boggling theories. It will deliver instant results and change your life forever. Guess what?! It’s only £9.59.
Single and can’t understand why? Read “Nice Girls Who Reply To A Guy’s Text Message Within 12 Months Are Losers Who Will Die Surrounded By Their 5,697 Cats While the Bitches Will Be Flaunting Their Big Fat Diamond Rings.” Call me a doormat, a wimp, a nice girl (gasp) but I would rather be myself and see what happens.
In my case, BlueBeretDad and Peanut happened. Not that bad after all.
It is no news that being pregnant is not just about starting a family. It is not about you and your baby bonding. Or you discovering a new sort of love and fear. Nope. Nowadays pregnant women are bombarded with Bump Bibles like “Advertisers Will Behave as If You Were the First Ever Pregnant Woman In the Universe And Worship You” and “Yes You Need All The Stuff We Mention On Our Website, Like That Handy Turn Your Bump into A Stylish Coffee Table Piece Of Plastic With An Elastic Band Attached To It.” And it doesn’t stop, there; wait until your child is born.
Soon after Peanut’s arrival, BlueBeretDad and I found ourselves calling the rescue services when we couldn’t dig our way out of the swamp of parenting advice after having leafed through “We Promise To Make You Perfect Parents” book no 1,234,678.
One such tome (I will not mention any names but you can surely figure it out for yourself) suggested that in order to be great parents and ensure that Peanut grows up to be a functional individual we all have to turn into a family of robots with on/off switches to be pressed at Peanut’s convenience.
After failing to follow a carefully laid out timetable for the Robot-Mum and the Robot-Baby I removed my batteries, Ctrl+Alt+Deleted and reformatted my innate failing Task Manager, switched myself on and off a few times and Tada! There we were, back to normal, asking ourselves:
“Peanut is now one day and 20 minutes old. Shouldn’t he be sleeping through the night yet? Why isn’t he sleeping through the night yet? What’s wrong with him? What’s wrong with us?”
“Peanut is now 5 days 2hrs 5 minutes and 31 seconds old; shouldn’t we be starting him at Mandarin, quantum physics and molecular biology?” #mybabyforNobelprisewinner
Another book, with a set of a bit more relaxed timetables gently whispered into my ear that I should have been writing down at each feed how many minutes Peanut spent at each boob, how often he fed, what my star sign was and whether the wind was blowing from the north. D’oh there was an answer to my failure as a mother to get the Screamer to sleep through the night.
My first and last attempt at following the helpful whispers towards the light went a bit like this: Sometime between 1.03am and 3.01am. I wake up sitting in the couch, Peanut snuggling on my left boob and using the right one as a cover. I must have dozed off with my mouth open again. The proof is in the puddle of the drool in my notebook.
So in the end, BlueBeretDad and I took all the parenting tomes to the back garden, poured some unidentified liquid over them and sent them to where they all belonged. Then once we managed to wash the ashes out of all the orifices and our hair we sat down and made a decision that we would only follow our gut instinct. That we would not allow any publishing guru spoon feed us guilt, low- self-esteem and a feeling of failure. As Peanut’s parents we know best…most of the time.
Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t but we are doing what we can to each day give him love, affection and a few NOOOOOs! In at least two languages. And if we are not sure, we ask friends and family, because if I am going to be parting with £9.59 or £19.95 I will spend it on wine for us and them. The rest will go to charity.
I don’t believe in instant coffee which is but a flaky substance aspiring to be the real bean thing. As soon as you pour freshly boiled water all your hopes dissolve in the disappointing experience of exposing your taste buds to this stuff. And this is my main problem with all sorts of self-help babble spouting brain-muddling nonsense. Instant promise of instant results, be it your child, problems with partner (current or to be), your hobbies, your body or your big toe.
Professionals train for years to be able to help others and if everything came down to always getting up at the same time, starting your day with sending out magnetic waves to the universe before you drink buckets of coffee and smoke at least 200 hundred cigarettes to then move on to writing some lists and hit your head with a hammer at least 500 times before you go to bed then we would all live in a perfect world. But we don’t. I would tell you why that is but I have to jet off to meet my publisher. I have written a self- help book about it.
BlueBeretMum is busy sharing her time between bringing up her very energetic Ponglish baby/almost toddler and scribbling about life, universe and everything.
Blogs here
Sometimes tweets: @blueberetmum
