Oneill - Ungovernable: the Victorian parents guide to raising flawless children

S o. Here is where your life choices have deposited you. Lets take a look, shall we?

Your bloodshot eyes and slouchy slept-in clothing. Your once-taut belly lapping over the yoga pants that will never come any closer to a yoga studio than the 7-Eleven it shares a parking lot with.

But heres some good news! Youve finally found a way to make the baby sleep: you just have to keep one hand on her tummy while using your other hand to keep the wind-up baby swing swaying at precisely three-fourths time, and run the vacuum and dishwasher simultaneously, while making sure the spit-up-encrusted blanket she wont let you wash is tucked snugly around her left shoulder but never touching the right.

Now you are enjoying the first stillness of your day. Youve made a little nest out of the least offensive dirty laundry that was clean yesterday before your older child overturned the basket from the sofa and used it to cage your middle child, who, defying six months of potty training, chose tactical targeted urination as an effective defense.

You went to rewash the towels but then both boys started throwing up, so the laundry that was merely peed upon had to take a back seat to that which had been puked on. The layer of plastic toys (the cheap, mass-produced cartoon abominations you swore youd never buy) jab you through your makeshift bed, but the blessed side of total exhaustion is that you hardly feel them. Plus, ever since the last baby compensated for her slippery-quick birth by doing unspeakable things to your pelvic floor with her exit, youve accepted that pain is just part of life now. Lets lie back onto the intricately finger-painted yogurt stains that cover your couch, and reflect.

You wanted a baby. You wanted to love another human and shape them into a gift to give the world. Now, in your darkest hours, you fantasize about yourself before children, smugly popping each blue birth control pill out of its foil into your toilet. Had you access to a time machine, you believe youd use it to push into that bathroom, rip the towel rack off the wall, and knock your idiot self into the tub. Then youd fish every last pill out of the bowl. It doesnt matter if theyve dissolved back then you kept the toilet clean! The powder will dry and you can mix it with the expensive yogurt you used to buy, in the Before Time.

And here you are. Huddled in garbage, chained like a low-rent Princess Leia to a pumpkin-sized Jabba the Hut, fantasizing about time machines and toilet pills. Aw, honey. Its okay. This is a confusing time in your life.

Youre a twenty-first-century parent living in a world where the rules of proper parenting change by the hour. And youre starting to think theyre stupid rules. Stupid and useless, and theyve crushed your faith in any writer with letters after her name. Still, youre desperate. You keep hoping to grab ahold of a book with the right set of rules.

Judging by the way your chipped manicure scrabbled over the spines in the childcare section of the bookstore before settling on this peculiar book, youve still not found the magic words that will transform your sloppy, non-subservient progeny into something you can show off in public. In fact, youre beginning to despair that you ever will. That you have done, and are continuing to do, everything wrong.