Ferber meets Ferglar

Katie didn't take too well at first to the sleep deprivation of motherhood.

BBFC comments: Content contains mild references to children and moments of parental in-joking. However, as intention is harmless 

 

As any new parent will tell you, it's all about sleep. You talking about '4 hours unbroken' as the holy grail. If you head to sleepdeprivation.com it'll mentions a number of otherwise hilarious side effects such as excess clumsiness and slurred speech, side effects one associates with much more enjoyable past-times, such as drunkenness.

 

But as a sleepadled guilt ridden new parent, you will inevitably find your way Dr Ferber.

 

Ferbs introduced, essentially, an idea that provided a middle ground for getting their kids to sleep. Parents in the 80s, who until then had had 3 options to get their kids to sleep.

Option 1. Holding the child indefinitely to achieve silence, usually so that judgemental I-raised-you-during-a-war-inlaw types wouldn't think they were failures.

Option 2. Letting the child 'cry it out'. Brutal (but "100% effective"). 

Option 3. Boarding School.  Brutal (but reassuringly expensive).  
 

So, allow me to introduce you to a fourth way.  Where 

Ferberisation meets Ferglarinisation. You may be able to spot where I've 'got creative' and adapted a couple of my own ideas.

 

Dr Ferber says:

Find a nighttime routine that helps calm your baby and signals bedtime. For instance, bathe, read a story, drug her quite heavily and cuddle her, muffling her screaming beneath a soothing pillow.

If baby is still nursing in the middle of the night, sell it on eBay, or begin by replacing that feeding with rocking to sleep or locking her in a cupboard, before beginning to help her find her own way to sleep.

Each night, put baby in her crib while she's still awake. Sleep where you can easily hear her, but not in the same room. (Many parents take turns camping out on the couch during "Ferberization.") When you go in at scheduled intervals, don't pick baby up to rock or feed her. Just sit there pointless while she performs Emily-Rose-style-back-snapping convulsions. Stay for 2 of 3 minutes, Say 'Go to sleep' firmly, and leave. 

Day one: Let baby cry for five minutes before going in to offer comfort. Make yourself a drink. Just a beer or something, maybe a slice of lime. The next time, wait 10 minutes, re-pour your drink, lose the lime; then wait 15. If baby is still crying after 15 minutes, keep the interval at 15 minutes for the remainder of that night until baby falls asleep, or you lose consciousness.   

Day two: Let baby cry for 10 minutes before going in. This allows you amble time to make something a little more ambition: maybe a Tom Collins, or a Mojito. Then return after 15, then 20. Keep interval at 20 minutes until baby falls asleep. 20 mins is lime enough to make some elegant concoctions; me, I'd go for a Daiquiri, or hit the Southside.

Day three: F*ck it. Let baby cry for 15 minutes, or an hour. Whatever. You'll be needing 15 mins minimum just to prepare the Absinthe; sugar, spoon, lighter, low ball glasses. My motto: three shots in before you go back in. Then give it 20 - hallucinations should be heavy by now. Talk to your baby, make it light. Once calmed bvy stories of electric-eel-sheep, leave. One more for luck. Look at the stars. Then wait 25. Keep interval at 25 minutes until baby falls asleep.

Most children will be sleeping well by the end of three days and should definitely respond by the end of a week. If not, speak with your pediatrician. After that, best check yourself out (your liver) or in (to rehab).  

Write a story about your holiday.

"Write a story about your holiday..." the teacher would say, day one at the start of a new school year. And, if you listened carefully, you could almost hear them whisper, "and leave me the f*** alone." Well, the wizards who wrote the SATs exams would have outdone themselves to set any task so coherent.

Snuck in amongst politics and business this week, you may have noticed that SATs testing - a compulsory exam in English, Maths and Science for 14 years olds - has been scrapped.

Unless you're under 23, or a teacher, you won't have experienced the exquisite pointlessness of the SATs experience. Feel like you've missed out? Worry not - let me take you there.

The only thing to be said for SATs, from a teachers' point of view, is that they were externally marked. No one cared: even the kids knew they were pointless. I think the best reason we could give them to do well - other than, of course, the much documented intrinsic desire to succeed so deeply ingrained in UK Youth Culture - was that it affected setting for GCSEs. Now that's inspiration. You'd find yourself saying things like, 'OK, good lesson needed today, your SATs are only weeks away', then later crawl into the crowded corner of the staff room reserved especially for self-loathing, avaricious sellouts who'll say anything to buy a quiet hour on a Thursday afternoon. Guilty, and guilty about it.

The other thing of note is how unbelievably badly written they usually were: invigilating a SATs exam in 2003 was a case in point. There were 4 invilgilators: two pros (oh, the glamour) and 2 teachers.

It went like this:

0900 Time starts.

0901 A handful of kids have read the writing task and already put their hands up. Idiots, I think, it's Sats, how can they not understand the question?

0903 All but 4 of the students in the room have their hands up.

0904 Invilgilators meet at front to try to work out what to tell the students.

That's because the question went something like this:

Imagine you are Macbeth, about to murder King Duncan. In pen, send an email to your wife, Lady Macbeth, telling her that she influenced you - without your knowledge - to kill King Duncan, an act you will carry out shortly. You should demonstrate both knowledge of the text and formal email writing skills in your response. You may use ideas from the reading paper. You may not use vowels.

They were always ridiculous, the marking deeply questionable, and no one - no one - cared. Except the Head, because they contributed to league tables, one of the single most hated, idiotic and divisive things ever brough to UK education.

SATs are being replaced with a teacher's report on the kids. How much better is that? It really doesn't need 3 exams, outsourced to a company in the States for marking - to confirm that Charile is a tool and has yet to reach the reading ago of... a tool, nor that Ivana is a genius and so on.

OK, ok, it's easy to be critical of government decisions. It's also quite fun, so join in whenever you can. Adios.

Some help in times of need

It seems that being totally unqualified to discuss the world financial crisis should not stop you from expressing an opinion. Very very few of us a couple of weeks ago would know what short selling is or what hedge funds were, and I think that that ignorance was not only noble but far more interesting that having that (sketchy, dumbed down) knowledge. 

Short selling, to put it simply for you, is this: if you are a short person who wants to be appear taller through achieving incredible personal wealth (IPW), you can borrowing stuff from other short people of IPW, or from a company of IPW.  You and your rich short friend lose loads of other people's money whilst increasingly your own IPW and go and buy lots of yachts. The company and the normal people meanwhile become homeless and die alone. 

A hedge fund is an oft confused phrase when you have so much money your pockets balloon on either side, looking like a hedge.  

But if you think I don't know what I'm talking about, check out these two venomous beasts: Sarah Palin and our Argentina's very own Christina Kirschner.   

To steal from what I've read sporadically on the subject, Palin's response to the question, What would you do about the Bail Out Bill? was quite predictable in its madness. 

- First of all, my name is not Bill. Second of all, when I look out of my window, I can see Russia.

Relevance not a strong point but not to worry, it's all part of God's awesome plan. 

Meanwhile, a thousand miles or so south of there, Christina is giving speech after speech talking about Argentina will stay strong because it is prepared for tough times. Excellent, and I thought these things were all somehow connected. Even as the pesos became worth 10% less overnight, she continued laughing in the face of the silly Americans in their time of financial crisis. Those fools.       

 

Or, as Leno apparently opened his show with last week: "Before we begin, I want to warn the good people of Nigeria watching this show, if you get any emails from Washington asking for money, it's a scam. Don't fall for it."

Shoot, it's all a bit upside your head, isn't it, Sarah? 

Hard drive

There are few things that can leave you hating 'progress' more than a lost hard drive. Ring binders, books, VHS tapes: things the size of your head that retained about an hour of information. These things were not disasterous to lose.

 

But a hard drive - not backed up due an attitude best described as an oh-you've-had-your-comeuppance-now-it'll-never-happen-to-a-Mac smugness - can contain something like the following:

- Music, approx 15,000 songs.

- Photos: Leah 6 months, most from Argentina, two weddings, many many more.  

- Work: nearly everyething since I've been a teacher: I was between 'back ups', somehow. A bunch of Katie's too... 

- Writing: about 70,000 words of It's Like Omigod, a humourous, observational take on my first couple of years of teaching. And a stack of others.

- Bookmarks: who'd have thought, but man does it take a long time to re-track down all those handy little local websites.

 

Depressed. Well, don't be.

 

But do please back up.