By Brennen Schmertmann
Fatherhood in Real Time
I’m just going to say it … bedtime sucks. It was true when I was 5 years old and it is true now. Back then I didn’t want to go to bed and now my children don’t want to go to bed. Darn genetics! I might be alone in this but, bedtime has always been a struggle and it seems to always end up with me yelling at someone to go to sleep and to stop jumping on their beds. I try really hard to make sure that everything is ready and that bedtime can be an easy process. Their beds are made, box fan and sound machine on, water bottles gathered, and blankies are in their normal spots. The only thing we have to do is stop playing, read a book, brush teeth and go up to bed. However, this is the beginning of a chess match.
Getting my children to stop playing is akin to a hostage situation in a police movie. I realize that the right thing to do is to ask them once and then if they don’t listen, follow the “model parent guide” and help them let go of their toys and gently direct them up the stairs into their beds. However, it’s been a long day and I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to hand-hold someone all the way up to their bed, let alone three of them. So, my tactic is to ask five or six times, no one listens, and then I get angry and demand that everyone start going upstairs. This tactic does get them upstairs but doesn’t build a healthy relationship with my children.
The other frustration I have is that my 2-year-old needs me to hold her to go to bed. That requires me to pace around the room until she goes to sleep and that can take a long time. I have had to pace around the room holding some child every day for seven years and the knees aren’t what they used to be. I do like holding my daughter when she is going to bed but, my goodness, it takes so long … so long. Sometimes I can be up there for an hour pacing back and forth waiting for her to go to sleep. “Patience is a virtue” was said by some guy who didn’t have children. I have a lot of other stuff to do as well, which can compound the frustration because there aren’t enough hours in the day to complete all the things that need to be done.
I recognize the beauty of being able to hold my 2-year-old when she goes to bed. Our kids are only little for so long and time is so short. My oldest is 7 and I remember having to hold him to go to bed and now, he just goes to bed by himself. Days when I remember that fact make holding a child for and hour or hour-and-a-half easy. However, I don’t always recognize that and still struggle with bedtime. I still rush it so I can be off the clock because I have been white knuckling it all day. Honestly, I probably rush bedtime because I focus more on myself in that moment, on my needs and not my children’s needs. This time of day is a work in progress for me, as a father. Bedtime should be a moment of connection with my children. One last moment before the day is done. However, sometimes I still think of bedtime as the final frontier.
(Brennen Schmertmann attends St. Paul the Apostle Parish in Davenport. )
