Sleeper Cells

This morning I struck upon a startling realization. One that will shake the concept of parenting to its very core. It is so earth shatteringly brilliant in its simplicity that some will call me a visionary and others, too frightened to accept the simple reality, will decry me a mad man. My epiphany will force parents to reevaluate everything that they thought they knew about themselves, their children, and every piece of interaction they have with those children. In short, it is a game changer. And here it is:

CHILDREN ARE TERRORISTS.

I'm not saying children are LIKE terrorists, I'm saying children ARE terrorists.

Think about it. Terrorists are people--they can be parts of a group or individuals (just like children)--who systematically work to destabilize an established system of rule through acts of unconscionable cruelty or symbolic mischief. Whether or not they actually incite "terror" is not really relevant, that is simply the byproduct of their actions, which they carry out with the intention of breaking down the system.

Terrorists have a "big picture" goal of some sort, and let's start by taking a closer look at that aspect first.

The rampaging sociopath, who might commit any of a number of unspeakable acts on the general public, is different from a terrorist because the sociopath lacks organization and a long-term goal. If a person climbs a bell tower and starts shooting, he (let's be realistic with our gender reference here, it's ALWAYS a "he") might have some sort of statement to make, but that statement is always going to be secondary to the act itself. It's the shooting from the bell tower part that this person craves, not that any message in particular gets out. There are no plans in place to FURTHER carry out unspeakable acts in the name of a cause. This is a one off deal.

Because children have a long-term goal in mind, they are not simple sociopaths venting their rage/dissatisfaction/whatever with the status quo.

Even the terrorist who works alone--like the Unabomber, for instance--has plans to carry out continued acts of cruelty in the name of a cause. Whether that cause makes any sense or not also isn't relevant. It makes sense to the terrorist, and that's all that matters.

But what, you might ask, does a terrorist WANT? WHY do they do what they do?

That is simple. They want "other," and they are willing to make personal sacrifices--perhaps even unwittingly (as the terrorist might sacrifice, say, having a successful romantic relationship in exchange for a singular dedication to a goal)--to make that "other" happen. They believe their vision of how things should be is the BEST way for things to be, and they are not willing to listen to any reasoning to the contrary, no matter how logical or convincing, that others might present. Most importantly, though, they perform their terrorist acts because they believe there is no other way that they can accomplish that goal. They view themselves as powerless in the conventional sense, as a part of the system, and they reason that their only recourse is to target the very fabric of the system in a way that will ultimately destroy it. Allowing them to rebuild it from scratch with their own designation of "order" at its heart.

"OK," you say. "I see that you are starting to create a few parallels between how terrorists think and how children could subconsciously view their own place in the family 'system.' But, come on. Children aren't blowing up refrigerators because they can't have pudding. They aren't torching the living room because they can't watch another episode of 'Bubble Guppies' (this is a new show, it just started this week, and, I swear, yesterday Gabe MIGHT have torched our living room he was so incensed that there was only one episode to watch available to him, if he'd had the means--though that attitude went away after about two minutes when he was freshly distracted by a glue stick). You're insane!"

Am I? AM I? AM I?

Now we're going to get to the meat of this thing. And I will focus solely on sleep--but there are relevant examples that can be drawn from many avenues of child behavior.

If I am insane, it's because our little terrorists have been systematically destabilizing our family system by destroying our ability to think rationally and effectively parent sanely through sleep deprivation. And I have three and a half years of research to back this up. For three and a half years, neither Libby nor I have had a good night of sleep. That isn't to say that we've never had the OPPORTUNITY for a good night of sleep. We have. Nights go by that we have no disturbances. Though, the only ones we've had since Norah came along have come when the children are nowhere near us overnight, because she has yet to learn to be a subtle terrorist. She is the kind of terrorist that blows up a pub filled with innocent people.

Gabe, however, has learned subtlety. He has learned that he doesn't need to wake us up EVERY night--thus depriving himself of his own vital sleep, which allows him to function at his full capacity for destruction throughout the day (another form of terrorism--here, though, he WANTS a mess, and by continuously making them, he forces me to eventually give up and let the mess exist throughout the day, but I digress). He has learned, perhaps subconsciously--I'm willing to accept that PERHAPS children are unwitting terrorists who do the things they do simply because that is how human beings work, and they are just working THAT system to destroy another one--that waking us up in the middle of the night, say, one day out of ten still makes us sleep uneasily those other nine days. He is like a cyber-terrorist, crashing some agency network just to prove that he CAN do such a thing--and much worse, possibly with planes falling out of the sky--if he wants to.

But WHY, you say. What could possibly be the point?

To get what they want, obviously! Not only do they get what they want when they wake up--be that a glass of water, a bottle of milk, to snuggle in someone's bed, or to simply wake up the rest of the household and get the day going two hours early (which happened with Gabe this morning)--they are also breaking down our wills and our ability to resist their constant badgering and nagging throughout the day. Because I don't have the strength to keep saying "no," with the requisite five minutes of explanation, all day to the insane requests that Gabe makes ("Can I have ice cream for breakfast?" "Can I have the big tape dispenser?" "Can I use Daddy's computer?" "Can I put stickers on the dining room table/art supply cabinet/Norah/the TV/the floor/this library book/every surface in the house?"), eventually, I will cave in and let him do something. And I can only blame my weakening resolve, which I have to trace back to the fact that I rarely sleep more than four to five hours a night (yesterday I let him have ice cream at 9:00 in the morning after he pestered me for an hour, just as an example of my failure).

And Norah gets the same thing. We've been trying to wean her off the bottle as much as possible, but she LOVES her bottle and will only drink from a sippy cup after throwing a tantrum or two. For a time, I was very good about not giving her a bottle at all during the day, but now I'm finding myself not so willing to keep fighting that fight ALL DAY, and I'll give her a bottle once in awhile just to have some peace and one less thing to deal with.

See! The terrorists are winning! They are destabilizing our family systems and eroding our wills to resist! We must declare a war on children, I mean terror, and fight them with every weapon and tool available to us!

. . . .

You know, on second thought, never mind. That sounds like a lot of work, and I just don't have it in me to deal with it right now. Just forget I said anything and go about your business.