I don't read a lot of parenting books, partly because there aren't enough hours in the day, but partly because I was a special needs parent for over two years and that trial by fire has pretty much convinced me that I can handle anything and that I don't need no stinking book to tell me what to do. I also get the feeling that the problems I want parenting books to solve, they'd never address. The one that got closest what
Let's Panic about Babies, which is hilarious and informative at the same time and also makes for a great coffee table book/conversation starter.
If I did start picking up parenting books, it would be because a parenting book addressed these following issues specifically, in great detail.
- How to handle things, both mentally and physically when you realize there are toe nail clippings in the water table that your child has been drinking out of.
I'm still reeling from this one. Like I'm wondering what kind of damage it's done to my psyche. Here's the story. So we're outside playing and of course Little Munchkin wants to play in the water table. Her favorite past time in said water table is to drink from it of course, which I try to discourage, but there are only so many hours in the day.
Said water table was set up by the trashcan for a time, which I'm only mentioning because it's close proximity to the trashcan is the only explanation I can find and be reasonably happy with for the fact that there were toe nail clippings floating in her water table water. Gah. I'm literally having to quell a gag reflex just writing this out. I have to hypothosize that someone's toenail clippings were floating on top of an overloaded garbage can and they just somehow magically appeared in my daughter's unclosed water table (which is another issue entirely) and just settled there, because any other hypothesis for how they got there is just too terrifying to contemplate.
- How not to gag on a piece of half-chewed food your child sticks in your mouth.
The munchkin likes to 'share her food' which in theory is fine but in practice is completely disgusting, because what she does is eat something, realize halfway through the process that she's either not into it or that she's jammed too much into her mouth and then bale with that piece of food. If she's sitting on a lap, she discard said piece from her mouth, into her hand and into a mouth if its close without much thought and barely any reaction time on my part. And if it did make your mouth, she expects you to eat it. After having three kinds of bodily fluid on me at a time (something I endured as a special needs parent) and going through that without gagging, I thought I no longer had a gag reflex. But when I'm challenged with having a half-chewed piece of french toast forced down my gullet by a drool-covered toddler hand, I most certainly have one.
- What to do when a diaper loaded with poo gets flung all around you.
Shag carpeting + toddler poo = Ugh.
So yeah, if you know of any parenting books that deal with these problems specifically, I'm all ears. If not, pay no mind to the mother picking toe nail clippings out of a water table while chewing on half-eaten french toast whose busy thinking about the poo still left on the nursery floor.
Fighting Nun [waits a beat]: I think you are over-thinking a kid's show. 