Now that you're a full-time stay-at-home mom, weekends tend to look a lot like weekdays, with one notable exception: on weekends, you might have a handy sidekick to help with the children and the house. In theory. In reality, you have a surly, "Is it really my turn/it's not fair" kind of overgrown au pair who completes domestic and childrearing jobs as a favour to you instead of accepting these tasks as the obligations that they truly are. Yes, we're talking about the great sperm donor himself: Dad.
This is the same fellow whose ears technically work as well as yours. His, however, seem to have a nifty motion-activated control that only kicks in when you finally raise your tired butt off the couch to respond to the two-year-old who's been screaming for the last 10 minutes. You were hoping (against all odds, it must be noted), that for once Daddy would jump up at the first whimper and say, "I'll get it. You stay put." Instead, even the best intentioned of the breed can only get up once you're up. He'll mutter, "Oh, I was going to go," and then either plop himself back down on the comfortable end of the couch, or worse yet, follow you out of the room and even partway up the stairs. At this point, it becomes necessary to say something like, "It doesn't take two of us, you moron. I'm already up and you can get the next one!" They never do.
Daddy Dearest
On the nights when Dad isn't home, you don't have to play out this charade. You do all the work and you don't have a pesky shadow following along behind. You also have the added benefit of making up stories (or exaggerating, at any rate) about how impossible the children are. When these guys are around, they expect (and react best) to being ordered about like unpaid servants. If you don't ask them to help the children on with their coats, they won't. They will slip on their own jackets and wait anxiously at the door, waving their keys around and announcing the time every two minutes. They might even go out to the van and gun the engine a few times. Go on, honk the horn, I dare you. Arrrrgh.
If you expect them to prepare a family meal on the weekends, you must tell them precisely what you would like them to do. If you say, "Get some vegetables going," you'll be lucky to have a half-opened bag of ready-to-eat carrots tossed on the table. You have to say, "Take the green and red peppers out of the fridge, wash them, cut them, take out all the seeds..." You get the picture. If you ask them to set the table, you'll be lucky if everyone gets a knife and a fork. If you want other accessories -- glasses, napkins, and occasional dessert spoon -- you must issue these instructions explicitly.
When the stench of a diaper is so strong that dogs are crossing the street to poop on your neighbour's lawn, they will not engage their olfactory sensors until you have told them to. "Can you smell that? I think it's Daddy's turn" is a very good start. Usually, though, it's best to go with, "Holy crap, are you waiting for it to ferment? Change your baby before we need a blowtorch to get the crust off his ass." Or something to that effect.
If housecleaning is on the agenda, again you need to be specific. Simply uttering the words "I think we'll have a tidy up today" will do nothing except ensure that he will spend 45 minutes going through the tiny drawer in the office desk and announcing that he has "finally sorted that out." Meanwhile, you need a snow shovel to get from your front door to the stairs, which are littered with the detritus of a week's living. Try instructions like, "Start with the front hall and don't come up for air until you get to the top of the landing. Be ruthless." This can work.
It's worth noting that men are wonderful at grand proclamations regarding the state of the house. After announcing, for example, that they will be "cleaning up this mess," they then proceed to stand in the front hallway, assigning each "piece" of the offending mess to a passing family member. "Take this to your room." "Do we really need this?" "Can you sort through these toys for me? I don't know which pieces go with what." "Who had all the CDs out?" This is really quite annoying and it is perfectly acceptable to revert to temperamental teenage behaviour when faced with this dictatorial style.
If you have a husband who travels a great deal for business, he will likely need some serious guerilla training on weekends before he will be of any help. Start with a formal introduction of the children and their various quirks.
"This is David. He's eleven and needs to wear a sign that reads, 'I am a bad example,' particularly when teaching his two-year-old brother the fine art of pestering his two sisters.
"This is Julia. She's thirteen going on twenty-two. She needs to be approached with care in order to determine whether it's a 'Good Julia' day or a 'Bad Julia' day. This can be determined by the frequency of door slams, shrieks, and stomps coming from her bedroom.
"This is Leanne. She's five and is trying to grow a boy's penis. You might want to watch for her bathroom breaks as she is determined to master the standing-up position.
"This is Adam. He's two. Wear protection."
This will give Daddy Dearest a fair start. Of course, the real trick in all of this is trying to maintain the myth. You know, the one that says he's still man of the house and boss of all of us? Good managers know how to make their subordinates feel valued.
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 | Excerpted from Journey to the Darkside: Supermom Goes Home by Kathy Buckworth. Copyright 2007 by Kathy Buckworth. Excerpted with permission from Key Porter Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced except with permission in writing from the publisher. |
