Welcome to motherhood. It’s the hardest job on earth but also FUN and not hard. It’s the longest, shortest time. It’s organic but also Doritos. The rules are simple, not contradictory, but also not rules, because we are play-based.
1. You must never be boring, but also don’t be fun, or else they won’t respect you as a parent.
2. You must curate a schedule of sports, academics, and whimsy, but don’t curate it so it will be child-led.
3. Infants must learn to swim with you holding them, or they could drown in a bucket, but also not rely on you to swim.
4. Cribs should contain one twenty-thread count sheet and be free of comfort items in a way only monastic monks could understand, but also make it cozy.
5. You must sleep-train your baby before the four-month regression, the six-month regression, and learning leaps. But also don’t pressure them or they will have abandonment issues and form a goth band.
6. You must create a curriculum of brain-stimulating activities—a box of old-timey keys, brick bits from a pueblo in New Mexico, or rain in a jar. But also don’t focus on academics.
7. You must make organic meals but also not be a snob, so let them eat cupcakes made from Blue No. 5 and petroleum at birthday parties.
8. You must pretend-play and create scenes with your child about a no-eyed cat and her toilet-paper-roll friend Roger in outer space. But also don’t be your child’s playmate.
9. You must get them into an Ivy league school, but also send them to public school to help sustain community.
10. You must support school lunches but also pack a back-up healthy lunch of cucumbers wrapped in seaweed pants.
11. You must be safety conscious but also not hover or be a helicopter mom.
12. You must teach them to be socially independent but also curate playdates for them.
13. You must teach them stranger danger but also to be friendly to strangers.
14. You must allow only the appropriate amount of screen time, which is zero.
15. You must learn how to make a DIY kite out of old newspapers but also buy a store-bought one when the lumbering piece of sky garbage won’t fly in wind that doesn’t give a shit about decorative pom-poms.
16. You must get your baby to latch correctly so they get enough milk for a healthy weight, but also not so much that they become an obese baby or a body-conscious baby. A baby who is happy with their weight, not skinny, but also zaftig in the way that still looks sexy in clothes.
17. You must enjoy this time but also don’t enjoy it, because it will be your fault if your child isn’t a success and takes naps at McDonald’s. But also that’s honest work.
18. You must know how to survive a fire, hurricane, pandemic, or alien invasion. You must be able to make a spreadsheet, fold a fitted sheet, sheet cake, lullaby, and a leprechaun trap. You should be an expert at getting stains out, finding stars, telling jokes, home-cooking, hosting dance parties, playing dead, riding escalators, watching “this,” diving for Barbies, finding schools with chickens, and getting good GPAs. You must also be good at teaching how to tie shoelaces, learning stages of development, gentle parenting, not gentle parenting, free-range parenting, parenting without borders, time-outs, consent, talent shows, ghost stories, growing pains, the alphabet, volcanoes, and middle school. But also don’t be a know-it-all parent.
If you follow these simple, not contradictory rules, you will be a good mom, but also not a mom, because we are also stardust persons with decision fatigue.
