Martyrdom

My sister-in-law has a baby girl just four months younger than Miss. Naturally, there is great competiton between the two grandchildren. Cousin's adorably unruly mop of curls gives her the cherubic edge, but we like to think that Miss outpaces her in sheer get up and go. In truth, cousin didn't really get up and go anywhere till very recently: let's just say she's Not A Climber.

But as a newborn, Cousin was a terrible sleeper, until her mother very sensibly and sanity-savingly employed a magical woman known in select circles of Dublin parents as a baby whisperer: a sleep trainer. Somehow, and allegedly with no crying involved, this wonderful lady effected a miracle and Cousin went from being a baby who woke every twenty minutes to sleeping twelve hours a night, every night. I heard about this with envy and am still waiting, with shameful schadenfreude, to hear that Cousin has regressed, fallen off the wagon, started teething, or anything that would throw a spanner in the works. So far, not a peep. It's as if they only have to be parents twelve hours a day, and the other twelve they can just go back to being their regular pre-baby selves.

And yet. Every now and then I daydream about having some expert come in to observe and then "fix" my children: Moxie, Ellyn Satter, even SuperNanny (God help us) could perhaps get my kids to sleep through the night, eat their dinner, or come when called, because I'm certainly having no luck with such basics. But I realised today that if such a thing were to come to pass I would secretly be rooting for the kid, to prove that no knowledge of child psychology, no amount of experience with other people's children, no amazing techniques, would have any effect on my offspring, because they're Special Snowflakes and they damn well know their own minds and won't be falling for any of your tried-and-trusted solutions. So there.

Of course, this is really because it would validate my own inability to do anything with them, and because some apparently not-so-tiny part of me really wants to be able to cast up at them when they're teenagers how I was up several times a night with them for two years. Each. A really stupid, stubborn part of me.