Lie #49: My kid won’t ever ______ because ________.

It’s the lie we all tell ourselves. This – THIS is the doozy. This is the one you tell yourself before you have children. You know the one. The one where you stare at the stranger’s kid having a meltdown in a restaurant and you two look at one another and nod in silent assent. The one where you insist, to yourself or anyone else that’ll listen, that your child will be a good eater and won’t subsist off of french fries and yogurt. The one where you quietly full body eyeroll when your friend tells you her behavioral nighttime routine woes because of tantrums.

“Our kid won’t ever do that.”

The last one is me. One. Hundred. Percent. I never understood these moms that talked about how their kids kept them up all night. I, admittedly, still don’t. I find it completely foreign. But what I did do is tell a big ole fat lie. “When I have kids, they are NOT going to interfere with my sleep schedule when they are old enough.” I got bolder. “They are going to have a strict bedtime routine because research shows [whose? No clue] that children with set schedules are more successful in life. I [imagine puffed up chest here] will be a balanced parent.”

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