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"Babies Can't Get Bored!"

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This baby is watching The English Patient.

If you've ever done an Internet search for why your baby is bored, you'll find that experts constantly insist that babies can't get bored.

How They're Trying to Help: I'm not really sure what the end goal of this "babies can't get bored" conspiracy is, unless there is a group of people determined to bore babies to death. I guess one motivation is that people are afraid you're going to put your baby in front of the TV if they admit he might be bored.

How It Does Not Help at All: If a baby cannot be bored, then whenever he gets tired of whatever he is doing, something else must be the problem. Maybe he doesn't like being left alone. Maybe he needs a nap. Maybe he is concerned about rising income inequality in this country. You try to address all these things, but none of them help because he is frickin bored.

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"I have to disagree, Mom; I feel unemployment is a far more telling indicator than the Dow's performance."

I am not demanding that I be allowed to put him in front of the TV. I could take him on a walk. I could give him another toy to play with. I could call the dog over and order him to act stupid. I could sing a song. I'm pretty sure these are good things for babies, and I'm pretty sure a lot of parents will give them a try if you allow the possibility that the baby might be bored. Not every parent is just champing at the bit to put on Dora the Explorer the moment you give them the slightest opportunity, forcing you to lie to them to keep them in line.

Not only does it not help, it can hurt. If I take my baby to someone's house and I believe he can't get bored, why shouldn't I just drop him in a cardboard box and give him a pacifier instead of taking him around to watch people and look at the different rooms? Babies can get bored, and you should help them out by interacting with them and letting them look at different real-world things. Is that so hard to say? Are we so scared of TV that we have to oversimplify this?

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"Breast-Fed Babies Never Overeat!"

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Must be a bottle-fed baby.

How They're Trying to Help: I don't know about this one; I guess they heard it somewhere and are trying to take away one more worry that a breast-feeding mom has.

How It Does Not Help at All: I guess it doesn't exactly hurt for most people, because most babies don't overeat? Where this gets ridiculous is when they turn it into a rule that no babies can possibly overeat. My baby sure as hell overeats. Maybe they mean he doesn't digest more food than he needs, and that was certainly true, because he would finish whatever container you gave him (breast or bottle), and then he would vomit up the excess. Does he need 5 ounces? He'll happily eat 8 and then spit up 3 over the next couple of hours. I don't know, maybe he thought it would be rude not to finish what he was given?

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When he gets older I guess he'll politely eat his host's crappy dinner and discreetly vomit it behind a plant.

For some babies, that much spitting up is a medical problem, either standard acid reflux or something called GERD, which sounds like something you have to tell your kid not to call other kids. But not mine. He was what they call a "happy spitter," which sounds kind of dirty, but just means that even though he throws up left and right, it doesn't bring up acid that burns his throat and makes him cry. He'll just toss his cookies while playing or watching you sing to him and continue as if nothing happened. It also means the doctors just shrug their shoulders at you and can do nothing.

What this comes out to is that for a long time I could not just pop up in the morning and let him drink as much boob as he wanted or else we would have a barf party. The experts claimed that this would never be a problem, but my furniture claims otherwise.

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"It'll Get Much Better After Three Months!"

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How They're Trying to Help: Some people call the first three months of a baby's life "the fourth trimester," as they act more like disgruntled evicted fetuses trying to get back inside than like the happy human babies we see in movies and ads. It's horrible. Obviously people want to help by telling you there's a light at the end of the tunnel -- by about 3 months, the baby will stop crying several hours a day for no reason and will start smiling and making other human-like interactions.

How It Does Not Help at All: This is like saying "You're only going to be waterboarded for 96 more hours." If you're nearly suicidal at two weeks, getting literally no more than two hours of sleep at a time, the baby crying inconsolably for at least 15 minutes every time you try to change his diaper or rock him to sleep or feed him or do anything (if your baby has "colic" this comes out to more than three hours of crying a day), two-plus months sounds like an eternity.

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"WAAAAH WAAAAH, YOU PUT A HAT ON ME, IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD, WAAAAH."

From your helpful friends' point of view, they are reassuring you that it will only be 2.5 more months. From the harried parents' point of view, they are being told that this will not end for at least 2.5 more months. "Enjoy this time, they grow up so fast," is also a cruel, cruel thing to say at this point, although it makes perfect sense to me now with my kid at 8 months. I used to stare shell-shocked into my friends' eyes as they came to visit and wail, "THEY GROW UP SO SLOWLY," like a doomed ghost.

So this puts the friends in a tough spot. Facts are facts; they can't very well lie and say it will end any sooner. So what's a better alternative? Maybe some comfort along the lines of "one day at a time" that directs your gaze away from the infinitely distant horizon, or even better, my favorite phrase of all, "Would you like me to come by and hold the baby for a few hours so you can get a nap?" I would be willing to give that person anything I had, even my firstborn child ... no wait, especially my firstborn child.

If you enjoyed the article, Christina can be contacted on Twitter and Facebook. If you didn't enjoy the article, Christina can be contacted by shouting as loudly as you can out your window.

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