Our lives are killing us
by Mira and Charles on April 30th, 2010The toxic lifestyle of the American family today
It may be about the worst thing that could happen to a parent. You go to your car and there in back in the child seat is your child, dead. You forgot about him, you miscommunicated with your spouse…however it happened, it’s the last thing you wanted, and now the nightmare is the reality.
But how does something like this happen?
The people to whom this happens aren’t bad people. They’re not negligent people. They are people who get up every day, go to work, carry out their responsibilities, deal as best they can with the demands of daily life. They are us. That is what’s so horrible to these stories. We may protect ourselves by saying, oh, it could never happen to me. But let’s not kid ourselves. It could.
Again, though, how?
A recent story in SFGate shows how indeed this could happen to any of us. This family got home at 11:30 on a Saturday night after doing laundry at a relative’s house. These parents both work two jobs. That night there were bundles of laundry. Another kid, two years old, to bring in and get to bed. They were tired and distracted that night, as they probably were most nights, and most days too. Each thought the other was bringing the 7-month-old baby Sophia in. Each saw the door to the baby’s room closed and assumed she was in there. They didn’t get to sleep until 3 AM that night.
Next morning they slept late. How, you might ask, can parents sleep late with a baby? Easy. When we lead lives where we’re so busy we’re doing laundry in the middle of the night with the whole family, it’s easy to get into topsy-turvy schedules. Millions of families are in that situation. You put your kid to bed late, go to bed late yourself, and hope to God the baby sleeps late the next morning so you can sleep late. And sometimes she does, and you’re deeply grateful, even though you know your schedule is crazy. What can you do about it?
The next day, the father got up late and went to the gym. The mother woke up later, went to her baby’s room, found the baby wasn’t there. She frantically called the gym, they got the father, he ran to the car, and the horrible nightmare crashed all around them.
Of course this was neglect. The DA is investigating and might determine that it was criminal neglect. If so, an appropriate punishment will be handed out.
But you don’t think this could be you, you are deluding yourself. Most of us are working harder than ever to make ends meet. We’re overstressed and overtired. We have too much to do and not enough time to do it in.
Well, what do you think happens under those circumstances? Mistakes get made. Things fall through the cracks. Multiply that times millions and millions of people, and a lot of babies will get left in cars and die.
That’s what’s in common with all these stories. Otherwise sober, responsible people get overwhelmed, exhausted, and distracted just drop the ball. We’re all dropping the ball all over the place, but sometimes that ball is our baby.
I’m not making excuses for these parents. In the end, we are responsible for our kids no matter how busy and tired we are.
Still, our lives are killing us. These parents whose kids die like this all have good intentions. But if we keep living the way we do, more kids will die.
And if our lifestyles are killing our babies, what are they doing to the other things we care about? Nothing good.
It’s got to stop. And it can.
Here’s what I see over and over with the families I work with and talk to. As hard as they work, they ADD demands to their lives. They ADD stress. With all they have to do, they do MORE.
So, yeah, I get it: you have to work hard to keep a roof over your head and put food on the table. When our kids were little we’d work and take care of the kids in shifts. We barely saw each other. It was terribly exhausting and stressful. It was only by the grace of God that our kids didn’t die as a result of some moment of exhausted inattention. I get it.
But we can all dial it back a little. There is always some way for us to take something off our plate, instead of always adding more. We can always so NO to some activity or obligation. We can always find a way to make getting more sleep a higher priority.
And we have to. Our lives, our children’s lives, depend on it.
Our books Our Love Is Too Good to Feel So Bad and The Weekend Marriage should help you sort all this out. The Emotional Energy Factor will help you cope better with what’s on your plate. And, if something terrible has happened to you, Everything Happen for a Reason will help with the healing and with putting everything in perspective.
And of course if you need one-on-one help with any of this, that’s what we’re here for at The Chestnut Hill Institute. We’d love to hear from you.
I’ve not checked this for typos. I wrote it very quickly. Let every little mistake stand in for someone whos gotten hurt by the pressure-filled lives we lead today.
