It’s 5:30am. Crying begins. You stare at the ceiling, hoping it stops.
It doesn’t.
The pretend-I’m-sleeping-so-she’ll-get-up method won’t work today. Why?
Because she’s outta town on a girls trip for 3 days.
You are it. The only parent available. No choice but to be on.
Leading up to your wife leaving town, you may dread it for weeks. It’s hard enough to do together, and now you have to do it all without any backup.
You’ve done it when your wife runs an errand or goes to the gym, and that single hour felt like an entire day. So a whole weekend alone with your kid sounds like solitary confinement.
But what you probably aren’t thinking is how solely being with your kid is a huge benefit for everyone involved. Why?
You get the complete picture of everything.
Changing diapers. Prepping meals. Cleaning up. Getting your kid dressed, then getting yourself dressed while your kid is taking sticky trash out of the garbage. Doing the mental checklist before leaving the house and entering the baby battlefield. The list goes on.
More than just the tasks, you get to inherit the feelings that accompany those tasks. Stress. Boredom. Exhaustion.
But also the other feelings that are only earned after spending concentrated time with your kid. Laughter. Wonder. Excitement.
It’s a never-ending ride that takes you more places emotionally than most experiences on earth.
This is your chance to earn solo-parenting stripes. Don’t fear it, lean into the fact that…
You get time alone with your kid.
Which gives you appreciation for your partner – especially if she’s a stay-at-home mom who’s typically doing this alone.
And while it may not be the type of fun your previous, easier childless life had to offer, this is your life now. Embrace it. Lamenting the experience is just gonna take away from what it could give you.
Instead, embrace this time with your kid.
Learn about her and teach her about you.
This is when those magical, spontaneous moments of laughter come out of nowhere. But those only arrive after spending long chunks of time together.
Think about every friend you’ve ever had. You probably hung out for long afternoons and nights. The longer the hang, the more you laughed and discovered what’s fun to do together. Same thing happened with your wife. It took lots of time to connect deeply.
It’s very similar with your kid. But the difference is, he or she is much younger. As adults we’re used to sitting around, sharing drinks and conversation. Kids don’t do that.
But it reminds me of one of my favorite quotes by Kenneth Koch: “You’re not the age you are, you’re all the ages you’ve ever been.”
So tap into whatever age your kid is. Get on the floor. Pretend you’re a baby who crawls and screams just like him. He’ll love it. It might feel weird because you don’t do that, but at some point you did do that. Tap into it.
You gain trust from your wife.
This is a test. I repeat this is a test. All men report to your battle stations immediately!
Make no mistake, your wife is assessing your abilities. She so badly wants this to go well.
If you get this right, it could be a complete paradigm shift in your relationship. If not, it signals to your wife that you are another child for her to take care of, and leaving the house for more than a day is more hassle than it’s worth.
There will be hard times where you want to call your wife and complain or ask for help – resist that unless it’s truly an emergency. Give her some worry-free time away.
When she comes home, really, and I mean really try not to bitch about how hard your weekend was. Tell her how it went, but in a light humorous way that shows you had it under control. Then mention a funny or tender moment you shared with your kid. She wants to know that you can handle all the child management without feeling guilty for leaving. If you do this, it will motivate her to return the favor.
And when she comes home, make sure your house doesn’t look like a tornado ripped through it. Don’t be the dad hoping your wife is gonna waltz in like some CNN reporter, eager to sympathize with this poor victim of parenting. She won’t. The last thing anyone wants when they come home is for it to feel way worse than they left it.
Spend nap time or post-bedtime resetting everything. Clean all the dishes. Put all the toys away. Make the bed you both sleep in. It doesn’t have to be hotel-clean, but it shouldn’t look like a Def Leopard after party either. If you really want to turn her on, vacuum and clean the counter tops.
This is your chance to 1up your previous self.
Don’t squander this opportunity to level up as a parent and partner by turning on coco melon while you scroll on your phone. You’re gonna feel tired regardless of doing that or playing with your kid, so you might as well take out the legos and play King Kong. You wanna feel like dad (not deadbeat) of the year.
So get out there and dad hard with a vengeance. Yippee ki yay.
