Go the Fnck to Sleep

What exciting adult rendezvous is the sleepless child interrupting in Go the F**k to Sleep? It is his parents trying to watch a video, the mother under a blanket, the popcorn in the microwave. If the child refusing to sleep brings to mind the young Marcel in Remembrance of Things Past yearning for a kiss from his fragrant, bejeweled mother amid the clinking wine glasses of a glamorous adult dinner party, that is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about two slouchy, exhausted people trying to watch a television screen somewhere in each other's proximity. You can see why the father is so angry and unhinged; the precious adult time he is desperately fighting to preserve is so paltry, so modest, so barely there.
One wonders if this hostility toward the child, who is naturally and rightfully manipulative, is just a tiny bit misplaced. If we are raising a generation that sees the whole world as an expanse of devoted maids and butlers, if we ourselves are overly beholden or enslaved to our children's anxieties and desires, isn't it our own fault? Likewise, if we can't manage to hire a baby sitter and get out of the house, if we have made of the conventional nuclear family structure something stifling, airless, it can't really be the fault of a 4-year-old, resourceful and mischievous as he may be. We are, after all, to blame for our own self-sacrifice, and if we are being honest and precise, it's not exactly self-sacrifice, tinged as it is with vanity, with pride in our good behavior, with a certain showiness in our parenting, with self-congratulation.
The book, in all its cleverness and artfulness and ingenuity, raises certain other questions: Are they having sex, these slouchy rageful parents? Not enough, perhaps. When the father turns back to the waking child's bedroom, we look out at the comfy, sexless, vaguely depressive scene of his wife sprawled asleep on the couch under an ugly old blanket. No wonder the slouchy dad is full of rage. No wonder all those slouchy dads and moms who just want to watch a movie and eat some microwave popcorn find this book so funny, so transporting; no wonder it makes them feel, as the publicity materials suggest, "less alone." But if those sweet-faced children, so gorgeously drawn by Ricardo Cortés, could talk back would they say: "Put on a ******* dress. Have a ******* drink. Stop hovering over us. Live your own goddamned life."

CNN) -- "Go the F*** to Sleep" is being hailed as a cathartic children's book for parents. Beautifully illustrated and written in the same witty prose style as generations of beloved bedtime storybooks, this read has made a startling climb to the No. 1 spot on Amazon and as a New York Times Bestseller.
Who can explain it?
As the title suggests, "Go the F*** to Sleep" mocks the parental frustrations of trying to lay a child down to bed. Crass in concept and execution, this is an expletive-filled bedtime story intended solely for the amusement of parents.
Joan Demarest is an attorney in Corvallis, Oregon, and the mother of three young boys. Demarest told me that initially she thought the book was funny. That was before she read it. "Now I find it unsettling. I don't like violent language in association with children.
She has good reason to be concerned about the message behind such a parody. Demarest was the prosecuting attorney in one of Oregon's most high-profile child murder cases. She understands the fear that far too many children endure because the lines of what's appropriate parenting have become blurred.
Nobody is suggesting that there's a connection between Adam Mansbach's book and child abuse or child neglect. Still, there's no denying the reason "Go the F*** to Sleep" should be kept out of reach of children is because of its violent language and because of the way it demeans children.
"Imagine if this were written about Jews, blacks, Muslims or Latinos," says Dr. David Arredondo. He is an expert on child development and founder of The Children's Program, in the San Francisco metropolitan area, which provides consultation and training for those working with troubled youths.
It is hard to imagine this kind of humor being tolerated by any of the marginalized groups Arredondo cited. Consider the lines on page 3:
"The eagles who soar thru the sky are at rest
And the creatures who crawl, run and creep.
I know you are not thirsty. That's bulls**t.
Stop lying.
Lie the f*** down, my darling, and sleep."
The irony, says Arredondo, is that the people buying the book are probably good parents.
Bedtime story: Go the bleep to sleep
"The people reading this book are educated parents, who actually care about their children and are frustrated that often their children don't behave the way storybooks display."
Parents often don't act in the way storybooks depict either. Putting kids to bed can be a challenge, and it may be an even bigger problem for this generation of parents because the sacred bedtime ritual of reading to children has gone away.
"I think it's pretty important to note that most kids in this country do not get read to at all when they go to sleep," Arredondo says.
That lack of interaction between parent and child troubles him.
"It's a big problem" he says. "There is nothing in the cosmos, nothing known to man, that comes remotely close to the complexity and the elegance of the architect of every child's brain as it is developing. Neglect of a developing child's brain is a terrible thing."
We hex our children when we fail to read to them, he says; a child's developing brain makes connections at the rate of 1,000 per second. That's why children require copious amount of attention and stimulation. When they are denied that, they suffer.
Author Adam Mansbach is undoubtedly the kind of father who heaps love, affection and attention upon his daughter. (He reportedly had the idea to write the book because of his exasperation with her at bedtime.) But sadly, his book accurately portrays the hostile environment in which too many children grow up.
For far too many kids, the obscenities found in Mansbach's book are a common, everyday household language. Swearing is how parents across the social, educational and economic strata express their disappointments or anxieties, their frustrations and outright anger at their children. Sometimes the biggest bully in the neighborhood lives in the same house you do. Sometimes it's your parent.
Perhaps the reason Mansbach's book resonates isn't so much because of the humor, but because of the truth behind it.
The violent language of "Go the F*** to Sleep" is not the least bit funny, when one considers how many neglected children fall asleep each night praying for a parent who'd care enough to hold them, nurture them and read to them.
You know, like all those parents depicted in all those beautifully illustrated storybooks.

"The people reading this book are educated parents, who actually care about their children and are frustrated that often their children don't behave the way storybooks display."

Putting kids to bed can be a challenge, and it may be an even bigger problem for this generation of parents because the sacred bedtime ritual of reading to children has gone away.
"I think it's pretty important to note that most kids in this country do not get read to at all when they go to sleep," Arredondo says.
That lack of interaction between parent and child troubles him.

That's exactly the demographic we're talking about here. The ones who DO honor the ahem "sacred bedtime ritual of reading" (and reading... and reading... and reading....) The story isn't funny otherwise.

OK... I thought you were quoting the article approvingly.

Yeah, it was stupid.

Go the F**k to Sleep is the latest all-the-rage "children's" book. It's a Goodnight Moon-esque text where a parent begs their child to please, for the love of all that is holy, go the **** to sleep (here's Samuel L Jackson reading it). It's crass, and the tone is one of sheer frustration ("hell no you can't go to the bathroom. You know where you can go? The **** to sleep"); it's also hilarious. I'm not a parent, but I have been a live-in care-taker for a small child, and "sure, fine, whatever, I'll bring you some milk, who the **** cares, you're not going to sleep" is not unfamiliar. Parents across the interwebs seem to enjoy the book, because parenting can be really, really, really frustrating, and even though you love your kid, sometimes you just want them to go the **** to sleep. Please. Oh my God, please
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Sometimes, frustration at a child is not actually being misdirected from all other aspects of your miserable life. Sometimes, children are just frustrating – just like pretty much anyone you love intensely, from your partner to your best friend to your dog. Children are also not particularly receptive to the usual negotiating tools, like logic and rational argument and even appeal to emotion. Children are pretty much wholly self-centred, especially the smaller ones whose tiny brains are not yet developed enough to understand concepts like "mums need sleep too" and "mum is a distinct individual whose sole purpose in life is not, in fact, to meet every single need that you have." That is the worst. Whining may also be the world's most annoying sound. And I'm pretty sure that wanting your kid to just shut up and sleep transcends class, country, religion, region and race, and isn't just a yuppie parent thing.

So, yeah. Sometimes yuppie helicopter parents focus way too much on serving every single need that they perceive their child to possibly have at the expense of their own identities and lives, and it probably makes a lot of people miserable. And sometimes telling a kid to go the **** to sleep is just telling a kid to go the **** to sleep. And you probably aren't even saying it out loud, because I'm pretty sure yuppie parents don't say "****" to their children.