I get a lot of press releases in my e-mail inbox. Most of them are informative and leave me wondering, “What am I supposed to do with this? Give free publicity to a company I know nothing about?”
Seriously. Unless there are dying kids involved I rarely give any kind of press to anyone on the blog – unless they pony up the samples or a giveaway or, you know, SOMETHING. (I don’t think it’s too much to ask.)
That being said, I got a press release today and I found myself staring at it for a good five minutes. Here’s an excerpt:
You wouldn’t dream of leaving your toddler playing in the living room while you take a shower or putting your newborn down for a nap in his bedroom upstairs without turning on the baby monitor. But accidents can happen even when parents are careful. An estimated 64,000 children under age 5 are treated in U.S. hospital emergency rooms each year for injuries from accidents involving everyday nursery products, such as cribs and high chairs.
Seriously? SERIOUSLY?
First of all my main problem is the assumption that I wouldn’t dream of leaving my toddler in the living room while I take a shower. Um. Guess what. My toddler is playing in a totally different room than I’m in right now. I don’t think I’ve seen my toddler for the last thirty minutes. She’s playing with her sister.
The baby monitor thing is just as weird. I mean, I don’t know about anyone else’s baby, but I could have put either one of my newborn daughters at the end of the block and I wouldn’t need a baby monitor to let me know when she’s awake. Newborns cry. That piercing, soul-wrenching cry. The one that is the cause of most bouts of post-partum, “Why won’t she just be QUIET?!” thoughts – or sobs.
To read things I have done and to see that some PR person thinks that no mother would dream of doing it shows that whoever wrote this release isn’t a mom, or is a really protective mom who thinks it’s normal to be that way.
That does not take away from the statistic. Kids get hurt. My daughter had a hairline ankle fracture from setpping on one of those big-ass legos. Why did we get her the big-ass legos…you guessed it…so she’d be safe from choking on the normal-sized legos.
Sometimes trying to be super-safety-mom just gets you in a world of hurt. A different world of hurt than you would have been in if you hadn’t been safety conscious, but a world of hurt nonetheless.
Even though a couple of the no-brainer tips in the press release were helpful (don’t use the high chair tray to keep the baby from falling on the floor – no shit, really?) I have to give a big, hearty thank you to the May 2009 issue of ShopSmart.
Your press release lets me know your magazine is one I would never dream of buying.
March 24th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
LOL. I don’t think our baby monitor is even plugged in, and I leave my toddler to play while I do other things alot. I listen, ’cause heaven knows she lets me know the minute something doesn’t go her way.
And when am I supposed to shower????
March 25th, 2009 at 6:59 am
Bwahahaha! I thought the same things when i got this press release yesterday! Glad I’m not the only one. They should name their magazine Sanctimommy.
March 25th, 2009 at 11:49 am
It’s been a long time since I had toddlers, but I distinctly remember leaving them in the living room (probably watching Barney videos) while I took a shower. Just before I would step under the water I would yell, “are you guys okay?!” and if I got an affirmative answer I would get in. Halfway through I would poke my head through the curtain and yell, “are you guys still alive?!” (At this point they would probably roll their cute little eyes all they way up in their heads and yell at me to quit bugging them, because Baby Bop was on and dammit Mom, you are interrupting her solo!) And afterwards I would check the living room, take count of the children and check for head wounds.
All of this to say that I WOULD dream of it and I HAVE done it.
March 25th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
If I can’t leave my toddler in the room while I take a shower, then how am I suppose to take a shower. This is too funny. I’m with you on this. There are moms that are a bit too cautious, I think I get that way sometimes, but I have a hubby that reminds me to calm down and I don’t think it’s perfectly normal to be over protective.
March 29th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Unreal. I can only imagine this pitch was written by someone who has read about mothering and not actually done it herself. Because once you’ve been a mother you realize that monitors are something you only use when you want your sister in law to think you’re a good parent.
March 31st, 2009 at 5:05 am
I can believe it. I have a PR firm, and unfortunately some of my colleagues out there are not always thinking! Or, they don’t have enough experience to know what NOT to do. How embarrassing!
April 1st, 2009 at 8:08 pm
I do the same thing, when would I ever be clean and able to be around people if I couldn’t take a shower? Guess what, my children are awake when I’m awake, and we kind of need to do our thing. Unless I locked them up in the bathroom with me, while I shower but that would be child-abuse, right?
I think we all try and do the best we can, and also: every child is different, and every parent know their own child best. What works in one family might not work in another one.
I just this minute wrote about something similar on my blog, http://www.angrymother.blogspot.com, about the big guilt we all feel because we try to do the right thing, yet all the time, someone tells us that we are doing wrong, and: harming our children.
I’m fed up with it. I’m, no, correct: we, are not bad mothers, we are great mothers, and we are doing a fantastic job, whether we take a shower or not.
April 15th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
There’s just something judgy about the phrase “You wouldn’t dream…” It’s presumptious. Right up there with, “I would never!” in my book.