When Did I Get Like This?: The Screamer, the Worrier, the Dinosaur-Chicken-Nugget-Buyer, and Other Mothers I Swore I’d Never Be
Where to buy When Did I Get Like This?: The Screamer, the Worrier, the Dinosaur-Chicken-Nugget-Buyer, and Additional Mothers I Swore I’d Never Be books online?
- ISBN13: 9780061956959
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
When Did I Get Like This? is the hilarious tale of one mother’s struggle to shrug off the ridiculous standards of modern parenting, and remember how to delight in her children
Over the last seven years of long days with small children, I have had many moments of joy, cool, and peaceful daydream.
This book is about the additional moments.
Before I became a mother, failing at something did not shake my fundamental belief in my capabilities as a human being. But now that I am the mother of three children under the age of seven, I have one overriding daily thought: I suck at this.
What kind of mother feeds her kids dinosaur chicken nuggets? Three times a week? What kind of mother lets hand washing after using the toilet slide, as long as it was just Number One? And then I marvel: When did I get like this? Why do I doubt my parenting abilities, day after day? Why does motherhood, a job as ancient as Eve, have me teetering daily on the edge of sanity?
With each new stage of motherhood, I tell myself I will never again be suckered by the question, “Don’t you want what’s best for your children?” And yet, time after time, I am. Sometimes, I am right to obsess. Additional times, the record will show, it has been distinctly counterproductive.
I’m effective on it . . .
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I have to start this review by adage I am absolutely appalled that the leader would suggest she could give her children juvenile diabetes by giving them juice to drink. As a parent of a Type 1 (juvenile) diabetic, I can tell you that this is an autoimmune disease that is not something to be taken lightly or joked about. You absolutely cannot get juvenile diabetes from diet or sugars, and for her to misuse the term in her book is helping to further the myths and stereotypes about our children and this disease. Nearly one million Americans are living with Type 1 diabetes, not to mention the millions around the world living with it. I would suggest to the leader she should do her research before fueling fake notions about Type 1 diabetes.
Needless to say, for her to say that right at the start of the book left a terrible taste in my mouth for the rest of the book, but I gave it a honest chance regardless. Overall, I establish it to be a lackluster read that didn’t live up to it’s title which suggested a humorous take on motherly adventures. I didn’t find much humor in the book at all, and the humor that she did described isn’t easily related to by the average middle-class or young mother. That being said, I establish the book more appealing when she wrote about taking care of herself and following her instincts, as a replacement for of worrying about what everybody else was going to reflect of her actions. The book is also easily read in bits and pieces lacking having to digest it all at once, so it could be considered a decent read if you’re bored and have nothing else to read at the moment. These (minor) upsides keep me from giving the book one star, but overall this is not a book I would recommend as I did not find it to be an enjoyable read whatsoever.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
I establish just about everything in Amy Wilson’s book When Did I Get Like This? completely tell-able to my own experiences as a mother. We do have some differences, but even with persons, I could know a lot of her feelings and experiences with her children.
Her book is a humorous but thoughtful take on motherhood. It’s not all laughs and silly kid tales — Wilson is very adept at building each chapter a pep talk to moms — don’t let all all these tiny things get you down – you’re doing the best you can with what you have – and, most importantly, it’s okay… (“okay” being anything and everything that you’re finding rather challenging at the moment.
Some of the key parts of the book I could tell to the most (and I even read them out loud to my spouse because he too could tell): Her sleep struggles with her daughter during a period of terrible illness (daughter’s illness) — nearly everything she wrote about was something my spouse and I have veteran with our son at one point or another. How she views her role in the parenting relationship with her spouse — she’s the caretaker, the appointment maker, the ensuring that no one gets hurt while the dad is the fun one. Her description of her middle child’s out of nowhere freak outs and her trying to cool him down while others watch on, in horror.
But the one thing that really struck me was the subtitle of the book itself — The Screamer, the Worrier, the Dinosaur-Chicken-Nugget-Buyer, and Additional Mothers I Swore I’d Never Be. I mean, come on – I reflect most women, when pregnant with their first child – swear they will never do certain things, and then soon find out that sticking to persons preplanned rules is near impossibility. If it takes buying a dinosaur-shaped processed chicken nugget to get your kid to finally eat some sort of protein, then you will most likely do it. I’ve too really lost my marbles and screamed about things that really are not vital at all. Worry? Well, I reflect that’s just a agreed.
This is a must-read for all moms with a thinking sense of humor. I really loved every moment of reading this book, and I will be suggesting it to a lot of my friends who will be or are new moms.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
If Erma Bombeck was the voice of the post-50s generation of women that stirred to the suburbs and had to cope with crabgrass, suburban social rites and changing rules of child-rearing, then Amy Wilson may become the voice of the Generation Y urban moms.
We now have a passel of Generation Y women, brought up under the aegis of female equality but they are also saddled with a whole lot of fantastic expectations. Women are supposed to rear children using a whole new set of rules which include:
*Natural childbirth –No drugs allowed.
*Breast feeding: No bottle until the kid is one years ancient and then presto, out with the breast
*No shouting or spanking or blaming.
*Early schooling to renovate kids brains (or maybe to get them out of Mom’s hair, but who’s going to admit to that?)
Amy Wilson is a very amusing Mommy. She is an Urban Mommy, residing in New York City where her financial practiced spouse provides fully for them but isn’t home that much. Amy, who is also an actress (although she doesn’t go into that), lives the Manhattan life of one-upmanship. Get the kid into the best pre-school is one vital step. Her tale of how the parents are grilled as to whether they are worthy of their kid’s inclusion into pre-school is a must read for anyone who hopes to make that grade.
The book covers the period of the first pregnancy through the oldest boy’s days in first grade. It is a series of fleeting life tale that can be read consecutively or at random. There are three kids, one mom, assorted babysitters who don’t really appear but must be on hand sometime. The spouse comes in late enough to miss dinner prep and bath, arriving just in time to read a tale at bedtime.
But there is much less complaining about “my spouse doesn’t do enough” than in the books that appeared in the 70s and 80s when the feminine revolution was in full swing. Here many of the essays and tales center on how to cope or on how do others cope so much better than I do? There are comparisons to the Duggars (that weird family tree of 19 kids who live out in Arkansas or somewhere) where the home-schooling mom is able to make her offspring toe the line lacking screaming or spanking. No marvel the Discovery Channel has learned a gold mine in persons reality shows about huge families. There’s a whole generation out there that can’t figure out how to make the kids behave.
Although there is a chronological curve to the book, each tale stands alone, so you can pick it up and turn to any chapter and get a laugh or a nod of the head. There are three kids, Conner, Seamus and Maggie and they all get their turn as the lead player in the drama of the day.
Probably most amusing is the time Amy tries to take the offspring on an airplane trip to Florida just when her spouse is away on a business trip and her nanny has to place on a medical urgent situation. No sooner is she on the plane than the Maggie the baby starts to throw up. How the airplane crew and additional passengers react (is there a leper colony nearby where this family tree can be dumped) and how Amy manages to survive and really get to her destination in the nub of the tale.
This book would make a nice gift for all persons young moms who can’t know why their children are not the reasonable, pleased tykes they are supposed to be after all the time and effort that has been poured into their upbringing. While Amy’s children are not devils they are not angels either and each one of their occasional misadventures is chronicled here, using their own baby voices. (I suspect Amy is going to get some grief for that when the kids become teenagers.)
So for anyone who has ever wondered: “How come Sarah’s kids seem to listen to their mother, while mine don’t” this book will come as welcome relief. Turns out Sarah, Amy and everybody else has had to deal with the same problems and has made some mistakes along the way. And since child-rearing advice seems to change every generation, this book may also stand as a tribute to what that advice was in the first decade of the 21st century. In the meantime, this book is an a amusing read – and insightful too!
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
This is the first book Amy Wilson has published and I have to say, I certainly hope she continues to empower, humor, and validate us through future publications. This is a honestly fleeting book and reasonably simple to fit into your busy “mommy” schedule as it is organized as a series of fleeting tales that are ordered sequentially (to some extent in the style of David Sedaris or Augusten Burroughs and equally hilarious). It starts with Amy and her spouse, David, having struggled to conceive, and ends with her musings on life with her spouse and three children. You get to know Amy well along the journey and by the end you will wish she was your best girlfriend or at a minimum a really close national with whom you could share daily tales and nod in agreement over the fence when it comes to the quips of your spouses.
This book, while hilarious, also has such heart. Amy will help you see that you are not alone in your doubts and fears of not living up to the textbook definition of what a mother should be to her children. She really let’s down her wall and is so open and honest about her own misgivings of motherhood, I absolutely like it when she describes her son telling her there are “two mommies” and you learn about “bold mommy” (the one who sometimes loses it). You feel Amy’s pain as she wonders about the things that have crossed every mom’s mind, am I failure if I don’t breastfeed, did I give up if I got an epidural, what if we didn’t get into the right preschool, is my second (third) child getting the shaft because we don’t go to enough “mommy and me” classes? I was laughing aloud and in tears at various stages of this book, Amy shares her insights with such a keen assessment of the way women reflect and run in our society. I kept thinking, “Yes, Yes, my spouse does that same thing, why can he not seem to OPEN the dishwasher?!”
My own son is now a teenager, but I kept nodding and giggling throughout the book thinking, “Oh yeah, I remember that.” And many of persons same doubts you have when your children are young do remain with you into their teen years, they just subtly change and I hope as Amy’s offspring grows into their adolescent years that she shares her humor with us as Connor has his first kiss, Seamus learns to drive, and Maggie goes on her first date. I can’t wait to continue reading and laughing along with her!
What I really like about Amy’s manner of language of material is that in the end you see her right like and her number one role as that of being “Mommy.” She can dish about her spouse, about her fears for her children, about her own internal anxieties, but she does it all lacking coming across as a complaining woman who thinks she has missed out on her own life. (I despise it when I read “persons” books). You will close this book, smile, sigh, and reflect…”I’m not crazy, I’m a excellent Mom.”
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Loved this book. It is a wonderful and amusing account of parenting from the authors point view. Of course not everything will apply to everybody, but she is honest and open and I find that I stayed up late just to read one more chapter (she kept them fleeting just for this reason…). I’m not sure but if you are not a parent already that you would find this as humorous or as enjoyable as persons of us who have had the same or similar experiences. But for persons of you who have veteran parenthood this book is a fantastic light and amusing read, while keeping right to the parenting experience.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5