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"  Don&amp;#039;t let this be you.  Hi. We&amp;#039;re Sh*tty Moms. Don&amp;#039;t be scared, you&amp;#039;re probably one of us too. Do you love your kids but hate playing trains? Are you pretty sure your child won&amp;#039;t be grateful for all the wretched chores you do until she&amp;#039;s 40 and you&amp;#039;re too deaf to hear her say &amp;quot;thank you&amp;quot;? Do you think that it&amp;#039;d be kind of nice if mothering were a little bit easier? Welcome! Here&amp;#039;s a few ways to embrace your shame:  Quit Sports, Get Sleep We&amp;#039;re talking to you, swim team mom. How many more years can you keep waking up at the same hour that rock stars fall asleep? If the sport of swimming really cared about you, meets would start at two in the afternoon and end at three. A recent study found that you can&amp;#039;t &amp;quot;get back&amp;quot; lost sleep. It&amp;#039;s gone forever, never to be enjoyed. Another study found that not getting enough sleep shortens your life and increases your weight. Are you really going to risk dying young and chunky that so your kid can anchor the &amp;quot;B&amp;quot; relay this Saturday? C&amp;#039;mon.  Give Your Children Away. When adults behave in an immature and selfish fashion, they are called &amp;quot;childish.&amp;quot; Childish is an insult, because children often behave horribly. They wake you up. They ask you to retrieve things that they can easily get themselves (apple juice, the remote, Daddy). They demand a bite of every food you eat, even if they&amp;#039;ve tried it before and hate it. And they never let you watch your shows on the TV. If a guy treated you once the way your children treat you all day, your friends would force you to break up. So, for your own mental health, find a way to escape, if only for a few hours. Give them to a friend, a grandmother or even their father. Are you alone now? Good. Wash your hair, watch Modern Family and update your Facebook status without mentioning your kids. It&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;you time.&amp;quot;  Stop Trying to Have a &amp;quot;Family Dinner&amp;quot; Opt for meals instead of dinners. This gives your family so many more opportunities to eat together. Dinner only happens once a day. (OK, twice. If no one&amp;#039;s looking.) But meals happen all day long. Also, something about the word &amp;quot;dinner&amp;quot; implies there is a table. Who eats meals at the table anymore? By the time you clear it of electronics, unpaid bills, and sports equipment, it&amp;#039;s time for that second secret dinner. Why do you think new cars come standard with cup-holders? It&amp;#039;s so the entire family can buckle up and enjoy a meal of Gatorade and Luna bars while driving to school.  Don&amp;#039;t Freak Out if Your Kid Is Not A Genius Geniuses are overrated. They stick out like sore, nerdy thumbs. No one describes a genius without using the word &amp;quot;misunderstood&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;moody.&amp;quot; Who needs that drama? Average kids, however, rock. No one will misunderstand your average kid, if only because he&amp;#039;s not smart enough to use a lot of big words. Average kids instinctively know that they don&amp;#039;t have the intellectual goods, and they make up for it with charisma and personality. Ronald Reagan was a C student and a two-term president, as was George W. Bush. And Mitt Romney? An A student with two degrees from Harvard? He didn&amp;#039;t even get one term.  Music Appreciation Lessons We moms were all scared out of our wits by Amy Chua&amp;#039;s Tiger Mom. Even though the book ended with the youngest daughter rebelling against violin lessons, we couldn&amp;#039;t help but notice that the oldest one got into Harvard. Dear God, we thought, what if Amy Chua is right? For any mom unable to enforce her draconian practice regime, the success of Chua&amp;#039;s family was disturbing. Well, good news awaits in the form of an oft-overlooked fact: musicians cannot make a living without their fans. Performer and audience are yin and yang. And that&amp;#039;s where you come in. Let the Tiger Moms of the world spend their best years nagging their kids about first finger on middle C. Your job is to raise a yang who will, one day, download yin&amp;#039;s CD. Remember, if it weren&amp;#039;t for your kid&amp;#039;s iTunes account, Tiger Mom&amp;#039;s kid would have to get a day job. Laurie Kilmartin is the coauthor of Sh*tty Mom: The Parenting Guide for the Rest of Us as well as an Emmy-nominated writer for Conan on TBS, and, as a stand-up comedian, has appeared on Conan, Last Comic Standing, Jimmy Kimmel Live, and Comedy Central. She lives in Los Angeles with her son. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/mom-kids/news/a14631/call-mom-time-out-kilmartin/>