After three months of rocking, bobbing, holding and cajoling, my kid finally followed my brother’s advice.

“You know when I was in Africa” (in the Peace Corp), my brother told me 35 years ago. “We just put the babies in the other room and closed the door. They will eventually fall asleep.”

In 1990, we sort of did that with the Boy. The wife put a baby “monitor”/radio in the room so we could listen. He was never much of a screamer. Just a little hint of a whimper was all he needed to get whatever he wanted.

But when the granddaughter came out this year, the “kids” were not having the “African Way” — explaining it slowly and carefully didn’t help. Maybe I should not have told them the tradition in that part of Africa was not to name the child until it was at least a year old. The infant mortality rant was so high, no one wanted to get that “attached.”

No matter how much my grand daughter screamed, or cried or fussed, the parents held her, they bounced her and played chain saw sounds in the background. Who knew two-stroke engines could coax a baby to sleep? Apparently millions of people based on the YouTube views of two hours of chainsaw sounds…

The sounds of cutting down a forest can soothe the savage beast...

I took a little pride in using their rocking chair and a few choruses of the “Ants Go Marching” to bore the baby to sleep on my chest.

But after three months, the party was over. That girl could cry for an hour and had taken up screaming for a special effect. She would also get picky about the “exact method.” Sometimes rocking, sometimes bouncing, sometimes walking, sometimes nothing worked.

Sometimes just walking put the baby “out”.

“We decided to let her cry it out,” the Boy announced with the self-satisfied pride of the ignorant. He never acknowledged this was my plan from the start… “We put her down and walk away. After 5 minutes we can go in and rub her back — then we wait another 10 and then 20.”

I told him that was stupid.

“Every time you go in there, you are reinforcing her crying,” I said with the benefit of second-hand behavior modification learned from the tough-love master (my wife) in the 1980’s.

“It’s the Ferber Method,” the Boy said, like:

  1. I would know what that means
  2. I would give a shit.

But obviously his smarty-pants wife had been reading again — and the Boy just had to show me how stupid I really am.

The first night we were over, he demonstrated. He put the baby down. Set the timer for 5 minutes. Patted her back. Set the timer for 10 minutes, patted her back. She fell asleep right before 20 minutes.

“See,” he said as he poured me a glass of wine, and they prepared to leave for the night.

“You know the timer is for you,” I said. ‘It’s just to keep you kids from running in there every two minutes and picking that baby up. A three-month-old can’t tell time.”

He looked at me like he better start checking on nursing homes, because my brain is being destroyed by something…

“Just ignore your physical scars, the emotional issues and your occasional sleep psychosis,” I told the Boy. “We did fine as parents…“

He tilted his head like a confused golden retriever.

Throughout these conversations, the wife was just nodding. I thought she was agreeing.

Behavior Queen

In 1990, she had been teaching for 5 years. She was getting her masters in early childhood education. She practiced behavior-modification on me like it was an Olympic event and I was losing…

She used the carrots and sticks with her nieces to the point where they will never be able to shake those memories.

“I still can’t believe she took that ice cream out of my hand and threw it out the car window,” one 40-year-old niece said as she wiped a few small tears from her eyes — recalling the pain and lost Dairy Queen from more than 35 years before. No one can remember the offense (probably licking too loudly) but they all remember the consequence.

Finally, it was grandparents turn to put the baby down.

I fed her a little, rocked her a little and put the baby in the crib just as the eyes were closing. Closed the door tight. Hello Africa.

There’s a full scale survelliance system that feeds video of baby sleeping (or not sleeping) to the internet. The parents are Santa or North Korea (they know when she is sleeping, they know when she’s awake).

After two minutes of a little crying and one loud scream, the wife was in the bedroom and scooping up the kid.

“I just can’t stand it,” the wife said.  WTF happened to my behavior modification queen? ”I don’t think it’s good to just let them cry…”

“You were the one who trained me. Never pick them up. Be consistent. One slip and you gotta start over — sound FAMILIAR…”

She glanced at me sideways. No admission of guilt, but clearly pleading Nolo Contendere. She walked the baby back to the crib as I headed for the kitchen.

“I am the weakest link,” she said quietly and only to the baby but loud enough for me to hear on the video link.

I really don’t know what happened to the woman I married. Sometime around 2015, she because the first to feed the dogs under the table. In 2017, the first to give money to the homeless. In 2023, the first to “surrender” to the baby’s cries.

Thanks to the video, the “kids” knew it too. But they said nothing. Talk shit about the free babysitters, and they will be spending Saturday nights at home.

Epilogue

Six weeks after implementing the African Way, that baby is quiet and asleep within 5 minutes — sometimes just a few seconds. The kids had run off to Mexico with our grand baby for a month between Thanksgiving and Christmas to get it done — otherwise the former behavior-modification queen might have fucked up the whole thing.

To this day there has been no nod to the sage advice from me and my childless little brother who brought home the deep secrets of the dark continent. But I will always know, and now you do too:  fuck the “Ferber Method” that grand baby sleeps because they finally did it “the African Way”.