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The 4-Second Window

When your baby is first born you are thrust into a state of over-the-top bliss which is best exemplified by the utterly saccharine message on your answering machine, done in your best Mr. Rogers tone of voice: "Hi everyone ... you have reached the home of Sam, Paula ... and our new little special guest star Brittany ... tee hee hee ... we can't come to the phone now 'cause we're in teddy bear land..." You've been lulled into believing that the rest of your life will proceed in a state of pure happiness, and that eleven minutes of sleep per week is plenty.

Eventually you will be forced to re-engage with the outside world, at which time reality will reappear in the form of parking tickets, fleas, leaking roofs, bad haircuts, telephone sales people, and local television commercials. The negativity generated by these experiences allows your fatigue to get a foothold, and when the insides of your eyelids feel like sandpaper and you crave three or four days of uninterrupted sleep, you start to get protective of your spare time.

Although it is common to experience sudden waves of hostility towards anything which threatens to disturb your momentary and hard-earned peace of mind, you must remember that babies are emotional sponges; they are far too fragile to withstand exposure to any negative outbursts. Therefore, in order to prevent Permanent Emotional Scarring (also known as "growing up") you must wear the Happy Face¾ and make the Happy Cooing Sound¾ in order to fool the little one into thinking that all is well in the world. Ha ha ha, children are so gullible.

After a few short months you'll have more to worry about than your tone of voice and facial expressions, since your baby will have entered that precious and loveable stage where everything goes into the mouth. Any object which is not actually bolted to some sort of foundation is a choking hazard for infants and toddlers. Never let your guard down, even during the early months, since many infants exhibit what is known as "Magnetic Trachea Syndrome," a condition where all objects in a room which are smaller than a forklift are magnetically attracted toward the child's windpipe. Many new parents have had the confusing experience of laying Baby down for a nap in a clean bed and returning to find the pillow surrounded by car keys, guitar picks, lipsticks, pennies, golf tees, cough lozenges, and Monopoly houses. This is often mistaken for paranormal activity by parents who watch too much television.

When your baby is old enough to sit up without mechanical assistance you may be tempted to plunk him down on the floor while attempting to perform some household task. You may have even worked out a simple routine such as taking out the kitchen trash, a move which you have timed out to exactly seven seconds. The moment Baby turns his head away, you can grab the trash, run outside, throw it in the can, and run back inside to a proper viewing angle before he's had time to plug in the cuisinart. Remember, as playthings go, high-speed rotating knives are politically incorrect at best, so don't loaf on your way back into the house.

Babies are very resourceful when motivated, and are very fast learners. If you have the trash dash timed out to seven seconds, he'll review his process and find a way to eliminate unneccesary steps which will then enable him to activate the cuisinart in six seconds.

Exhaustive research at Homedaddy¾ Labs has established a 4 second window, now known as "The Four Second Window" and recognized as the industry standard, during which you can safely look away from your baby. This is the average amount of time needed for Baby to stick the top half of a bowling trophy down his throat, or in the case of an extremely precocious child, to burn your entire house to the ground. Some parents have "trained" Baby to go for slightly longer stretches of time, and one reader claims to achieve spans of up to eleven seconds with the use of simple restraining straps. We at Homedaddy Inc.¾ do not endorse this technique, except perhaps on the parent.

There is no substitute for constant vigilance. You may have served as a babysitter sometime in your past, but that probably meant acting as referee for a knock-down-drag-out Monopoly grudge match between the neighbor's pre-teens. Infants are another story.

You can't even have a decent game of Monopoly with an infant. Babies do not have the worldly experience to deal with complex situations and will usually attempt a life-threatening maneuver such as inhaling a hotel or purchasing Water Works.

Speaking of Monopoly, did you know that it is a sure-fire cure for Baby's fever when she gets sick? Here's how it works: At the first hint of a fever (non-stop continuous wailing from 2 to 6 AM with no inhale is one telltale sign), start up a friendly game of Monopoly. By the time the game is over, Baby will not only be finished with her fever, she'll be finished with grad school. The best part of this plan is that if you lose, you can throw a tantrum, since she'll be old enough to handle it.

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© Todd Pinsky 1998-2002. All rights reserved.