Parental Onset Psychosis

Years ago when I still knew everything; I decided to have children. As I grew older, I am unsure whether it was age or parenting experience that lead me to the realization that so many have. I know nothing. Everything that I thought was true turned out to be false. Or at least that is how it appears to me.

Five years ago, we left Washington where Danny and I worked a combined 110 hour a week. We moved to Oklahoma where, we thought, the economy was more suited to having me stay at home.

I had such great goals and aspirations. My children would be brilliant scientists and thanking me for staying at home with them and teaching them all that I knew. Throughout my childhood I had pretended that I was famous and being interviewed about myself. Now I pretended that I was interviewed about my amazing parenting techniques. – The fantasy had changed, but not disappeared: I would be humble, yet brilliant. I would be kind, but firm. I would be poised, calm, cool and collected. Ah, it was a great time, those four days of driving. Thinking of all the good that I could do.

Alas, time cured me of most of my delusions. For unbeknownst to me, my children had a plan of their own. While I decided that I would study “Positive parenting, and stimulating situations; and the effect on Children.” My children had decided to research “Parental onset psychosis: the effects and reactions under various stimuli.” I would like to say, five years later that I have succeeded brilliantly. While my own plans may have fell by the wayside, the children are moments from completely proving their own hypothesis “Kids can make parents crazy.” I am glad to have been a part of this important study, but wish that I hadn’t been the lab mouse.

Nevertheless, in pride of their accomplishments, I will present to you some of their examples:

Experiment 1:
Hypothesis: Making mom scream in 60 seconds or less.
The Lab: Summerville House, Boswell, OK.
The time: 12:00:06-12:00:56
Study: When Mom encounters a booger collection, it takes her less than a minute to scream, and or retch.
(It did, gross)

Experiment 2:
Hypothesis: By refusing to respond to suggestions, the Mom will eventually give up and clean the room herself.
The Lab: Summerville House, Boswell, OK.
The time: 10:05:06-5:45:56
Study: Ignored Mom all day, she ‘lost it’ and cleaned the bedroom herself.
(Sigh)

Experiment 3:
Hypothesis: By continued contact with stimuli (children), Mom will eventually develop an eye twitch, as well as odd mumblings.
The Lab: Summerville House, Boswell, OK.
The time: May 20-July 11, 2006
Study: After months of part time study, this finally happened after purposefully doing the opposite of everything Mom said. Final breakthrough came when the scientist changed the small stimuli (the baby), and missed one cheek when replacing the diaper. (As a side note: the amount of liquid you put into a child exponentially increases the ‘final product’)
(I’m still twitching)

Conclusion: By changing stimuli, keeping the subject under pressure, and constant attention, we were able to identify conclusively that PARENTAL ONSET PSYCHOSIS (P.O.P) does in fact exist and can be lessened or strengthened depending on the skill of the stimuli, and the duration of the experiment.

From the Kitchen Sink (the only place that there is peace),

Heather Summerville
Lab rat