Kids, Sleep, and Make Writing Great Again | Jerm Warfare Weekly Banter

Jerm (0:30)

My name is Jerm, this is Jerm Warfare, the Battle of Ideas.

I don't think I have slept this little in years. Not even my first child.

Mike (0:41)

Don't worry, Jerm, you've got a flight coming up, you're gonna sleep all the way through it, it's gonna be fine.

Jerm (0:45)

I've been practicing. I've been practicing for not sleeping.

But no, but in all reality, I mean, you guys have also got more than one child. With your second kid, did you have any of those regression issues with the older one?

Charles (1:07)

I mean, are you really expecting an accurate sort of memory of anything? Yeah, it would be my question.

Mike (1:15)

Well, I mean, first of all, it was 22 years ago, 21 years ago, Jerm, come on.

Jerm (1:20)

Oh, all right, okay. But apparently, it is normal, though, for the older sibling to regress a little bit, because, I mean, they're no longer the center of attention.

Mike (1:32)

What's the difference in the age?

Jerm (1:34)

Two years.

Mike (1:36)

Yeah. Yeah, okay. Well, that's still not too bad.

I don't know. I mean, it won't last long, I don't think.

Jerm (1:45)

No, it won't last long, but when you're going through it, it's very, very exhausting. Because it's, I mean, you feel so frustrated because, you know, the child doesn't understand what's going on. And it's so easy when you're tired to lose your cool. And then you feel terrible when you do lose your cool. And so you have to, through the whole thing, just restrain, restrain, restrain.

It's such a challenge.

Charles (2:10)

I think, actually, you say, you say the child doesn't know what's going on. I think, I think instinctively or intuitively, a child absolutely does know what's going on, but is not equipped to communicate those sort of feelings and emotions and whatnot.

I mean, I think age is a factor in it. But I think, I think across all species, the arrival of, the arrival of new offspring and the effect of that has on the family dynamic, I think is completely understood by the others, which is why there is a perception of the craving of more attention in a way that perhaps they haven't had before and whatnot. But I think we, you know, it's just, I think it's another, it's just another thing that we've lost touch with in terms of our innate ability to be able to deal with it, because I think we think we can do it by words and we can't. I think so many human behaviours are still actually about, not necessarily physical demonstrations, but they're more aligned with behaviour. And this is, you know, this goes back to so much of what we talk about, which is why I think the unseen danger of being isolated from other people, because we all use these devices and we think we're communicating with one another. I don't think we really are. We hear the words, we say the words, but we're not able to transmit those messages that you can when you're in, you know, in proximity to somebody. And I think when it concerns dealing with a child, especially if the child does have some language, you think you can crack everything with language.

Mike (3:58)

Actually, it's worse than that, Charles, isn't it? Because we don't hear the words. We don't even hear the inflection in people's voices. We read the words and we infer a meaning from those. And 99% of the time, and I say this because we've, the UK Column has run a forum or a community kind of thing for the last 20 years. And in that time, we've pretty much seen it all in terms, and I'm not excluding myself from this in any way.

The chances of misunderstanding through text communication are absolutely guaranteed.

Charles (4:37)

Do you know, I couldn't agree more. And I think email in particular has so much to answer for because it turned telephone calls into transcribed communications. And I can think of masses of people who articulate themselves very clearly when they're speaking, but their written word is absolutely not a representation of the way in which they would have said it.

And people miss points. So typically, I mean, from the earliest days of using email, I think you are asking for trouble if you ask anyone more than one question in an email, because you definitely won't get more than one answer. For some reason, people are only able to apparently give one answer per email.

And the increase in frustration, in misunderstanding, has just... I mean, I think it's got worse and worse and worse, but also it's made people very lazy in the way that they do communicate. And it's just the time. You think how quickly you can resolve something, either in a face-to-face conversation or a telephone call, whereas trying to write it out in email particularly, and the back-and-forth and back-and-forth and back-and-forth. You know, for what? It is, it does look very much like a system just designed to make people wade through treacle for the rest of their lives. That's very effective, if that's what it was for.