Parent of youngsters thinks no one else can truly be sleep-deprived

Dear Carolyn: I have kids who are 8months old and 2 years old, so when a childless friend told me she had been sleep-deprived, I just laughed and told her she doesn’t know what sleep deprived is. She didn’t say anything about it in the moment, but then later sent me an email detailing health problems she’s had related to insomnia and telling me she thought I was insensitive.

I replied, “You’re acting like this is personal about you. I’m just telling you, no parent wants to hear a non-parent whine about not sleeping.” She didn’t reply to that and I had basically forgotten about it, but I saw her yesterday and she was very cold to me.

Do you think I should address this with her again? It’s not that I’m unsympathetic if she’s really having problems sleeping, it’s just that it’s fairly ridiculous for her to compare what she’s going through to what parents of young children go through.

—“Sleep Deprived”

“Sleep Deprived”: Yes, so so ridiculous, because parents of young children are the only ones whose experiences are actually valid! Yes!

Not only were you awful to this friend, but you also took her patient explanation as an opportunity to be awful to her all over again! And you still don’t see it.

And I’m just telling you that no suffering person wants to hear another person dismiss their suffering as a ludicrous yeah-whatever WHINE. You called a sick friend a whiner. And you did this even though you presumably have firsthand knowledge that sleep-deprivation is a form of torture!

But instead of tapping into that to feel some empathy for your friend, you used it against her. Hard.

Please lose the certainty of your place at the top of the experience mountain and work on your empathy skills, stat.

And “address this” with your friend “again” only if you’re prepared to deliver an abject and heartfelt apology for treating her pain as nothing more than the “ridiculous” pretender to your own.

You can tell her you responded so badly because you, too, are sleepdeprived and are clearly not at your best at putting 2 and 2 together.