By Elissa Caterfino Mandel

In 2019 little kids and their younger siblings come with gadgets I never had as a young mother: the light that spins and projects beautiful images on the ceiling, the food processor that purées homemade veggies into baby food, the bottle warmer that makes sure formula doesn’t stay chilly, and the diaper pail that spins human waste beyond recognition. But the most confounding of all is the sound machine.

Fortunately the sound machine also comes with my 3-year-old granddaughter, who on a regular basis, interprets its intricacies for the technologically challenged.

My husband and I lie about our facility with the sound machine. Even though we always pretend we can do it, we can’t work it at all. It’s shameful to admit that we’re confounded by something tiny and sweet that plays “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”.

The device is designed as an aid for parents trying to get a young child to sleep. Apparently, there is no dispensation for incompetent grandparents.

The sound machine looks like a miniature Bose radio. It’s attractive, streamlined and compact. It should be as simple to use as it is to look at. It isn’t.

Soothing? Forget it. I have so much anxiety about getting the sound machine to work that I need a Xanax to recover from the thought of it.

It’s supposed to lull a child to sleep by playing music that no one who wants to remain sane can listen to for long. That’s why children eventually give up and go to sleep.

Did you ever realize that the tunes for Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and Baa Baa Black Sheep are exactly the same? No, I bet not. Those are the random thoughts you have after you’ve listened to the sound machine for an excruciating 45 minutes.

Every time my granddaughter sleeps over, we plug the sound machine in, which in itself is a five-minute proposition because the thing comes with a detachable cellphone-like cord that’s perennially stuffed somewhere in the overnight bag. To compound the situation, the sound machine has so many random holes to make it aesthetically pleasing, we never can locate the one that actually connects to the cord.

Then we look at the tiny buttons that supposedly make the music play and press them haphazardly. It’s like her stroller and her car seat, which to us are an unfathomable collection of buttons and straps and plugs that only the spawn of Einstein, and my granddaughter, can figure out.

To sleep my granddaughter requires lights out, shades drawn, doors closed and every eensy weensy shred of light, like a cellphone screen flashlight, extinguished. So usually it’s totally dark by the time we have to turn on the sound machine. We end up fumbling around with the thing like idiots and by that time of night — ok, it’s 7:30 — we’re so exhausted that we can hardly see. Keep in mind that we’ve put our glasses down somewhere in the room, and because it’s pitch black, they might as well be in Timbuktu.

In spite of our efforts and sporadic pressing of buttons, the sound machine stays silent and dark. Each time, it takes a 3-year-old to decipher and turn on the device. For a near-58 year old, the sound machine is a a puzzle that’s clearly intended to be tackled only by members of Mensa and preschoolers.

Luckily my granddaughter is inordinately patient with the sound-machine challenged. She gamely offers to jump out of bed and turn it on for us, which sort of defeats its whole purpose, which is to get her to relax and drift off.

Fortunately for me, the sound machine and other assorted appliances also come with my granddaughter. Her favorite words are “let me show you, Grandma.” God, I hope she never gets tired of saying them.