Look me in the eye and tell me you know what you are doing?
Saturday, July 18th, 2009July 18th 2009
Spending the day with friends who also have children is a sure way of making you question whether you are bringing up your own child to the best of your ability. Two of my best friends had babies (one including a set of twins) at about the same time as me give or take six months. They are all now two and our parenting styles are quite different but most of the time (I hope) take a bit of inspiration from each other. Like all new mothers I lurch wildly from thinking that I am doing really well to the next minute feeling completely at sea. Yet we all, for the sake of sanity really, have to present some kind of façade of knowing what we are doing. The proof of the pudding, when it comes to children, really seems to be, their behaviour right in front of our eyes. No matter how we might pontificate about our fantastic discovery of the trick of sleeping through the night or how to ignore a tantrum the evidence of our success is the child that is right at the table eating lunch with us. It is like being continually judged firstly by others and most critically by ourselves.
Today the lunch went reasonably well in an outside pub garden sitting along a trestle table with four 2 year olds and six adults. The food arrived and was eaten with varying degrees of success with the majority of the children sitting long enough at the table to partially clear their plates. So far so good. Then came the running around the pub garden and looking at the ducks which required a cunning combination of trying to ensure that each child was within site of at least one adult while endeavouring to hold some kind of conversation with one or more of the other adults while also trying to eat our own food. A certain recipe for indigestion and mildly improved with the addition of vodka tonic.
All was going rather well and aside from our son Charlie disappearing into a bush and refusing to come out the stress levels did not soar too high. I sometimes find the different dynamic of having a husband/partner on hand at weekend activities quite stressful in itself. From single handedly navigating social activities with my son through the week suddenly I am wondering whose ‘turn’ it is play around or converse and this brings the whole dynamic of the marriage into public view as well as any errant behaviour on behalf of the toddler. At this point I may well order another vodka and tonic in the knowledge that at least today I will not be driving even if I may later be drunk in charge of feeding and bathing a feisty child.
Then I joke with one of my girlfriends about Charlie sometimes thinking he is the character Ben 10 from one of the cartoons on Sky. “You let him watch Ben 10?,” she retorts with quite some strength. “I would never let Douglas watch that. I think it’s for seven year olds and has far too much violence for children of two.” Suddenly I am forced to assess my entire parenting approach and realise it could well be running the risk of being at fault. Certain programmes such as boxing or The Day of the Dead I would certainly avoid putting on for him to watch but a cartoon of characters playing make believe games which he clearly adores and often asks for seemed to be OK. The worst thing is I realised that I had never actually sat down and watched it with him so make a mental check to do this next time. My husband luckily shows a hastily constructed united front and says he has watched it with Charlie and thinks its fine and loves the fact that Charlie thinks he is Ben 10 and can often be found (particularly on woodland walks) darting in and out of trees tapping a make believe watch and attacking mythical beasts. Maybe my judgement is not so wildly out of kilter after all. Phew!
Then tonight I, like most other nights, realise the importance of a nightime routine for our sanity if not theirs. Charlie has refused the fish pie dinner that my husband has so carefully created for him in a mini ramekin created from our main meal for later. He has now disappeared upstairs chasing the new kitten and has wedged himself under the spare bed which makes it virtually impossible to reach him and drag him out. I am now feeling hungover, slightly sick and exhausted and retreat downstairs muttering to my husband that he “will come out when he is ready”. He is quietly furious at my obvious ineptitude and says “Are you going to just let him get away with this or make him get out from under that bed and eat the yoghurt for desert?” I am now wildly regretting that third vodka and feel dizzy at the thought of trying to wrestly him out from under that bed. “Why don’t you get him out then if you’re so cross about it?” I snap back at him and all of a sudden our marriage as well as the future development of our son is at stake. A bit more crashing from the kitchen and I can stand the tension no more and so gallop upstairs, grab the startled child by the hand and drag him downstairs. He soon gets over this and sits quietly eating his yoghurst while singing merrily to himself. Now not sure what the dynamic is between husband and I. Who was right and is anybody ever right and does it even matter?
The bath bit went quite well and then, with a headache still brewing and time ticking on to the discussed bedtime deadline of 7.30pm and sit with him on my knee in the rocking chair in his nursery and we read the same book three times. Then he makes a run for the door and I rugby tackle him and tell him I absolutely refuse to get the Gruffalo book from downstairs and am about to launch into another mother child battle when he quietly says “Mummy I am really tired. Bed please.” So I place him in his cot. “Please can I put the pillows round the other end tonight Mummy so the monsters cannot reach me?” (slight concern that Ben 10 has had a negative effect) and I say “Of course darling” and we switch the pillows and then he has to kiss each of my hands in turn and then wave night night (his current evening ritual) and then, like every night, I tiptoe out of that room with an air of confidence that all is good with the world and he shall now fall into a deep sleep and of course masking the inner turmoil that he could just start shouting and refusing to sleep. If I make it out of the door with no murmer from him then I can be 99% sure that sleep will be the victor. I literally dash down those stairs and straight into the red wine. Another day achieved. Another mountain climbed. Another day towards achieving the much coveted award of “mother who might know what she is doing for one day at least.”