Dear Dave
Friday, 29 January 2010
At the school gate
Dear Dave,
Have a good one. You're long overdue a night out. It can't have been easy the last year or two, dealing with Daisy's poor sleep. Thank goodness she's finally settled down and Sam's over the bout of stroppiness he was having before Christmas. Life should get easier every day from here. Another few months and nappies will be behind you; another year and Daisy will be at nursery. After that, it's only a hop, skip and jump to Sam doing chores and Daisy being at school. At some point they might even be able to say 'please' and 'thank you' without being prompted. Hey, mine can all catch their own vomit in a bowl these days, which is a major step forward, I'm sure you'll agree.
Yep, you've done much of the heavy lifting of childcare already. The amount of man-handling you'll have to do will steadily decrease as the weeks go by and you'll be able to sit down and conserve your strength for threats, bribery and shouting. This will be tiring in its own way but nothing compared to the broken sleep and physical exertion of the early days. Get out and celebrate! It's great you've managed to stay in contact with some of your old mates and that they're understanding of your situation. With luck, you might even think of something to talk to them about other than children. Have a good one.
Personally, I'm short on practice of leaving the house at night. Working up the energy to go see Avatar is almost beyond me. As a kid, I dreamed of living within walking distance of a cinema but now I actually do, I can't summon up the motivation to go. It's cold and wet out there. I'd rather curl up in front of the TV.
The downside is that I've ended up sharing a social life with my children, gleaning adult conversation from talking to the parents of their friends. This situation started during the years of eating biscuits at toddler group, continued via countless chats outside the nursery door and now persists through the half hour I spend loitering in the playground each day.
These convenient friendships are fragile, however. I've mentioned before how easy it is to lose acquaintances made at parent and toddler - I'd speak to people every week for months and then they'd simply disappear. At school, it's even stranger than that. Now Fraser's older, his class comes out of school on the other side of the building. I still have to lurk where I've always lurked, waiting for Lewis and Marie, but most of the parents of Fraser's classmates have moved round to the other door. People I spoke to every day for four years, I suddenly hardly see.
Then there are those parents whose children were very friendly with Fraser in Primary 1 but have since drifted off into other social groups (usually because they're icky girls). I've been to these peoples' houses, drunk their coffee and had long chats taking an interest in their lives. Now we just smile unconvincingly at each other in passing as we hurry round to opposite ends of the school. Another few months and their kids will walk home by themselves. The parents will become nothing more than familiar-looking faces at open days and school shows. It's weird.
Of course, Marie starting school has introduced me to a whole new load of people and the parents of Lewis' friends are still hanging around. For the time being, I have plenty of people to talk to in the playground while trying to stave off hypothermia on a snowy Wednesday afternoon. Some I regard as proper friends.
I just wonder what happens when they move round the corner to the other door...
As it is, there are occasionally days when schedules and illnesses combine to leave me standing about without my normal clique. If enough kids are off sick, being collected by their gran or heading to After School Club, then I have to hunt around for company. Of the remaining parents, some don't speak English very well and some of the mums are wary of being spoken to by a strange man. Others I've simply never clicked with, unable to strike up a conversation which goes beyond the weather. Oh, and then there are the dads who have the day off and aren't thrilled to be spending it standing around a playground in subzero temperatures. Talking to them seldom goes well. They tend to view me as a lunatic when they find out I do it every day.
Last time I was stuck for someone to speak to, I was surprisingly glad to spot Trevor hunched by the school gate, looking uncomfortably out of place as he gazed at his own boots. We don't have much in common and having a chat with him can be hard going but we've helped each other through a couple of difficult situations in the past so there's enough mutual respect to bridge any awkward silences.
"Hi, there. How are you?" I said, adjusting my scarf against the chill wind.
Trevor stood there in a khaki t-shirt, seemingly oblivious to the cold. "Can't complain."
There was an awkward silence.
We had at least a couple of minutes until the bell went for the Primary 1s to come out and probably another five for them to actually appear. I tried again. "Is Karen working?"
"No."
I was about to launch into an extensive further series of Yes/No questions, beginning with 'Is she at the shops?' and ending with 'Is she taking another rollerblading class now her instructor's out of traction?'. Then I remembered that I am not my children. "What's she up to then?" I asked.
Trevor shrugged. "Didn't tell me. Said it was my turn to collect Malcolm." His tone told me there was a whole lot more he was keeping to himself. Given the scale of conflict I witnessed between the two of them in public recently, I feared what might have occurred behind closed doors. Rolling pins and machetes were not entirely beyond the realms of possibility. (And that was assuming Trevor had chosen not to defend himself.)
"You guys doing OK?" I said nervously.
"Can't complain," he repeated.
I nodded. If I lived with Scary Karen, I'd be too frightened to complain, too. Nonetheless, Trevor has served in a number of war zones. He's never told me exactly what he did there but he's such a big block of solid muscles they may simply have used him as armour-plating. Certainly, if the bomb ever drops, it's him I'm going to duck behind for cover. This being the case, I thought he might dare to venture something slightly more informative if I pressed him. "Well, if you ever need to talk about..."
"She wants more kids."
This was significantly less pressing than I'd been expecting. "What?" I said (with a touch of deja vu).
"She wants more kids - now William's started at nursery and all."
"He has?" I couldn't quite believe it. Then I did the maths and realised that it's three years since I first met Karen and her two boys.
"Yeah. She's thinking she's going to have to stop with the... er... you know..."
"Dressing him up as Diana Ross?"
"Not that."
"Tying him to railings while she goes and gets a haircut?"
"Yeah, but, er, no. I, er..." He made some suggestive gestures near his chest.
"Oh! Breast-feeding!" I said rather too loudly, like I'd just won at Charades, and doubtless giving some nearby mums even more reason to be wary of me.
"Yeah. That."
"Oh, right."
There was more awkward silence, punctuated by the school bell.
"Isn't she a little old for...?"
Trevor winced and glanced over his shoulder. "Keep it down - someone might hear. You don't want Karen finding out. She might go for you next time." He pulled up his t-shirt and pointed to one of his iron-hard pectorals. Despite all the hair, an area of fresh scars was clearly visible. There was a pattern too them. I made out bushy eyebrows, a bulbous nose and a hideous grin. I stared, hardly noticing that every other parent in the vicinity had begun cautiously backing away from us.
"She threw a gnome at you, didn't she?"
"One of her favourites."
Karen's collection of garden gnomes is almost legendary. The live web cam feed of the dozens in her front hall now gets several thousand hits a day. You might wonder why, but watch it long enough and you'll swear the little blighters are moving. Conspiracy theorists can't get enough.
I baulked at the thought of the level of rage that would be required to bring her to harm one her darlings. "Oh, goodness."
Trevor nodded. "She thinks she still has what it takes and she won't hear otherwise. Says she misses having little ones around. Not to mention, she reckons I'm doing such a good job with Malkey and Will, she thinks I could do with some of my own... Not that I don't think of them as my own." He looked over his shoulder again. "I didn't say that. That's how she put it. 'Some of my own,' she said. They were her words."
I was focused on one word in particular. "Some?"
"There's a history of triplets in her family."
"Oh..." Our gazes met and the brief moment of wide-eyed terror we shared conveyed as much as several hours of discussion. There was no need to say anything else on that particular topic. We stood there for a while and I bobbed up and down in an effort to keep warm. The Primary 1s still didn't appear. Time dragged on.
Eventually, I couldn't help opening my mouth. "So you don't want more kids?" I said.
"I don't know that now's a good time."
"When is a good time to have your life turned upside down?"
"I 'spose," said Trevor, rubbing his chin, but he didn't seem convinced.
Finally, the school door opened and children started running out. Marie skipped over in her luminous pink coat and gave me a hug, inadvertently whacking me in a private area with her lunchbox.
"You never know," I squeaked, "the next one might be a girl."
Trevor looked at my grinning limpet with pigtails and sparkly shoes. He went pale.
Then I was dragged off to play What's the Time, Mr Wolf? and before I managed to escape, he was gone. In his place was a different set of acquaintances, already arriving for the second bell and the release of the next batch of children. I smiled unconvincingly at the ones passing by on their way round the corner, then I went to rummage about in the remains of Marie's lunch to see if she had any food leftover. I managed to bag half a tub of chopped apple. I sat quietly eating it on a bench until Lewis appeared.
I guess I could have found someone different to talk to but, well, I'd had quite enough adult conversation for one day. I just wanted to get home to the TV...
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
PS Have a great time! (Maybe you could go see Avatar for me?)
Have a good one. You're long overdue a night out. It can't have been easy the last year or two, dealing with Daisy's poor sleep. Thank goodness she's finally settled down and Sam's over the bout of stroppiness he was having before Christmas. Life should get easier every day from here. Another few months and nappies will be behind you; another year and Daisy will be at nursery. After that, it's only a hop, skip and jump to Sam doing chores and Daisy being at school. At some point they might even be able to say 'please' and 'thank you' without being prompted. Hey, mine can all catch their own vomit in a bowl these days, which is a major step forward, I'm sure you'll agree.
Yep, you've done much of the heavy lifting of childcare already. The amount of man-handling you'll have to do will steadily decrease as the weeks go by and you'll be able to sit down and conserve your strength for threats, bribery and shouting. This will be tiring in its own way but nothing compared to the broken sleep and physical exertion of the early days. Get out and celebrate! It's great you've managed to stay in contact with some of your old mates and that they're understanding of your situation. With luck, you might even think of something to talk to them about other than children. Have a good one.
Personally, I'm short on practice of leaving the house at night. Working up the energy to go see Avatar is almost beyond me. As a kid, I dreamed of living within walking distance of a cinema but now I actually do, I can't summon up the motivation to go. It's cold and wet out there. I'd rather curl up in front of the TV.
The downside is that I've ended up sharing a social life with my children, gleaning adult conversation from talking to the parents of their friends. This situation started during the years of eating biscuits at toddler group, continued via countless chats outside the nursery door and now persists through the half hour I spend loitering in the playground each day.
These convenient friendships are fragile, however. I've mentioned before how easy it is to lose acquaintances made at parent and toddler - I'd speak to people every week for months and then they'd simply disappear. At school, it's even stranger than that. Now Fraser's older, his class comes out of school on the other side of the building. I still have to lurk where I've always lurked, waiting for Lewis and Marie, but most of the parents of Fraser's classmates have moved round to the other door. People I spoke to every day for four years, I suddenly hardly see.
Then there are those parents whose children were very friendly with Fraser in Primary 1 but have since drifted off into other social groups (usually because they're icky girls). I've been to these peoples' houses, drunk their coffee and had long chats taking an interest in their lives. Now we just smile unconvincingly at each other in passing as we hurry round to opposite ends of the school. Another few months and their kids will walk home by themselves. The parents will become nothing more than familiar-looking faces at open days and school shows. It's weird.
Of course, Marie starting school has introduced me to a whole new load of people and the parents of Lewis' friends are still hanging around. For the time being, I have plenty of people to talk to in the playground while trying to stave off hypothermia on a snowy Wednesday afternoon. Some I regard as proper friends.
I just wonder what happens when they move round the corner to the other door...
As it is, there are occasionally days when schedules and illnesses combine to leave me standing about without my normal clique. If enough kids are off sick, being collected by their gran or heading to After School Club, then I have to hunt around for company. Of the remaining parents, some don't speak English very well and some of the mums are wary of being spoken to by a strange man. Others I've simply never clicked with, unable to strike up a conversation which goes beyond the weather. Oh, and then there are the dads who have the day off and aren't thrilled to be spending it standing around a playground in subzero temperatures. Talking to them seldom goes well. They tend to view me as a lunatic when they find out I do it every day.
Last time I was stuck for someone to speak to, I was surprisingly glad to spot Trevor hunched by the school gate, looking uncomfortably out of place as he gazed at his own boots. We don't have much in common and having a chat with him can be hard going but we've helped each other through a couple of difficult situations in the past so there's enough mutual respect to bridge any awkward silences.
"Hi, there. How are you?" I said, adjusting my scarf against the chill wind.
Trevor stood there in a khaki t-shirt, seemingly oblivious to the cold. "Can't complain."
There was an awkward silence.
We had at least a couple of minutes until the bell went for the Primary 1s to come out and probably another five for them to actually appear. I tried again. "Is Karen working?"
"No."
I was about to launch into an extensive further series of Yes/No questions, beginning with 'Is she at the shops?' and ending with 'Is she taking another rollerblading class now her instructor's out of traction?'. Then I remembered that I am not my children. "What's she up to then?" I asked.
Trevor shrugged. "Didn't tell me. Said it was my turn to collect Malcolm." His tone told me there was a whole lot more he was keeping to himself. Given the scale of conflict I witnessed between the two of them in public recently, I feared what might have occurred behind closed doors. Rolling pins and machetes were not entirely beyond the realms of possibility. (And that was assuming Trevor had chosen not to defend himself.)
"You guys doing OK?" I said nervously.
"Can't complain," he repeated.
I nodded. If I lived with Scary Karen, I'd be too frightened to complain, too. Nonetheless, Trevor has served in a number of war zones. He's never told me exactly what he did there but he's such a big block of solid muscles they may simply have used him as armour-plating. Certainly, if the bomb ever drops, it's him I'm going to duck behind for cover. This being the case, I thought he might dare to venture something slightly more informative if I pressed him. "Well, if you ever need to talk about..."
"She wants more kids."
This was significantly less pressing than I'd been expecting. "What?" I said (with a touch of deja vu).
"She wants more kids - now William's started at nursery and all."
"He has?" I couldn't quite believe it. Then I did the maths and realised that it's three years since I first met Karen and her two boys.
"Yeah. She's thinking she's going to have to stop with the... er... you know..."
"Dressing him up as Diana Ross?"
"Not that."
"Tying him to railings while she goes and gets a haircut?"
"Yeah, but, er, no. I, er..." He made some suggestive gestures near his chest.
"Oh! Breast-feeding!" I said rather too loudly, like I'd just won at Charades, and doubtless giving some nearby mums even more reason to be wary of me.
"Yeah. That."
"Oh, right."
There was more awkward silence, punctuated by the school bell.
"Isn't she a little old for...?"
Trevor winced and glanced over his shoulder. "Keep it down - someone might hear. You don't want Karen finding out. She might go for you next time." He pulled up his t-shirt and pointed to one of his iron-hard pectorals. Despite all the hair, an area of fresh scars was clearly visible. There was a pattern too them. I made out bushy eyebrows, a bulbous nose and a hideous grin. I stared, hardly noticing that every other parent in the vicinity had begun cautiously backing away from us.
"She threw a gnome at you, didn't she?"
"One of her favourites."
Karen's collection of garden gnomes is almost legendary. The live web cam feed of the dozens in her front hall now gets several thousand hits a day. You might wonder why, but watch it long enough and you'll swear the little blighters are moving. Conspiracy theorists can't get enough.
I baulked at the thought of the level of rage that would be required to bring her to harm one her darlings. "Oh, goodness."
Trevor nodded. "She thinks she still has what it takes and she won't hear otherwise. Says she misses having little ones around. Not to mention, she reckons I'm doing such a good job with Malkey and Will, she thinks I could do with some of my own... Not that I don't think of them as my own." He looked over his shoulder again. "I didn't say that. That's how she put it. 'Some of my own,' she said. They were her words."
I was focused on one word in particular. "Some?"
"There's a history of triplets in her family."
"Oh..." Our gazes met and the brief moment of wide-eyed terror we shared conveyed as much as several hours of discussion. There was no need to say anything else on that particular topic. We stood there for a while and I bobbed up and down in an effort to keep warm. The Primary 1s still didn't appear. Time dragged on.
Eventually, I couldn't help opening my mouth. "So you don't want more kids?" I said.
"I don't know that now's a good time."
"When is a good time to have your life turned upside down?"
"I 'spose," said Trevor, rubbing his chin, but he didn't seem convinced.
Finally, the school door opened and children started running out. Marie skipped over in her luminous pink coat and gave me a hug, inadvertently whacking me in a private area with her lunchbox.
"You never know," I squeaked, "the next one might be a girl."
Trevor looked at my grinning limpet with pigtails and sparkly shoes. He went pale.
Then I was dragged off to play What's the Time, Mr Wolf? and before I managed to escape, he was gone. In his place was a different set of acquaintances, already arriving for the second bell and the release of the next batch of children. I smiled unconvincingly at the ones passing by on their way round the corner, then I went to rummage about in the remains of Marie's lunch to see if she had any food leftover. I managed to bag half a tub of chopped apple. I sat quietly eating it on a bench until Lewis appeared.
I guess I could have found someone different to talk to but, well, I'd had quite enough adult conversation for one day. I just wanted to get home to the TV...
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
PS Have a great time! (Maybe you could go see Avatar for me?)
Labels: housedad, Scary Karen, school
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Wednesday, 6 January 2010
Understanding working parents
Dear Dave,Happy New Year! I hope you had a good holiday. We're finally back from visiting my parents' house in deepest, darkest Norfolk - the land of turkeys, farmers and dial-up internet. Even dial-up didn't seem to be working very well this time, though. So much as checking my email became a torturous exercise in dropped calls and lengthy load times. Renting a carrier pigeon began to feel like a worthwhile option. At least it did until my cousin popped round to visit and told me his connection had been running slowly too and so he'd had BT out to check the line. The reason it wasn't working properly?
Too many people had shot it.
Presumably they'd been firing at birds which had settled down on the wire for a rest but you never know - sometimes the need to make your own fun in the more isolated areas of East Anglia can lead to pretty desperate measures. Either way, though, my avian-powered p-mail solution seemed unlikely to work. As soon as the poor pigeon stopped to get its bearings it was going to end up as the lunch of some lunatic with a shotgun. This didn't really seem worth it for the sake of a selection of spam and a load of Facebook updates about the snow. I decided to not worry about it, letting the world wide web pass me by for a few days. It was a pleasant rest.
There's only so long a man can go without receiving Photoshopped pictures of cute, fluffy animals, however, so we've fought our way home through the bad weather, taken down the Christmas decorations, re-stocked the fridge and fired up the wireless router. Hurrah!
Even better, despite the cold, the school is open and all the kids are well. I've got some peace and quiet to sort through my inbox that I wasn't necessarily counting on. I fully expected one or more of the children to wake up with a cough or sniffle this morning and thus force me to decide whether they were well enough to go. Sometimes it's obvious, as they have a high temperature and goo is streaming out of every orifice, but usually it's more debatable. A slight temperature and a minor sore throat could clear up by the middle of the morning or it could have developed into full-blown pneumonia by lunchtime. How am I supposed to tell?
Fortunately, one of the advantages of being a stay-at-home parent is that there isn't normally a problem if one of the kids has to stay home as well. I can err on the side of caution and let them doze on the sofa, dosed up on Calpol and surrounded by tissues and sick bowls. Sure, it's annoying if I've got jobs planned or I was intending to head to the shops, but I don't have to organise emergency childcare or phone my boss and grovel to be allowed to take a day off. It's all nice and easy.
Take the last day of term before Christmas as an example. Marie got up complaining that she wasn't feeling very well and then sat on the stairs moaning. There didn't appear to be much obviously wrong with her but she'd been looking forward to the final day activities and the very fact she didn't want to go meant something was up. I decided it would be best to keep her off, reasoning that it would be unfriendly exposing her classmates to a potentially nasty virus only a few days before Christmas. After all, doctors and teachers are always stressing the importance of not knowingly sending an infectious child into school. (Although, bear in mind, if you ever see a kid in the playground glowing with fever and streaming with goo, you can pretty much guarantee they have at least one parent in the teaching or medical professions.)
I dropped off the boys and got to feel smugly self-righteous when the dad of one of Marie's friends mentioned that his child was suffering in a similar way even as he shoved her through the door into school. He'd got to get to work and he was hoping it was nothing and it would be cleared up by the middle of the morning...
Truth be told, it initially seemed to be him who'd made the right call. Marie was very tired all day but not tangibly unwell. Her symptoms could be explained by a lack of sleep combined with a natural desire not to venture outside in the cold. If anything, she was more polite and better behaved than normal. She certainly whined and argued a lot less. She lay on the sofa for most of the day while I got on with packing for the trip south. I wondered whether she could have gone to school.
We had to be up early the next day to catch our train, so we set lots of alarms and tried not stay up too late. I was woken at 3am by Marie complaining she was feeling sick. I found a bowl, calmed her down and went back to bed. It took me a while to doze off again and then I was woken at 4am by Marie complaining that she had actually been sick. Luckily, she'd caught it all in the bowl so there wasn't much clearing up, but I was still rather tired when my bedside erupted in bleeping at 6:30. I wasn't entirely prepared to discover we'd had four inches of snow and getting to the station might be an issue. We got ready and I went to call a taxi, hoping for the best. Just as I reached for the phone, however, Marie threw up her breakfast.
This presented something of a dilemma. On the one hand, we were considering taking a vomiting child for an eight hour journey on packed trains through weather which could conceivably leave us stranded somewhere between Darlington and Doncaster. On the other, I'd spent an entire day packing and we had non-refundable tickets.
Taking the financial hit would have been painful enough but there were only two days until Christmas, so even if we delayed, the chances of Marie being entirely well before travelling down were slim if we wanted to make it for the big day. We wouldn't have been able to get seats on another train anyway. If we were going to go, we had to go right then. I began to regret ordering the kids' presents online and having them delivered to my folks.
It was time to make a decision.
I grabbed a handful of plastic bags and called the taxi.
It turned into a very long day. The taxi struggled to make it the solitary mile through town. Our first train was almost an hour behind schedule before it so much as made it back the mile the other way and passed our house. The carriage was overcrowded with extra passengers who'd had to abandon plans to drive or fly. I almost got left behind in Newcastle as I transferred our luggage to the guard's van in order to free up space for people to stand. We missed our connection...
And all the while, my little biological warfare unit breathed in and out, adding an exciting cocktail of germs to the warm air circulating around us and dozens of others. Every so often, she made retching noises. I hid her up a corner by the window where her pale, drawn features weren't so obvious and I tried not to picture one of those contagion maps they have in the movies, showing bright lines of infection spreading out across the country in an intricate web from the initial source as carriers split up and move on to the next leg of their journeys. I'd probably have felt less shifty if I'd left her with the neighbours and taken a backpack full of anthrax instead.
We got steadily closer to our destination, however. We changed at Peterborough, then Norwich and eventually found ourselves with only one more stop until we reached The Middle of Nowhere. We were almost there. So close...
Then Marie retched. It had a different sound quality from previously on the trip. It was deeper. More liquidy. Kind of ominous.
"I'm going to be sick," she wailed.
I grabbed one of the bags and shoved it under her chin. (Having learnt my lesson with random carrier bags, it was a see-through plastic freezer bag to minimise the chance of holes.) I was barely quick enough. A torrent of evil burst forth from my daughter and flowed into my proffered receptacle. Then she took a deep breath.
...
There was more.
...
And a little bit after that.
...
Then she was done. We'd caught all of it. Delighted, I tied a knot in the top of the bag, inspected it for leaks and then wondered what to do with it. Since Marie had had nothing but water for hours, I was able to marvel at how thin and clear the vomit was.
I have a very vivid memory of going to the fair when I was around Marie's age. There was a game where you had to bounce a ping pong ball on a table and attempt to get it to land in one of a number of jam jars. Success brought a prize - a goldfish swimming around in a freezer bag full of water. I had several shots at that game and then spent the rest of the evening proudly clutching my trophy. It was the only pet I ever had that was completely mine.
As I made my way along the aisle of the swaying train, clutching my bag of sick, I couldn't help musing how my lot in life had changed over thirty years. I staggered past the ticket collector, inadvertently waving my prize at her as the train juddered round a bend, and I felt slightly bereft without a gleaming goldfish to show off.
Admittedly, it would have been the world's unluckiest goldfish but, hey, it might have gone some way to disguise the bio-terrorism I'd been involved in. As it was, the poor woman looked afraid, gave me a wide berth and hurried off to phone Special Branch. We only just got off the train in time. It wasn't out of sight before a couple of helicopters full of commandos caught up with it and the whole thing disappeared in a cloud of tear gas and abseiling men with guns.
Greeting me with a hug, my mum raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything.
I think I'll be a little more understanding next time one of the kids' friends gets sent to school despite having a sniffle.
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
Labels: children, housedad, school, sickness, travel
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Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Herding short Vikings
Dear Dave,Getting twenty-three seven-year-old school children onto the top deck of a bus is... an interesting experience. Oddly, the kids who've been wandering off and causing trouble all the way along the street are fine at this point - it's the ones who've been dutifully following instructions since leaving the classroom who cause the issues. They insist on holding hands even while going up the stairs and then refuse to sit next to an adult they don't know despite there being nowhere else to go.
It's a conflict of programming worthy of Asimov.
They stand on the top step and argue about stranger danger while clenched in the vice-like grip of a heavier 'friend' who's been distracted by his own nose and has forgotten to hold on to the handrail. Meanwhile, another twenty kids are all lined up behind, ready to go down like nine-pins as soon as the driver has checked all the tickets and the bus lurches off along the road...
So, Dave, you may be having a few issues with Sam's teacher this year but, honestly, you should fob Daisy off on the in-laws and volunteer to help on a school trip. You'll find it a real eye-opener, I can tell you. If you feel Miss Green is giving Sam too much of the wrong kind of work and that she isn't entirely engaging with his educational needs, you ought to try a visit to the museum with his entire class. By the end, you'll have a new appreciation for Miss Green's ability merely to stay sane on an on-going basis. Forget the excessive colouring in - it's a miracle she gives you (and 20+ other parents) six hours of childcare a day and hasn't yet locked herself in the supply cupboard to have a mental breakdown and then play quietly with the finger-puppets.
Heck, if worst comes to worst, you can always teach Sam to read yourself. I doubt it'll come to that, though. Even if it does, having somewhere cheap and away from home for him to go to and be socialised with other kids while learning about papier-mâché is still something to be thankful for.
Of course, if you did manage to off-load Daisy on unsuspecting relatives for a few hours, I can see why you might want to lie around having a rest rather than accompanying a horde of children across town to learn about Vikings. Maybe I should just tell you what happened to me when I went with Lewis' class, his teacher and Kerry's mum (the solitary other parent helper). I certainly needed to lie around having a rest afterwards.
As I said, the bus journey had its moments. The walk at the other end wasn't so bad. A couple of kids picked a fight while crossing the road, most had forgotten where we were going and one was a little cold because he'd tried to put his coat on over his enormous backpack. He'd got into the sleeves up to his elbows but the rest of the coat was hanging round his waste as he wandered along with his upper arms pinned to his side and his forearms sticking out in front of him. When I offered to rescue him from this absent-minded escapology experiment, however, he didn't seem fussed. I left him to it and concentrated on keeping a watchful eye out for cars, kidnappers and open manhole covers.
When we finally reached the museum and the children had been given stern warnings by Mrs Rogers not to get too boisterous, we were greeted by a couple of guides dressed in animal skins and wearing helmets with horns on. Well, I say 'greet', they actually leapt out at us waving plastic axes and roaring. Half the children jumped out of their skin, the other half didn't really notice. Then we were all forced to wear horned hats too, and sit down ready for a talk.
The talk began with a long explanation of why real Vikings never wore horned hats. Sadly, that didn't mean we got to take our hats off. Instead, Erik the Goat-Slayer and Sven Bottom-Thunderer as the guides called themselves, gave us a quick and lively rundown on the standard Viking topics: the names of the days of the week, longboats, runes, Valhalla and lots of roaring. Essentially, it was everything I remembered learning about Vikings when I was seven. Next term I predict a project on Romans featuring gladiators, togas, eating dormice, Hadrian's Wall and catapults.
Once the kids had been suitably wound up with roaring and period-appropriate fart gags, we had a hands-on session with Viking artifacts. We were divided up and I got to tell my group of six boys about the items they were handling as I hastily skim read the info from a help sheet. Since the objects included knives, shears, needles, drinking horns and various other sharpened bits of dead animal, this activity turned out to be more life-threatening than I'd initially envisaged. Nonetheless, we all survived with only minor injuries.
After the kids had done some drawing and then been turned upside down and shaken a bit to empty their pockets of any lingering Viking weaponry, we went to eat our packed lunches.
First, though, I got to supervise a dozen boys going to the toilet (in groups of two and three, thankfully). A couple of them couldn't reach the taps and at least one got mesmerised by the running water halfway through washing his hands and had to be reminded to stop. One thought the best way to check if a stall was free was to peer underneath the door. (Because, although sitting next to an unfamiliar granny on the bus is clearly to be avoided, placing the side of one's face on the floor of a public lavatory is apparently perfectly OK...)
After lunch, we did a quick tour of the Viking exhibits but they didn't hold the kids' attention long. It wasn't time to head home, however, and seeing as we were at the museum already, we went to look at some robots. We got to press buttons, waggle levers and play with touchscreens. This was more on my level. The kids ran riot but I could cope. It was a contrast to when I went to the modern art gallery with the Primary 5s. On that occasion, my own bewilderment made it harder to keep the children in line. I really couldn't explain why someone had painted three orange squares and hung them on a wall. I muttered something about the explanation being as important as the actual art but I'm not sure I was hugely convincing. As for the stairwell lined with the names of all the people the artist had ever met, laid out like a war memorial, in some ways it was thought provoking, in others it seemed like nice work if you could get it...
(I'm from rural Norfolk. If it's not a landscape involving cows, I'm not interested.)
Once the Primary 3s had had a while to play with the exhibits, their excited chatter began to turn to whiny bickering. Mrs Rogers gave me and Kerry's mum a look and we knew instantly to start rounding everyone up to go. The kids were approaching a level of tiredness where they were liable to descend into complete meltdown. If we didn't get them on a bus soon, we might not be able to do it at all without the aid of cattle prods and the Territorial Army. We were suddenly on a time limit.
Within three minutes we had them lined up with their coats (mostly) on. After a couple of head counts we were away.
We still barely made it.
Getting them on the bus was manageable, getting them off the bus again was challenging but getting along the street to school was almost unending. I had to keep saying, 'Keep up!' and 'Pay attention!' to every child in turn. Like ageing lettuce, they were all past their sell-by date and looking extremely tired. Those in the group with anti-social tendencies were picking fights over nothing and the space cadets were stopping in their tracks at the sight of anything bright or shiny, including, somewhat unfortunately, the sky. Every step became a battle.
When we finally reached the school gate, I was mightily relieved. There was forty-five minutes before I had to be back to collect Marie and I hurried home for a strong coffee and a chocolate biscuit, glad I wasn't Mrs Rogers. She had another hour to keep the Primary 3s amused.
Shiver...
They may have long holidays and excellent pensions but teachers deserve sympathy and understanding all the same...
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
PS Having now been on a trip with each of my children, I can verify that every age group presents its own difficulties to those in charge. When given instructions, Primary 5s argue, Primary 3s don't listen and Primary 1s sing and do a little dance.
I think I'll be getting all my kids' teachers bottles of wine for Christmas. Thoughts? Responses? Got a funny story about your children? Add your comment here. 9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post
Monday, 26 October 2009
The bear insanities
Dear Dave,Ed is unable to write today. He's suffering from fatigue induced from too many exciting outings accompanied by children and cuddly toys. I'll be sharing my thoughts with you instead. My name is Ted.
Fred the Ted.
I'm visiting Marie from school. Each of the Primary 1 children is taking a turn to have me home for the weekend so I can write about it in my diary and then share my experiences with the rest of the class. As you may have guessed, I'm a bear. I'm about eight inches high, brown and fluffy. I normally wear shorts and a sombrero that's very easy to lose.
I'm not the first cuddly toy that has visited Ed's house. Every year he had a child in nursery, a different plush play-thing came to stay. I'm following in the footsteps of Pam the Lamb, Pat the Cat, Lucky the Ducky, Hurtle the Turtle, Dog the Frog, Frog the Dog and (the somewhat unfortunate) Floodle the Poodle. Since the nursery is just down the corridor from the Primary 1 classroom, I've ended up in the same storage cupboard with them on occasion. During the long summer months, we sat around playing poker, sniffing felt-tip pens and trying to find a way round the website filter on the school's computers. On occasion, as we brewed moonshine in a forgotten corner of the art room, they filled me in on what to expect from some of the families I was likely to stay with this year.
When I was handed to Marie ten days ago at the beginning of the school holidays for an extra long visit, I was heartily relieved. Some of the places I've been have had such bad reviews, I've had to cross my paws and hope to come back in one piece without a coating of jam and cat hair. In contrast, my friends have all been quick to jump in with positive comments about Ed's house whenever it's come up in conversation. (Except poor Floodle, of course - he won't be jumping anywhere anymore, God rest his stuffing. I told him stoking a barbecue with lighter fluid is a bad move when you're ninety percent polyester...)
Ed had thought he was done with little visitors once his children left nursery. He wasn't too thrilled to discover the introduction of the scheme in Primary 1, particularly as it's not just me. After Christmas, he'll be able to look forward to Lana the Iguana coming to stay. (Which will be a real barrel of laughs, I can tell you. 'Lana' is actually a rather camp chameleon called Brian who's more than a little bit bitter about the whole need for a rhyming name thing. Don't give him any moonshine after midnight whatever you do - he'll be singing Celine Dione songs into your shoulder until way, waaaay past bedtime.)
Ed wouldn't mind the visits if it weren't for the diaries. They always seem to have got out of hand by the time they reach his house. Take my own experience this year as an example:
Everything started nice and relaxed with a couple of quiet weekends spent with Tom and Carla. Then, the next week, Lucy's family just happened to have some horse riding planned and took me along. When Charlotte read about that, she insisted her parents come up with something equally impressive for me to do. We all went to the museum and to the cinema and she stuck the tickets in the diary. William's family had to include pictures of our trip to the farm in order to keep up. Then they took me to the soft-play just to make sure.
Ever since, my life has been a non-stop whirl of parties, special events and hastily arranged outings. Jack's dad put the video of me eating lunch on a roller coaster up on YouTube.
Ed is feeling pressure to compete.
He's taking some consolation from the fact that not all of my experiences have been entirely good ones. Malcolm's scary mum, Karen, dressed me up as a gnome and posted me to her cousin in Lapland. The pictures of me with Santa look great but I'm not sure they were worth a two-way trip in a Jiffy bag while wearing a hat with a bell on the end.
That wasn't as bad as when Carlos took me to the zoo and fed me to a gorilla, though. As the photos of Caitlin's trip to Centre Parcs show, the ordeal was enough to mysteriously change my colour, size and shape by the following weekend...
Of course, Ed knows better than to get caught up in the craziness of trying to out-do other parents. He simply can't be bothered. Unfortunately, he made the mistake of reading my diary to Marie on the first night of my visit. Having been reminded of all the fun things her friends got to do when I came to stay, her expectations have been raised. She's suggesting a quick trip to Disneyland.
We haven't got quite that far yet but it might not be long.
Now Marie's five, she's started at one of those uniformed organisations where girls get to wear matching sweatshirts and bake biscuits. As a special treat for joining, the leaders gave her Claire the Bear to bring home, complete with her own diary. Ed tried his best to look pleased but didn't really manage. He's been somewhat distracted since, organising expeditions while simultaneously trying to keep me and Claire apart in case we attempt to breed.
Two diaries to fill and an entire week without school (combined with the threat of baby bears) has weakened his resolve. Any moment now, he could go crazy, give way to the peer pressure and book an outlandish excursion simply to have something to write about. We could all be on a plane to Bermuda tomorrow if I play my Pooh sticks right. (Heck, I don't mind spending the trip in a Jiffy bag if I get to share...) All I need to do is find some way to push him over the edge and I'll be off to the sun.
Once I've sent this, I think I'll hide some fridge magnets in his laptop...
Yours (in memory of Floodle),
Fred. Thoughts? Responses? Got a funny story about your children? Add your comment here. 9:00 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post
Wednesday, 23 September 2009
Dipping a toe in the temporal sea
Dear Dave,I'm still feeling peculiar.
Yesterday was just strange.
I mean, totally odd...
Marie finally had her first full day of education. I gave her a hug, shoved her towards the school door and then waved at her fruitlessly as she ran off to join her friends without a backward glance. Once she was inside I didn't know whether to shed a tear or let off a couple of party poppers. There was a temptation to simply lie down on a bench and groan quietly to myself.
I've been working towards having all three children at school for so long, I found myself at something of a loss once they were actually there. Six child-free hours stretched before me like a vast ocean of possibility and yet every drop of time felt precious and not to be wasted. As ever when faced with such opportunity, I was paralysed by indecision.
It wasn't that I couldn't think of things to do. Far from it. I just didn't know where to start. So much has been put on hold for the nine years since Fraser was born, six hours didn't feel like very long to catch up on lost time.
On the other hand, it was far longer than I felt capable of dealing with effectively. Nine years of small children has accustomed me to sprinting through everything. It started when Fraser was a baby - he'd often nap for three hours during the day but I never knew when those three hours would be or whether they'd come all at once. Sometimes I'd get an entire afternoon to myself; sometimes I'd get half an hour here and there. On occasion, I'd get nothing. I became expert at grabbing opportunities. I'd leave tasks set out, ready to go, and launch myself into them the second Fraser's eyes closed. I didn't faff around checking my email or drinking a coffee first. There wasn't time. I dashed through chores, hoping to get them finished before I was onto the next round of milk and nappies.
As the number of children in the house increased, the windows of opportunity shortened to the point where they disappeared and I seemed to be running through the day merely to stand still. This situation has obviously eased greatly as the kids have got older but, nonetheless, I've rarely had large chunks of time to fill. When the kids are all home, they can entertain themselves for hours... but they seldom do. I'm left to scavenge the time scattered between family activities and requests for help and attention. Meanwhile, the two hours or so I got each morning while Marie was at nursery were wonderful but they were also frustrating. I only had long enough to do one significant task in a hurry. Then it was a case of gulping down a coffee while skimming my email and putting on my shoes, before having to jog along the road to arrive promptly to collect her. I had a short stretch of time and I always raced along it...
Then suddenly, yesterday, I had six hours all at once.
I was a 400m runner presented with an open road. I was mesmerised.
Unable to decide between all the glimmering alternatives for relaxation and productivity, I went home and had a nap. Then I pottered about the house and ate some crisps. I didn't achieve anything. It was great.
I did feel a bit guilty, though. I'd give you a list of all the stuff I'd planned to do with the time but it would be the same list as when when Marie started nursery. Thanks to one thing after another, I'm not sure I've done a single activity I mentioned then, apart from go for coffee a couple of times and buy some clothes. Those clothes are now starting to look a little shabby. I could really do with buying some more... Drat.
I have a huge backlog of chores and tasks. When it came time to collect the children, I'd enjoyed myself but it was as if so much potential accomplishment had slipped from my fingers. What with Sarah at work slaving over a hot keyboard, and plenty to catch up on round the house, I felt that I should have had more to show for my day than an empty packet of salty snacks...
Today is different, though.
The thing is, I woke up this morning to realise I had another six hours. Tomorrow there'll be yet another. Next week there'll be six hours for four days running. I can weep, shower myself with streamers, groan quietly on a bench and still have time to go for coffee and then buy clothes.
It'll take some getting used to, but the road just keeps on going...
Right. I'm off to buy a huge telly to celebrate.
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
Labels: housedad, nursery, school
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Friday, 21 August 2009
Slugs and snails
Dear Dave,Thanks for asking how Marie's first day at school went. She seemed to enjoy herself. She certainly emerged from the playground gate with a drawing and a big grin. Then she smugly pointed out all the children who'd cried.
Ho well. I suspect her turn for tears will come in a couple of weeks when she gets tired and realises she has another thirteen years to go...
Still, things have gone very smoothly so far. She's even found a good answer to satisfy the various people who've asked her what she learnt. Her instant reply is, "Where the toilets are." It's not exactly rocket science or brain surgery but it's a solid start that can be built on. Truth be told, I always count my own initial session in any new situation as a success if I manage to locate the facilities. She'll go far.
The highlight of her first day experience was the moment she noticed that her choice of uniform options meant her socks and hair scrunchy coordinated with her dress. She was delighted to find herself a green Gingham fashion icon. The only thing which came close to this was getting to show off all her pink jewellery when a friend came round after school.
As you know from my recent rant, I'm not a fan of gender stereotyping. I'm clearly not in a traditional role myself and I'd be quite happy if Marie became a physicist or a plumber. I really have tried to bring her up the same as I did the boys, it just hasn't turned out quite the way I expected.
I suspect much of this is down to her nature but it came to my attention recently that treating girls and boys the same is harder than it sounds. You see, I had to buy birthday presents for a mixed pair of four-year-old twins, Katie and Peter. (Don't ask.) I don't know them that well and I wasn't sure what kind of stuff they had already, so I wandered round a toy shop searching for inspiration. Since they're the same age, have had the same upbringing and share the same home, the task became a perfect experiment to test my own attitudes. With little knowledge of their individual preferences and nothing to distinguish their circumstances, I could only be swayed by their genders into getting them different types of toys. I was confident, however, I could easily overcome any deep-rooted prejudice I might have and find a couple of play-things that would be acceptable to any child, no matter whether the kid was composed of sugar and spice or molluscs and canine extremities.
I was wrong.
I immediately found myself considering anything pink, sparkly, fluffy or creative for Katie and anything involving vehicles, flashing lights or sport for Peter. In fact, the obvious choices were a design-your-own fairy kit and an electronic rally car.
This was not a great start.
It's not as if my own boys like cars or sports (although they can be very easily distracted in an emergency by dangling a torch on a bit of string and giving it a good spin). Marie has played with our toy garage far more than both of them put together. Nonetheless, I felt drawn to buy speedy mechanical things for Peter in a way I simply didn't for Katie. They would have been good enough to get for her if I couldn't locate anything else but they weren't really right. In contrast, there were plenty of art materials and doll sets I thought Katie would love but I couldn't imagine buying for Peter. When it came down to it, I didn't mind getting them both 'boy' toys but couldn't bring myself to get them both 'girl' stuff. (To a certain extent, anyway - two Ninja Robot Aqua CommandosTM would have been as inappropriate as two Rainbow Princess PoniesTM.)
I stared at the shelves for several minutes, unable to find gifts that adequately satisfied both my gut instincts and my finely-honed liberal values, then I struggled on round the shopping centre, consumed by indecision. I didn't want to go with traditionally gender-oriented toys and I wasn't brave enough to make role-reversal purchases. My closest approximation to a solution was to pretend the twins were both rather restrained boys. This made me uncomfortable, though, because as I said in my last letter, equality that's achieved by making everyone act male isn't very pleasant. I was stuck.
To complicate matters further, I had Marie with me, holding the power of veto over my choices. Every so often I forlornly picked up a box, turned it over in my hands and showed it to her. "What do think of this for Peter?"
She rolled her eyes. "That's a girl toy, silly. It's got a picture of a girl on the box."
"He might like it anyway."
"I'd like it more. Can I have?"
I sighed and put the box back on the shelf. "Maybe when it's your birthday..."
This scenario repeated itself a number of times, interspersed with occasions when Marie picked up a fuchsia item covered with glitter and mermaids, and said, "I think Katie wants this."
"I'm sure she does but we're not getting it for her."
Marie nodded. "Can I have it then?"
I sighed and took it from her and put it back on the shelf. "Maybe when it's your birthday..."
After the third shop, I lost the will to live.
I gave up and got a Bob the Builder board game between them. Of course, buying one present between two children because they're twins is a whole other issue, so I felt compelled to buy a small toy car as well, just so they'd have a parcel each. Unfortunately, this back-fired later when it came to handing the gifts over. I went into spasm over who should unwrap which one, holding them out to the kids and then crossing my arms over a few times in rapid succession as my brain did some last second calculation. I ended up literally tying myself in a knot and then falling over.
The twins astutely ignored the gifts and frisked my dazed body for sweets, loose change and credit cards...
There are a couple of important lessons here:
- Gender preconceptions are clearly insidious.
- All kids, irrespective of gender, are cheeky little chancers.
Oh, no, wait a minute, I've already agreed to play a board game involving space marines with them this afternoon, while Marie makes a bead mosaic and watches a show about yoga-loving animals with pet butterflies. I'm booked up.
Maybe tomorrow, eh?
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
Labels: children, discrimination, school
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Monday, 17 August 2009
Porridge stains aren't sexy on anybody
Dear Dave,The holidays have gone by rapidly and it's only another couple of days until the new term starts here in Scotland. I'm going to miss the laid-back schedule of the summer but it will be nice to return to routine again.
We've stocked up on all the necessary equipment - gym shoes, uniform, stationery, etc - and we're nearly ready to go, despite being slowed by Lewis' resistance to change. He had a meltdown when he learnt the trousers he's had for the last two years are now too small. He promised to stop growing at once if allowed to keep wearing them, and he assured us that the hole in the knee isn't a problem (even though it's so big that a passing family of rabbits have taken up residence). We've insisted the trousers are replaced, however. Now he just wants to erect a shrine to them in his room... Ho well, doubtless he'll become equally attached to new leg-wear in a few days and I can sneak the old pair to the recycling centre. I'll tell him they've gone to live on a farm.
Marie is still excited about starting school. I made the mistake of reading the reassuring pamphlet for parents of new pupils that we were sent, though. It lists all the concerns I might have about my daughter's primary school experience, describes them in detail and then briefly attempts to quell them. Somehow, it wasn't entirely soothing. Despite having had no qualms about shoving my boys through the playground gate on their first days, I'm now a bit nervous about how Marie may fare during her introduction to formal education. What if she gets bullied or forgets to go to the toilet or gets mistaken for being English? What if she joins a gang or is allergic to the class hamster? The stress is beginning to get to me.
Deep breaths.
...
...
I'm sure she'll be fine, really. She's bright and she's good at making friends. She'll only have problems
Teacher: Look at this picture of a dog.
Marie: Don't be silly. That's not a dog, it's a puppy.
Fortunately, thanks to her two brothers, the majority of the teachers in the school are all too familiar with this kind of behaviour by now and should be able to counteract it quickly and efficiently without the surreptitious use of blunt instruments.
Yep, she'll be OK. I suspect I'm merely channeling some of my own angst in her direction. She has five weeks of half days before she's in full-time and then I'll have reached another housedad milestone. With all my kids at school, I'll have to re-evaluate my purpose and my position in society. Given the grief it's possible to get sometimes for being a housedad, I'm kind of wondering what becoming a part-time housedad will be like.
We had a salesman round the other day to give us a quote for a new front door. As he talked at length about security hinges and neoprene seals, Marie sat quietly at the kitchen table, threading beads and smiling sweetly. Then the man needed all our details for some reason. (I suspect he may have been gathering ammunition for a later attempt to sell us windows as well.) When he learnt that I'm a housedad, he seemed quite taken with the concept, affirming me with the apparently genuine assertion that he wouldn't mind being a housedad too. Sadly, his grin suggested that he was envisioning a tranquil life of supervising some gentle bead-threading while his wife was banished down a coal pit.
I felt the need to summon the boys to view the guy's product samples at that point. A quick whistle brought the sound of stampeding elephants from upstairs, closely followed by a tangled blur of flailing limbs surrounded by a cloud of dust and body odour. There was some arguing and hinge juggling and then they were gone again.
The man went a slightly odd colour and his grin wavered somewhat. I'm not sure if he got the full picture of my life but the conversation rapidly returned to the subject of nine-point locking mechanisms. I felt I'd won another small victory for our housedad revolution.
Just as well really. Housedads have had more bad press recently. The Daily Mail ran an article about how lots of career women are dumping their stay-at-home partners. Mixed in with the dubious statistics, there are even quotes from an expert to explain that it's all down to a loss of respect brought about by the wives feeling a lack of support because their men aren't pulling their weight financially. The essence of the piece is summed up by the line, "In short, having a man whose primary function is not as alpha male breadwinner, but domestic drudge, just ain't sexy."
Cheers for that.
It would be easy to dismiss the whole thing simply on the basis that, rather than being a psychologist, the expert in question is a divorce lawyer but... erm... No, actually, that's a pretty compelling reason.
The only really valid point in the article is that, when it comes to custody, divorce courts in the UK are weighted heavily in favour of the mum - even if the dad has been the primary carer for years, it can have no bearing on how often he has access to his children after a break up. Apart from that, there's nothing much to the article but scare-mongering. In reality, relationships where the man looks after the kids aren't under any kind of unique stress. The accusation of being a financial lightweight could be levelled in any situation where one partner is earning less, whether they stay home or not. Loss of respect can (and does) happen in families where the roles are 'normal'.
Being dropped on from a great height is nothing new for stay-at-home parents. It's just that in the past they've all been female. Housedads aren't particularly asking for trouble by defying the perceived natural order, it's simply that when any relationship goes south, the partner with control of the money is bound to be at an advantage. It turns out that given the security of being the one with the income, women can be as sneaky, underhand, self-centred and ungrateful as men.
I suppose this is equality but it's not a very happy situation. The Daily Mail may not approve of housedads but I'm fairly sure they're in favour of mothers spending more time with their kids and, oddly, the only way for things to improve for stay-at-home mums is for there to be more stay-at-home dads. The Mail really should be on our side. You see, sexual equality is usually portrayed as being achievable by getting plenty of females into high-powered jobs. Traditionally female roles will only gain the respect they truly deserve, however, when they're also seen as perfectly legitimate avenues for men. We don't just need women in board rooms, we need men at toddler group and the school gate.
Then there's... Oh, hang on, that reminds me - I need to go and collect the navy pinafores and knee-length socks I ordered for Marie. She looks so sweet in her uniform. I can't believe she's going to be in Primary 1 already! I... I...
I'd better go. Remember: Being a housedad - it's a public service.
(For my part, I'll try and remember not to cry when my baby skips into the playground on Wednesday.)
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
Labels: discrimination, housedad, school
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Wednesday, 17 June 2009
An academic exercise
Dear Dave,Marie just got her final end-of-year report from nursery.
I suppose it should have been a momentous occasion. Another three weeks and she'll be done with pre-school education. More significantly, after six years of lurking outside the nursery door at 11:30 every morning, I'll be done with pre-school education. All three of my kids will have moved on. This was my chance to reflect on how far Marie's come and savour the fruits of my housedad labour.
Except, of course, I had a quick glance over the report, shrugged and then filed it on top of the big stack of stuff that I'll maybe have time to file properly once she's at school.
I remember poring over Fraser's first nursery report, analysing every detail. He can hang up his own coat! He can count to 10! He can interact with other children without battering them over the head with a wooden brick! Surely he must be a genius! I saw that same hungry eagerness in the eyes of the newer parents. In some cases this was their first taste of institutional feedback on their three-year-olds; their first chance to have their parenting affirmed. They ripped open the envelopes and devoured every last comma of the contents.
I, meanwhile, have now received getting on for a dozen school reports on my children. Since the teachers obviously expend a great deal of time and stress on them, it's something of a shame that I've come to realise the information they contain can be divided into two categories:
- Stuff I already know.
- Stuff I don't agree with.
It really isn't a surprise to me, for instance, that Marie 'regularly uses her own drawings to express her ideas' and that she 'loves to show adults her work and to talk about it'. Rather than counting the number of pictures she produces each day, I now measure her output in terms of how many inches higher she's made the pile of creations I've been forced to admire. I'm well aware of her artistic tendencies. (To be honest, I'd be more interested if they'd found a way to get her to stop expressing her ideas...)
Elsewhere, however, the report states that 'Marie is able to count from 1 to 10 and recognise all these numbers in writing'. This is technically true but I'd actually be pretty confident of her recognising any number from 1 to 100. It's not worth making a fuss about but a factor of ten disagreement in her level of numerical attainment does make me wonder at the accuracy of the rest of the report. Taking every word to heart probably isn't wise.
Now I think of it, I guess there's a third category of content in reports that becomes more prominent higher up the school: stuff that's very important to teachers but that I'm not interested in at all. This includes such things as attainment against national standards and what's in the curriculum for the year. I can see why the teachers are very agitated about this information - it affects their career prospects, school funding and the likelihood of the Teacher Police turning up and asking awkward questions in a stern voice. If I was a teacher, I'd be agitated too.
As a parent, I'm not so fussed.
National standards come and go with every passing government. I don't need the details. I only care whether my kids are doing 'Well', 'OK' or 'Not so hot'. As for the content of what they're studying, I'm fairly indifferent. There's more 'common knowledge' in the subject of geography alone than my kids could realistically hope to learn in their entire school careers even if they studied nothing else. If it's ever important that they know the state capital of Minnesota, they can look it up on Wikipedia. At the moment, they're learning how to learn. I'm sure they'll cover the basics - dinosaurs, the Romans, Google and Mary Queen of Scots - at some stage. Beyond that, I'm happy to let the teachers stick to whatever topic they've found good worksheets for.
Yep, I've chilled out considerably since reading Fraser's first report. The kids are doing fine and hopefully they would tell me early on if there was a major problem rather than letting me wait until I got the write-up at the end of the year.
The official reports seem somewhat unnecessary with nursery kids anyway. I only have to stand Marie next to a three-year-old to see how much she's progressed since this time last year.
That's not to say I'm entirely past caring, though. The final sentence of her report did catch my eye. It says, 'Marie is ready to start school.'
Let's face it, that was worth reading.
(...even if I did know it already.)
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
Labels: children, nursery, school
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Friday, 13 March 2009
Geeks before their time
Dear Dave,Glad to hear Daisy's over the chickenpox and Sam's recovered from the stomach bug.
It's obviously a shame that Sam's now covered in spots and Daisy's started throwing up but, honestly, you were probably expecting this eventuality. (I know I was.) Good luck. Another year or two and you'll be able to look back and laugh...
Would you believe that someone told me recently that parenting only gets harder as the children get older?
It really wasn't what I wanted to hear.
Apparently, the amount of physical labour required in caring for them goes down but the other stuff becomes more difficult. Sometimes they behave like adults and they can be dealt with as equals; other times, though, it has to be remembered that they're still children and they don't have the experience or sense to make good decisions themselves. Finding the balance is not so much treading a fine line, it's more like battling through a constantly shifting war zone.
On learning this, my only consolation was that I don't have to worry about it for a few years yet...
Then again, what do I know? When Fraser got stuck in one of his DS games last week, I told him I'd 'look the answer up on the computer'. I didn't go into any of the details and I spared him words such as 'online' and 'internet', so as not to overtax his young mind. I fully expected him to be thrilled when I obtained the information he required and to act like I'd produced it with the wave of a wand.
More fool me.
He took it all in his stride and barely remembered to say thank you. Then, three days later, he came out of school and said, "What do you think I looked up on Google Images today?"
I did a double-take for two reasons:
- I hardly dared imagine what he'd managed to find on Google Images.
- I didn't know my eight-year-old had heard of Google, let alone been let loose on it.
I felt the need to check I'd heard right. "You've been using Google at school?" I queried.
The children ignored me as always. Lewis turned to Fraser and said, "The last time I used Google, I looked up the National Museum of Flight."
My brain exploded. He's six.
Then the pair of them had an argument over whether it's easier to Google by going through Internet Explorer or Firefox.
Needless to say, I found this all deeply troubling in so many different ways...
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
PS Marie wanted to wear her Santa outfit to nursery today. Since March isn't a particularly traditional time of year for Santa outfits, I was somewhat reluctant. Nevertheless, she was adamant. For once, I decided to be a spontaneous, fun-loving parent and not worry about it. She skipped happily into the playroom and I shrugged off the confused looks from the staff.
It was only later I remembered that today is photo day... Thoughts? Responses? Got a funny story about your children? Add your comment here. 9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post
Friday, 5 December 2008
The parable of the chocolate Santa
Dear Dave,The nursery organised their usual fund-raising festive raffle last week. Parents were asked to donate groceries for a Christmas hamper and we were then sold tickets at a rate of five for a pound. At the end of the week, the tickets were put in a hat, a single winner was drawn and one lucky family got the entire stash.
The hamper was left on display in the hallway outside the nursery door and, as the week went on, it gradually began to fill with all manner of delights. There were packets of biscuits, bottles of wine, jars of jam, noodles, teabags, canned soup and, bizarrely, three tins of peas. Apart from the peas, it all looked delicious.
Perhaps too delicious...
You see, the nursery is attached to the primary school and school kids frequently walk by on the way to the toilet. At home-time on the Thursday it became clear that one of these children had seen a crafty opportunity - a chocolate Santa poked clear of the other items in the hamper, his head cleanly removed, as if a child had taken a big gulp in passing, silver foil and all.
When told about it, my boys were impressed. Robin Hood had daringly snatched a share of the loot. The whole idea made them fall about laughing.
That's to say, it did... until we won the raffle. At that point, they were suddenly overcome with righteous indignation. They wanted their chocolate Santa, no matter that carrying home the remaining contents of the hamper was still nearly enough to kill me and that our shelves are now overflowing with tasty treats (and canned peas). They wanted the Sheriff of Nottingham called in to deliver retribution and compensation.
Sigh.
I think this may explain rather a lot about the world.
Merry Christmas,
Ed.
Labels: children (vol.4), children (vol.5), nursery, school
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Wednesday, 3 December 2008
Some part of the slate is always blank
Dear Dave,Don't do it. I know it will be tempting when you see all the trays laid out in a row like that but you just shouldn't do it. It's only going to end in angst and self-doubt. You will question your abilities as a housedad, your genetic heritage and the very future of your children. You may even get a ticking off from a teacher. It's simply not worth it.
When you go along to the parents' evening at school and you're hanging around, waiting for your appointment, resist the urge to take a quick shufti through the jotters of children who are not your own. Sure, some will be full of unintelligible, spidery scribble that will make Sam's back-to-front letters look like the work of a young Da Vinci. These will reassure you that he's doing OK. Unfortunately, those won't be the ones you open as you grab a book at random while checking over your shoulder for passing members of staff and little Amelia's mum.
Nope. You will be horrified as a pop-up version of the Sistine Chapel springs forth in your hands, light shines from the open page and somehow, impossibly, Handel's Messiah blares out, seemingly from the very paper.
This will be distressing, for any number of obvious reasons.
As you carefully put the book back, nonchalantly whistling to yourself under the suspicious gaze of everyone in the entire dining hall full of parents and teachers, you will understand beyond doubt that there are some competitions that Sam will never win...
Of course, you already know this to be true but the full realisation of it is still liable to be shocking. Although competition at parent and toddler is fierce, it's all rather meaningless. In reality, it makes no difference how many teeth a one-year-old has, whether they can say 'tractor' or how many blocks they can stack - barring a real problem, every child present is going to catch up eventually. It's a case of when skills and attributes develop, not if.
By the time the kids are at school, however, the situation has changed. Nature and nurture have really got to work, and talents and weaknesses have begun to emerge. Gradually it becomes a case of if, rather than when.
Not long after Fraser started Primary 1, I went along to a talk given by his teacher about the curriculum for the year. She went to great lengths to point out that there's always wide variation in the abilities of kids starting school. She showed us a couple of pictures of a group of people eating, drawn by different children in the class. One was a scribble. Without being told, there was absolutely no way of knowing what it was supposed to be. The other was like a black felt-tip version of The Last Supper. People sat behind a table, food set out before them. They had expressions, the table was drawn in perspective and it was even possible to tell what was on the plates. I was flabbergasted. I knew then that Fraser was never going to win any art competitions. He can barely manage that level of composition now that he's in Primary 4.
While my mind was still reeling, though, his teacher went on to talk about maths and how all the children had a line taped to their desks with the numbers 1 to 10 marked on it, to help them with their addition. This confused me in an entirely different way. Fraser could already subtract two-digit numbers from each other in his head. The thought that kids around him might need a crib sheet in order to add 3 to 5 was as astonishing to me as his classmate's sketch.
Every child has stuff they're good and bad at.
Lewis could do any thirty-piece jigsaw with ease by the time he started nursery. Marie's been there a year and can barely do twelve-piece jigsaws, but she can say 'please' and 'thank you' better than the boys can already. She can also beat me at Uno. She has much more empathy than the boys as well - when she was under a year, we showed her a picture of a crying baby in a book and she burst into tears herself.
(Admittedly, she's not always so understanding of the plight of others these days. Last week, a friend came round to visit but started sobbing when her dad left. Rather than consoling her, Marie said, "Stop crying so loudly. I can't hear Bob the Builder." Nonetheless, she has much more concern for the people around her than the boys can muster between them.)
There's no point beating yourself up over what your kids can't do. Maybe if I'd spent more time doing artwork with Fraser when he was small, he'd be better able to draw now but, then again, perhaps the distraction would only mean he was worse at maths. I don't know. Some skills, like reading, are vital but others aren't so important. If he's never able to paint, then so be it, as long as he understands that it doesn't really matter and he has the confidence to muddle through his art classes. I'd rather he spent time improving the skills he's good at and enjoys.
When a kid is born, infinite possibilities stretch before them. As they get older, it can be sad to see some of those possibilities begin to fade but it's merely a consequence of the child developing and finding their way. They can't do everything. They shouldn't be expected to.
It's worth remembering, however, that no matter how many avenues are closed, there are still infinite possibilities left. (Infinity is great like that.) Plenty of choices remain to be made and there's still a need for guidance, encouragement and teaching. There's even room for the unexpected:
Fraser took part in an art competition when he was in Primary 1. It was to do with road safety. All the kids were given a picture of a lollipop lady and they had to colour her in. Fraser was relatively neat and used a blinding selection of day-glo shades. It wasn't exactly a masterpiece but his efforts fitted the criteria for the competition very well.
At home-time on the day the winner was announced, the perpetrator of The Last Supper stomped out of the building in a foul mood and scowled at me. Fraser was not far behind, joyously waving the blinding, day-glo reflective jacket he'd won.
So, yeah, don't worry too much at the parents' evening what Sam's classmates can do. Concentrate on finding out what he can do and how you can help. Save your effort for thinking up some intelligent questions about Sam's progress to ask his teacher...
...particularly if she's young and cute and has a tendency to wear low-cut tops. What with that and the occasional outbreaks of Hallelujahs behind you as other parents 'accidentally' rifle through the wrong trays, you'll be pretty distracted when your time slot arrives. It's best to be prepared...
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
Labels: school
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Wednesday, 12 November 2008
Back to school
Dear Dave,"This is Geoffrey Fitzroy, headmaster of Malton House," said a plummy, English voice. "I'm calling about your nephew, Ned."
I was caught by surprise. I'd been expecting it to be someone conducting a market research survey or a recorded voice promising me a holiday in Florida. I put down the cup of milk I'd been carrying and transferred the phone to my other hand so I could listen more carefully. "Is he OK?"
"Physically, yes - apart from something of a black eye - but I'm sorry to say I've had to suspend him from school for a couple of days. Could you possibly come in to collect him? I'd like to have a chat about his behaviour."
"Er..." I glanced across the kitchen at Marie. She was busy eating her lunch. She grinned at me and waved, a green bean protruding downwards from either side of her mouth as she pretended to be a walrus. I didn't fancy my chances of getting her through town in a hurry. "Wouldn't you be better talking to his parents?"
"I've just learned from Ned that they're currently in Peru."
"What!?" This was news to me. I immediately suspected that Ned was making it up to avoid his dad being called in. Then again, there was a possibility I'd been told about it and forgotten. (Chris and Catriona are always gallivanting about with their jobs and I've long since given up paying attention.) I decided it was safest to play stupid. "Oh... Really?"
"I'm afraid so. Yours is the emergency contact number."
I did remember agreeing to that. Admittedly it had been more than a decade previously, back when Ned was in nursery, but what could I do? "Fine," I said. "I'll be there in three-quarters of an hour."
* * *
I'd say that Malton House is an unusual place but I've yet to encounter a private school that isn't at least a tiny bit wacky. In this context, Malton House is pretty normal.
The original building is a crumbling Georgian mansion covered in ivy that's imposing but not awfully attractive. It's a stone box with a grand, pillared entrance and a shallow dome on top. It does, however, draw attention away from the profusion of portacabins and concrete science buildings which have sprung up around it over the years.
The grounds are fronted by a high wall and I headed through the main gateway with some trepidation. My memories of school are not good - I was afraid the iron gates would clang shut behind me and I'd suddenly find myself forced to endure Double German and then play rugby.
Oblivious to my nerves, Marie whizzed off down the tree-lined driveway on her little pink scooter and I was forced to jog after her. A sports field stretched away to our left and a lawn to our right. Across the lawn was a very dense clump of bushes and some thickly packed firs. Through the trees, I caught the occasional glimpse of a truly hideous architectural monstrosity lurking in the shadows beyond, hiding itself from scornful looks amongst the dank foliage while squinting longingly at the light.
My heart sank. The physics block had been banished. I really wasn't going to blend in during my visit to the school. I hadn't had time for a haircut but I began to wish I'd changed out of my baggy pullover and put on a shirt and tie.
As we reached the main building, a discrete sign labelled 'Administration' directed us to a side entrance. I knocked on the door and there was a muffled, "Come in," so I opened it tentatively and went into the cramped and cluttered office beyond. It was more a cubby-hole off the side of a corridor than anything else and it had been filled with a desk and filing cabinets. An older woman eyed me suspiciously from behind her computer monitor, peering at me over the top of her half-moon glasses as if I was about to waste her time. "Can I help you?"
"Er..." I began.
Then Marie piped up with, "I'm Marie. This is my daddy. We're here to get Ned. He's been bad."
The woman didn't even smile. "Quite," she said. "The headmaster is expecting you. Go on through."
"Thanks," I said and hurried down the corridor, carrying Marie's scooter in one hand and dragging her along with the other, hoping to get away before she could divulge any information which I might regret.
Marie kept a steady stream of witter aimed at the school secretary as we went. "We came here on a bus but we're in a hurry because we have to get back to collect my brothers from their school. One of my brothers is called Lewis and he's six. My other brother is called Fraser; he's eight. They don't have to pay for their school but it's just as goo..."
And we were round the corner.
The secretary must have buzzed ahead because the headmaster appeared to meet us. He was a cordial man with slicked-back white hair and a firm handshake who welcomed me into his study as if I was an important benefactor.
The room was less cramped than the secretary's office but just as cluttered. The walls were lined with bookshelves and glass-fronted cabinets. Along with a vast collection of leather-bound books, a strange assortment of museum pieces was on display. There was everything from a flintlock pistol to mounted butterflies to a full-size totem pole which filled one corner of the room. It was like being backstage at The Antiques Roadshow. Up near the high ceiling, a selection of stuffed animals scrutinised us from the top of the cabinets. I was strangely disturbed by an guitar-playing owl and a pussy cat in a pea-green boat. They had some honey, plenty of money and very surprised expressions.
I averted Marie's gaze as best I could.
Ned was already there, sitting hunched over on a chair in front of the headmaster's desk, his hands in his pockets. He grunted a hello and I sat beside him. The upholstery on the chair was threadbare, as was the carpet, and the whole place had a faint odour of decaying fabric and furniture polish.
The headmaster poured me some tea in a china cup and then returned his attention to the work on his desk which had obviously been occupying him before I arrived. I politely drank my tea as he finished gluing teeth back into the manky remains of a baby crocodile.
Marie ran over to Ned and gave him a hug and started telling him all about her day in nursery. "I played in the water tray with Amy but she made splashes and got us wet. She didn't put her apron on, though, and so she was wetter than me and Miss Nolan told her off for making splashes and not putting her apron on. Then I had a snack. It was pizza! I didn't drink all my milk, though. I only drank nearly all my milk and..."
Ned's good with her. He nodded and smiled in the right places even when she continued on for several minutes.
After a while, I began to get restless. I put my tea down and checked my watch. We didn't have long before we needed to catch the bus back. Fortunately, the headmaster took this as some form of cue and looked up from his repairs. "So?" he said, waving some tweezers at Ned. "What do you have to say for yourself, young man?"
I grabbed Marie and handed her a plastic tub with the remains of her lunch to keep her quiet.
"Collins started it," said Ned.
"Mr Jacobs quite clearly observed you throw the first punch."
"Collins was calling me names."
The headmaster dismissed Ned's words with a chuckle and a patronising smile. "Well, a little name-calling hardly seems like a reason to hit someone in the stomach."
Ned didn't reply.
I guessed there was more to it than he was letting on. "How long has he been calling you names?" I asked.
"How long have I been at this school?" Ned said bitterly. "I can't do anything without him and his mates laughing at me."
I pressed further. "Has he ever started a fight with you?"
Ned shrugged. "A few times."
I turned to the headmaster. Having been in Ned's shoes as a teenager, I had a fairly clear idea where this was going. "Is this other kid getting suspended as well or has he been put on the rugby team?" I asked.
"Collins does have an important match this afternoon," said the headmaster, confirming my suspicions, "but I fail to see the relevance." He put down his tweezers and leant back in his leather chair. "Did you report these incidents?" he asked Ned.
Ned shook his head.
The headmaster locked his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. "We cannot act on events we know nothing about. If you don't report such things, we cannot deal with them."
"Erm," I said. "He's reporting them now."
I got the full force of the patronising smile. "It's a little late in the day, don't you think? I require dates and witnesses and..."
He trailed off as we all suddenly spotted that Marie was trying to feed the crocodile a cheese sandwich. "I'm a walrus," she said with a grin full of green beans.
The headmaster simply stared at her.
We were onto a lost cause and I used the distraction to beat a retreat. "We have to go. Two days suspension, was it?"
Mr Fitzroy managed a nod as he poked at the sandwich with his tweezers. It wasn't going to come out of the crocodile's mouth without a fight.
"OK," I said. "I'll tell his parents exactly what happened. Let's go, Ned."
I bundled everyone out of the room without looking back. We weren't in that much of a rush but I was mildly worried in case the school had dogs and they were about to be set on us.
The secretary glared at us as we left.
Marie gave her two slightly-chewed green beans to cheer her up.
* * *
"Why didn't you say something?" I said as we sat down on the lower deck of the bus. "You've been round our house every other day for six months."
I was next to Marie; Ned was on the seat behind. I turned to face him as best I could but he was looking at his knees. "Were you bullied at school?" he muttered.
"Yeah."
"Did you tell anyone?"
He had me there. "Guess not," I said. Somehow he'd managed to answer my question in full without actually telling me anything. As Marie befriended an old lady across the aisle and told her all about the crocodile, I tried a different tack. "OK, so why'd you decide to hit that boy today? I'm not too happy at having to cover for you, by the way. Why'd you tell Mr Fitzroy that your parents are in Peru?"
"'Cos they're in Peru."
"What!?"
He shrugged. "They'll be back on Monday. Lisa's eighteen - they left her in charge."
Understanding began to dawn. "Of you?" I said.
"Yeah." He finally became animated as the injustice of being ordered about by his sister welled up inside him. "I have to clean my room and everything. She's got me arranging the food in the fridge by sell-by date and taking a shower every day. It's like living in Stepford."
It's true that my niece, Lisa, is something of an over-achieving control freak who scares normal people with her inhuman levels of enthusiasm and politeness... but she does mean well. I didn't want to be critical of her when she wasn't even present to defend herself. Also, having spent plenty of time around Ned of late, I was on her side about the showers. I tried to stay neutral. "Come on, she can't force you to smell nice."
"Mum and dad left her the cash. I can't do anything if she won't let me. I'm skint - I spent out on Big Macs last week." He saw my confused look and explained. "She got a home delivery and it was all salad and yogurt."
"Oh," I said. "I take it that this explains where my stash of crisps and chocolate biscuits has disappeared to recently."
"Sorry," he said. "Needed food." He opened his school bag to reveal a familiar looking pile of snacks. "Couldn't leave it in my room - she'd have found it and turned it into cat treats or, you know, given it to homeless people or something."
I sighed. Technically he should have asked before taking but I was simply glad to see the stuff. I'd been fretting over where I'd put it. I was certain I'd bought it and brought it home, so its absence from the kitchen cupboards had been worrying - either the mice had got hugely brazen or I'd got distracted and made a serious unpacking error with the shopping. After the washing machine and the bathroom cabinet had proved to be full of nothing but dirty clothes and toiletries respectively, I'd spent a couple of days checking my shoes for Mars bars before putting them on.
In my relief that I wasn't going barmy, I took pity on Ned. "You could always stay at ours for two or three nights."
"Yeah, please!" he said, delighted at the prospect (and at not getting another telling off).
"You'll have to sleep on an air bed in Fraser's room," I said, attempting to quell his excitement slightly, "and you'll definitely have to shower at least once during the visit."
"No problem."
"Right then." I was rather thrown that I'd suddenly got an overnight guest I hadn't been expecting. There was a bed to make and food to buy and goodness knows what else to do. Then I looked out of the bus and noticed we were passing near Ned's house. "You can get off at the next stop and pop home to collect your stuff."
"S'OK. I've got my iPod and I can play your Xbox."
"I was thinking of clean underwear and a toothbrush," I said. "Maybe some deodorant. That kind of thing."
Ned didn't look like he could be bothered.
I pressed the STOP button and jerked my head in the direction of the door. "Seriously. Go and get them or I'll feed you yogurt."
Reluctantly, he mooched off.
I relieved him of his school bag as he went past. "I can take that," I said helpfully. "Save you carrying it everywhere." He shrugged and gave it to me.
I think he was on the pavement before he realised that this meant I had all the biscuits.
I opened a packet of chocolate fingers and gave two to Marie. "Can I be a walrus again?" she asked.
"Of course you can," I replied and inserted a couple in the corners of my own mouth.
We banged on the window as the bus pulled away, just to make sure Ned saw us grinning and waving and impersonating aquatic mammals.
For some reason, he pretended not to know us...
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed. Thoughts? Responses? Got a funny story about your children? Add your comment here. 10:30 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post
Wednesday, 8 October 2008
Bullying
Dear Dave,Happy birthday to Daisy! I can hardly believe she's one already. Doesn't time fly?
Actually, don't answer that. I think we both know that where looking after children is concerned, time can do some very peculiar things. A year can disappear but a wet afternoon can drag on forever. The hour they spend napping can vanish in five minutes, while the five minute trip home with a kid desperate for the toilet can take an hour. The weeks start to whizz past so fast that Monday morning seems to come round every day and yet it's always an agonising wait for that tooth to come through or the tantrum to stop or for the kettle to boil so you can have a cup of coffee. (Or is that last one just me?)
The upshot is that they get older quicker than you expect but, then again, so do you.
I guess you're finally moving beyond the baby stage, though. Daisy is eating finger food and you can give her cow's milk. Sterilising stuff is pointless because she can feed herself breadsticks from under the sofa, dirt and passing spiders. Has she learnt to walk? (Being able to take three steps and then clunk her head on the telly counts.)
She may still be 'your little baby' but sit her next to a new born and you'll be astounded at how far she's come in a year. Another few months and she'll most-definitely be a toddler.
In contrast, now that Marie's turned four, I'm officially past all that. I no longer have a toddler in the house. She's a little girl. I should expect to get to the supermarket and back without a child falling over, wanting carried or complaining they need the toilet.
Of course, this seldom actually happens but at least now I can dream. I folded up the buggy the other day and put it away because I hadn't used it in a fortnight. The boys are capable of performing complex errands with a reasonable chance of success. Fraser even volunteered to carry a useful amount of shopping home recently. They really are all growing up.
This does bring new problems, however - the kind of problems that are much harder to deal with than a grazed knee, tired arms or trainers full of pee. The kind that involve social skills, popularity and fitting in at school.
Marie is fine so far. She already has a gaggle of girlfriends who gather round to admire the pinkness of each other's clothing and then swap hugs. Lewis, meanwhile, has a group of like-minded individuals to help him re-enact scenes from Super Mario Galaxy in the playground.
Fraser isn't so lucky. He's a geek in a class full of non-geeks. He's also academic, opinionated and has a lack of tact. Despite only being eight, he probably has as many enemies as he has friends. This rather marks him out as a target.
He generally gets on better with the girls in his class than with the boys but that's just not cool when you're eight. He could do with a couple of mates with big piles of Pokémon cards and an interest in Nintendo. Unfortunately, I can't conjure friends for him out of thin air. School is going to be tough for him on occasion.
I'm keen for it not to be miserable, though.
I was bullied at school. I'm a geek, I'm shy, I'm not adept at a witty put-down, I had glasses from an early age and there is a portion of my genetic code that is part donkey. The only reason I wasn't called 'Big Ears' at school was because everybody was calling me 'Big Nose'. (I'm from Norfolk - I suppose I should feel lucky I'm not part turkey.)
For a few years, I spent a great deal of my existence being embarrassed and/or lonely. The bullying seldom got physical but it was horrible, nonetheless.
I wasn't sporty or popular, so I concentrated on what I could do, which was school work. I strove to excel academically. It was what brought me the most praise and attention from my family. It was what made me special. It was what made me worthwhile. I obsessed about coming top of the class.
This, in itself, didn't win me any friends. Then I became trapped in a situation where when I did well, I got taunted for being a 'swot', and when I didn't do quite as well as normal, I got jeered for 'not being as clever as I thought I was'. The latter was particularly unpleasant because it undermined the shield I'd put up around myself. I only became more stressed about doing well.
I tried fighting back. I tried ignoring the bullies. Neither tactic succeeded. I got contact lenses and stared at my nose from different angles in the mirror. I escaped into computer games and books and pretended I didn't care.
And, over time, I grew to care a lot less.
I realised that if people were going to pick on me, they were going to do it anyway, no matter the size of my nose or the quality of my eyesight or what mark I got in the last test. The people who were calling me names were idiots I didn't want to be friends with anyway.
After that, the bullies had less power over me and found being met with disdain and contempt much more off-putting than any witty retort I could have managed. We all got older and kept out of each other's way.
Sadly, I still feel that my worth is dependent on success. I'm sensitive to criticism, I hate getting things wrong in public and I'm overly keen to make a good impression. I grin like a lunatic when meeting new people. (Please like me! Please...) Whether all these issues are entirely down to the bullying is anybody's guess but the bullying really didn't help. As far as possible, I don't want my kids to have the same trauma.
Quite how to achieve that is the difficult bit...
I suppose the most important thing is to talk to them. We try to get the boys alone every so often (which is surprisingly difficult) and ask how life is going and if they're having any problems. Lewis is usually, "Yeah. Fine. Why are you asking?" but sometimes Fraser will think a little harder and tell us if anything is troubling him. This is a start. I generally kept it all to myself when I was his age.
The times I did confide in people, it didn't go particularly well, which discouraged me from doing it again, so I try to be as sympathetic with Fraser as possible. This alone seems to improve matters.
Working out what to do after that is more difficult. A couple of years ago, Fraser was being harassed by two older children who kept being obnoxious whenever they saw him, asking irritating questions and repeating everything he said. He wanted me to intervene but he only told me about the problem three days before the end of the academic year. I said I'd talk to his teacher if they kept doing it after the summer. They didn't. It all went away. Phew...
More recently, he was being picked on in the playground in the morning. Other boys in his class were lying in wait for him, taunting him to chase them and then acting annoyed if he caught them. To a certain extent, it looked like a game. Fraser kind of liked the attention to begin with but it became more vindictive as the weeks went on. It ceased to be any fun at all when Fraser's friends caved to peer pressure and started joining in.
We told him to ignore the other children and they'd quickly get bored. That didn't work, though. They kept goading him into taking part. Still, it was all relatively mild and confined to the five minutes before school, so we encouraged him to keep trying to sort it out for himself. We thought the eventual outcome would be better that way.
Then, one morning, I was standing at the school door, waiting for Lewis to go in, when I saw Fraser in the distance. He was surrounded by at least eight other boys, a couple of whom weren't even in his class. Two or three of them were making fun of him and Fraser was holding back tears. Another boy shoved him from behind. It looked like it was about to get very ugly.
If I'd seen a similar situation with adults, I'd have called the police.
I would have gone over and got involved myself right then but Marie was holding onto my leg, refusing to go to nursery. It took me a few moments to drag her off and then the bell went. The mob dissolved. The kids disappeared into the school.
There really wasn't any choice but to inform Fraser's teacher. I checked Fraser was happy with that first, however. When I was at school, I was under the distinct impression that telling a teacher about bullying would only make things worse - they'd downplay my story, not believe it or use it to cause humiliation. I thought I might even get into trouble for telling tales. There was certainly no expectation they'd be able to fix the problem and a good chance the bullies would use the whole experience as fresh ammunition.
With hindsight, I now realise that this was maybe exactly what the bullies wanted me to think. If I'd been reasonably careful to pick the right teacher, I'd have been OK. More than that, if I'd talked to my parents and had them backing me up, the situation would definitely have improved. (Teachers are less likely to fob off parents and just having my parents on my side would have been good in itself.)
Bearing this in mind and having been told that schools are much more geared up for discouraging bullying these days, I was optimistic something could be done to help Fraser. Crucially, from what I'd seen of his predicament, getting a teacher involved seemed unlikely to make things worse. I still didn't want to barge in without consulting him, though.
As it turned out, when I spoke to him after school, Fraser was delighted with the idea of me talking to his class teacher about it all. Knowing that he wasn't alone cheered him up. I quizzed him for more details of what had been going on and we both spoke to Mr Campbell at the end of the next day. Mr Campbell was suitably concerned, came up with an action plan and praised Fraser heavily for telling him what was going on.
I didn't hear the details of what happened in class the next day. Fraser didn't want to go into it but he seemed happy enough. Apparently, Mr Campbell had 'sorted it out'. The morning ordeal stopped straight away.
Fraser was also made that week's star pupil in his class - in recognition of 'his sensible decision to talk to people about his problems'. This was possibly a little more attention than I'd have wanted in Fraser's situation but Fraser was too relieved things had been dealt with to care.
Crisis handled... for now.
Fraser is never going to be stunningly popular and there's every likelihood he'll get picked on again in the future. All we can do is keep talking to him and listening. Hopefully he'll learn not to be concerned what other people think of him. That's a lesson I wish I'd picked up earlier and more fully at school.
The one thing I really should have done back then, though, is stuck up for the other victims. If I was going to be unpopular anyway, it might as well have been for doing some good. I had nothing to lose and there's a possibility it would have made school better for everyone.
I'll run that past Fraser sometime soon. I can't see him being too thrilled at the idea but at least I'll have planted the seed...
Ho well, I wonder what else I'm going to have to deal with as the kids get older? How long before it's all sex, drugs and rock'n'roll? One day I'll look back on those trainers full of pee and reminisce about how my problems used to be so simple...
I should be prepared. The way time flies with kids around, that day may well be tomorrow.
Good luck when Daisy brings her first boyfriend home.
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
Labels: discrimination, school
Thoughts? Responses? Got a funny story about your children? Add your comment here. 10:00 AM - Permanent Link - 3 comments - Post comment - Links to this post
Wednesday, 24 September 2008
If only
Dear Dave,Yep, glad to hear Sam's coped well with his first full days at school. Have you managed to coordinate Daisy's naps in such a way as to give yourself some rest? Play your cards right and you could now have several hours a week of extra time to sleep, catch up on the housework, read a book, play the PlayStation or lie around on the sofa in exhaustion, moaning quietly to yourself.
Well, maybe...
Chances are, most days, Daisy will happily demand your undivided attention from the moment the school bell rings until the middle of the afternoon. You'll spend all day crawling around on the floor with her, singing nursery rhymes. She'll doze off in the buggy on the way to collect Sam. Sam will stumble out of school, tired and crotchety, and demand your undivided attention until Daisy wakes up for tea. Then you'll have to deal with two children who have both become used to your undivided attention.
Good luck with that.
Anyway, it's got me to thinking that it's only a year now until Marie is at school the entire day. I'll have three children at school and none at home. I'll have my own undivided attention for six hours at a time. The possibilities are endless. I should begin making plans now.
Other people have certainly started to ask me what I'm going to do with my extra fifteen hours a week (during term-time, when the kids are all well, there isn't a random Monday holiday and, unlike today, the school isn't closed again because of strike action). Surely with a total of twenty-seven hours at my disposal, I must be considering getting a 'proper' job or at the very least have a major project ready to set in motion?
I try to be vague when questioned. I thought getting Marie into nursery would make life very different but the time that that has freed up is always quickly filled. I definitely don't have opportunity to spend my mornings sitting around eating biscuits. (That's what I used to do in the days when I went to parent and toddler, before Marie started nursery.)
Twenty-seven hours seems like a lot but I'll still need to eat lunch, buy groceries and clean the house - things I've previously done with Marie around. I might manage to get my chores done quicker without a small child 'helping' but possibly not. I'll be better able to dawdle. I'll be able to venture into intriguing shops on the way to the supermarket without a little girl tugging at me, complaining she wants to leave, demanding new pink possessions, needing the toilet or being admired by old ladies. When I get back, if the whim takes me, I'll be able to clean stuff that hasn't been cleaned since 1999. Time will fly past. I might even sit down to eat my lunch - that's bound to make it take twice as long.
Don't get me wrong, having them all at school is going to be great. I'm looking forward to it. Life will hopefully be much less rushed. I don't want to spend too much time thinking about it, though, partly because I don't want to set my expectations too high and partly because it will be the last big hurdle for a while.
We've had a constant succession of significant milestones up until now: conceptions, births, crawling, eating, walking, talking, first child out of nappies, first child to nursery, first child to school, final child out of nappies and final child to nursery, among others. We still have the retirement of the buggy to go and Marie needs to learn to wipe her own bottom but after that the pace of change will rapidly slow. Marie will start school and everything will continue on a steady course until Fraser leaves primary school.
Even then, reaching secondary school won't be as momentous as the point where the children are old enough to look after themselves or each other.
In another six years I can go out on my own and leave Fraser in charge... long enough for me to nip to the shops anyway.
Although, now I think about it, I'm not so sure. He can be quite contrary. I'd be nervous about what might happen. He has a tendency to subtly twist any instructions I issue. If I told him to make certain they didn't set fire to the house while I was out, there's a chance I'd return to discover they'd burned down the shed.
Maybe I should send him to the shops while I stay home.
Erm...
Unfortunately, any time I actually need him to be flexible with orders, he will resolutely stick to the absolute letter of the law. He doesn't like getting things wrong. If I sent him for a dozen free-range eggs and they only had a single carton of six but plenty of battery-farmed eggs, he wouldn't be able to decide what to do. It would short-circuit his mind. He might explode.
OK, eight years until I can leave Lewis in charge.
Except I'd come home to find him sitting obliviously playing Nintendo, surrounded by a pile of rubble. When interrogated over why he hadn't prevented the other two from knocking the house down, he would doubtless argue that he hadn't realised I'd left yet.
So... ten years until Marie's in charge...
She'd enjoy it too much. I'd get back from the shops to find that Fraser had left home permanently in a huge hurry to escape. Lewis, meanwhile, would have been forced to wear a sparkly leotard and paint everything pink.
I could be wrong. Their personalities, interests and temperaments may alter and grow over time. Maybe there will come a point when I'll be able to leave the house with them inside and not feel slightly worried about what I'll encounter upon my return.
...
...
Nope. I can't imagine it. OK, fifteen years until they will all have moved out...
Of course, that will merely leave me plenty of free time to sit around in an empty house, worrying about what they're up to elsewhere...
As I said, I try to be vague when people ask what I'm going to do when Marie starts school. It would be all too easy to get sucked into a game of If only. 'If only Marie were at school, I could get so much more done!' 'If only Fraser were old enough to look after the others, I could go out more often!' 'If only they all left home, I could wander round the house naked the whole day, playing the harmonica!'
Wouldn't the world be great then?
Maybe; maybe not. Who knows? Marie starting school will be great but there's no point wishing their lives away. I'm happy with my couple of hours of peace while she's at nursery. And when she's home, that can be fun, too.
Enjoy the crawling and nursery rhymes. Next year will bring something different. It may well be better. Doesn't mean what you have now isn't good.
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
PS Being a housedad has its perks. How many other jobs provide you with a personal, trampoline-based fan club complete with flag and streamers?
Not many, that's my guess.
Labels: children (vol.4), housedad (vol.3), school
Thoughts? Responses? Got a funny story about your children? Add your comment here. 8:45 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post
