This Was Yesterday ...

... and the reason behind my letter to Supernanny (below).

I pick the children up from school and the childminder. The 4 year old has a face like thunder and on seeing me bursts into tears. Thanks, I've missed you too. Someone has accidently taken her book bag home with her very FIRST reading book in it. I feel her pain, but it is even more painful when her brother, sensing her distress, decides to try and outcry her before we reach the car for no reason whatsoever.

I spend the journey home chanting in my head “Stay calm, be consistent, do not shout”.

Admittedly, my face is probably saying "Take me away from this godforsaken place, PLEASE".

I ask the 4 year old to put her shoes away 5 times before she does it. She asks me if she can watch TV approximately 10 times, I tell her “no” 10 times.

We make a Duplo zoo.

We = the 4 year old and I, whilst the 2 year old flails and shouts because he’s tired and therefore emotional (welcome to my world). He then demolishes the monkey enclosure, which sets the 4 year old off on a rant. I try to reprimand them but cannot get a word in edgeways.

Once they have calmed down in the asylum of their own bedrooms we race the Shake n Go cars across the living room carpet.

We = the 2 year old and I, whilst the 4 year old is flailing on the floor because she can’t have the 'fastest car' even though the three cars we have are the same. She then snatches the 'fastest car' which sets the 2 year old off on a rant. Once more I cannot get a word in edgeways.

When it is time for me to make dinner I offer up 15 minutes of Charlie & Lola. But, before I can even find the channel an argument has broken out about whose toes are touching whose bottom on the sofa. I switch the TV off as punishment.

In the kitchen I wonder who is being punished more, me or them, as I try to make dinner. The bickering continues, this time, as we only have one step for them to stand on to watch me. Watch me what? Seethe?

“Stay calm, be consistent, do not shout”.

Next, the relay begins of ‘When you have finished crying / arguing / pushing / snatching / irritating one another you can come out of your bedroom'.

I’m sure the calories burnt carrying alternate kicking children up and down the stairs must mean I can break from the diet and eat a small square of chocolate.

My husband finds me sat on the stairs weeping like an idiot. I feel like I have hopped the London marathon six times in a chicken suit filled with bowling balls and piranhas.

I pull myself together, release them from their bedrooms and sit with them whilst they eat their dinner, like angels, wondering if it was all a dream.

Fortunately today was better. I feel like I only hopped the london marathon five times and without the bowling balls and piranhas. I don't need Supernanny, I need a glass of wine!

Dear Supernanny

Dear Supernanny

I write this letter because on days like this I feel that I am bashing my head against a brick wall of bad parenting.

I have been rudely awoken every morning for the past 4 and a half years. I feel like shouting a lot of the time. I’d rather stick a hot poker up my arse than endure another day of mindless bickering.

I watch your program with great interest. It makes me feel better to know that there are people worse off than myself whose children are absolute terrors. But today I feel like most of those women rolled into one and my children could do with a bloody good talking to in your coarse cockney tones.

They need big colourful reward charts, naughty chairs, they need you to bob down and talk to them an inch from their face and tell them how it is with your voice of authority, they need extra attention, they need to be listened to more.

I understand that the reason you can stay calm, not shout and bob down on their level without strangling them is that you can go home at the end of the day TO NO CHILDREN.

Still, it would be nice for you to visit. You can stay as long as you want. In fact you could turn my life around if you could stay … forever.

Yours pleadingly

Laura

Click Click Click

I have very few memories of my mother. The trauma of her death at a young age has wiped a lot of my early memory and kept a lot of memories I’d rather have lost. I was 7 when she was diagnosed with cancer and 9 when she died. I have memories of my childhood … hundreds … but not many with her in them.

I have boxes and albums stuffed with photos. I often look through them and it can trigger memories of an event but not of the interaction we shared, normal everyday moments shared between a mother and child. The kind of moments I share with my children that I know I shared with her but have no recollection of. A goodnight kiss, snuggling up for a bedtime story, holding hands as we walk down the street … all gone in the dust of death.

I have only two very different memories that have stayed.

Memory 1
We were at a neighbour’s house. I was playing with my friends; the adults were all chatting and laughing in the living room. It must have been a party of sorts because there were a lot of people there. We were running up and down the stairs, racing round the house. It was late, I was tired and hot and I went to my mum for a cuddle. She sat me on her knee; she lifted my long hair up and blew cold air on my neck to cool me down, breaking off to laugh with her friends. We sat like that for a long time, together. It is a tender moment that I treasure.

Memory 2
Driving somewhere, just the two of us, Mum and me. I was sat in the backseat. I had a plastic toy gun which made a click noise when the trigger was pulled. Cheap plastic against cheap plastic; Click, Click, Click. I realised that this noise, although not annoying to me, was grating to my mum. I evidently clicked one too many times because I was told in no uncertain terms that if I didn’t stop it would be going out of the car window. I must have weighed up the seriousness of her threat before … CLICK. Without saying a word, and still driving, she removed the gun from my hand, wound down the window and threw it, wound up her window and continued on our journey as if nothing had happened.

I have a lot of memories of my father’s parenting which was fairly laid back unless I crossed the line in which case I knew about it.

I often think about the way I parent my own children. On a bad day I am a ‘show no mercy’ gun slinger and on a good day I am a laid back tender neck blower.

I need to learn how to be a mixture of gun slinger and laid back tender neck blower all the time!