Debunking

Sometimes life just writes my blog posts for me. The post about Mabel's dentist visit segued into Dash's prosaic encounter with the tooth fairy; and then this happened...

After school yesterday, out of the blue, Mabel and I had this conversation:

"Mummy, is Santa real? A___ told me today that it's just the parents giving presents."
"Oh really?" said I, playing for time.
"I know from the way you said that, he's not real."
"What?"
"You used that voice you use."
[Oh crap. Really? I'm that transparent?]

Then we had a little conversation about whether it's more fun if Santa's real or not real, and she admitted it's more fun if he is real, but she still wanted to know the truth. So I told her the truth. And followed it up swiftly with the Very Serious Admonishment that now that she's in on this big secret, she must be very careful to keep the secret from the other kids.

I admit, I felt a twinge of sadness at the passing of the belief. But mostly I felt relief. I never did very well with the double standards required by Doing Santa. When you're reassuring your kids on the one hand that giants don't exist and dinosaurs are extinct and fairies are only in stories and there are no goblins, and then encouraging them on the other hand to write letters to the man who'll come down the chimney and leave them presents in some totally magical manner... well, I've nothing against anyone who does it, but I found it tricky.

Anyway, there are great things about having Santa finally debunked:

• I don't have to explain how come Santa only shops at Target.
• I can put useful things in their stockings that Santa couldn't possibly have known they needed (and certainly wasn't asked for).
• I don't have to be careful to remember which presents we gave them and which ones Santa did for years to come.
• Santa doesn't get all the credit for the great gift ideas that were really mine.

Don't worry, Santa will still be coming to our house. Probably until the children are grown-up, and maybe even then a while. But if he slips up now and then and brings the wrong thing ... well, I suppose the kids will know exactly who to blame.

Don't call her cute

Don't call my daughter cute.

I don't mind. I think she's cute too, sometimes. But she'll have your guts for garters if she hears you.

A particularly chatty (and somewhat clueless) fellow customer in the supermarket made that mistake a week or so ago.

"You're just so cute," she said, in a cutesy-wutesy voice.

The five-year-old was unimpressed. "I'm not cute," she countered, with a steely gaze.

I asked her later why she doesn't like it - not because I disagreed with her stance, but just because I was interested in her reasoning.

"Cute means small. I'm not small. Babies are cute. I'm not a baby."

Fair enough. Much like Thumbelina, in her heart she's six feet tall. It's not her fault that grownups are all still bigger than her.

On Friday, the dentist's assistant tried to call her cute. Mabel was nervous about the visit, but I could tell this was galling her, so I came gallantly to her defense:

"She doesn't like to be called cute, actually."

"Oh? Well, what would she prefer?"

I took the opportunity to put some words in her mouth, since she wasn't feeling quite as perky as she had been in the supermarket, and I suggested, "How about, I don't know, smart?"

The dental assistant took that on board, though it's not as easy to believably tell a child you just met and who won't meet your eye, never mind talk to you, that she's very smart.

But you know what, you wouldn't tell a stranger you'd never met that she was very pretty. (Unless you were in a bar and trying to score, and bolstered by alcohol, and even then she might not appreciate it.) So how about you stop making superficial remarks about children in front of them, and instead, wait for them to talk to you first? That way, if they want to tell you about their new shoes or the fact that you're buying their favourite snack because it's their birthday next week, or that their favourite animal is the proboscis monkey, then you can legitimately have a conversation, at the end of which you might just be able to remark with sincerity that they are, indeed, a smart kid.

And then I will try to help them learn to take a compliment graciously, with a smile and a Thank you.

Stick police

Things that go through your head when your kids start playing with someone else's kids at the playground:

Isn't that nice, they're all playing together.
My children are so well socialized, obviously.
They're playing a nice game of tag.
Wait, where did that stick come from?
Oh, that's okay, they all have sticks.
Wait now, that's not a stick, that's half a small tree.
Is the other parent here? He must be the man in the car. Where does he stand on the stick issue? Should I say something? Am I a helicopter parent if I wade in yelling "No sticks!" or am I a negligent parent if I don't? Is he judging me?
Okay, they're in teams. That's nice.
No, wait, you can't exclude the little one.
Uh oh. Here comes the little one to talk to her dad.

... 

Maybe I'll just go have a word with them. Make sure they're all playing nicely together.

"Hi! What's your name?"
"Sarah, this is Mabel. Mabel's four. Are you four? Is that your brother? He's in second grade like Mabel's brother? That's nice. Now you can be friends. Be careful with the sticks. Maybe we should put the sticks down. Dash, how about playing tag with no sticks? Hmm? No, you don't have to defend yourself. Well, yes, I can see that the other boys have sticks ... Fine, just everyone play nicely, right?"

...

Well, that cleared everything right up.
Girls against boys?
No, but, the girls are four and the boys are seven or eight and that's three against two... oh good, she wants to be on his team...but now it's everyone against the little one again...
I should not be policing this.
But that father is sitting there in his car.
Judging me.

...

He wasn't judging me. He looked out his car window and we had a nice conversation about how you should let the children just play, but that it's always hard to know where another parent might draw a line that you don't. And then I decided that playing dodgeball with sticks was probably a good moment to draw a line, and announced that it was time to go home.

Free-range parents v. the Lorax

One of my favourite things about our neighbourhood is the Sunday morning farmers' market. We show up some time after ten, the kids get chocolate croissants, we get coffee, we sit on the grass, friends appear, kids run around, we chat, it's nice. I buy some vegetables, usually.

The children all like to climb two trees nearby - one in particular is sturdy and child-friendly, branches low enough to the ground for a tall five-year-old to boost themself up, spread wide enough to hold four or more at once. They play monkeys, and baby birds, and jungle animals, and every now and then a parent is called over to put up or take down a smaller child and be drawn into the game.

Yesterday morning was just the same.
"Where's Dash?" B asked me.
"In the tree," I said, waving vaguely in that direction, where I could see a flash of blue Superman t-shirt between the green leaves.

A few minutes later Dash and his friend came back to us. The friend was looking upset and as she sat on her mother's lap and began to cry, I asked Dash what had happened, afraid she'd hurt herself.

"She's a bit unhappy because a lady told us to get out of the tree," he told me.
"What lady?"
"The lady over there."
"Why? Were you doing something wrong?"
"No, we were just in the tree."

My friend (also a mom of tree-climbers) and I went over to see what was what. The children all came with us, six of them, all a little unsure and wondering what was going to happen. We told them that they were allowed climb in the tree, because all their parents said they could. We told them it wasn't against the law. We put those who wanted to climb back up in the tree.

The elderly lady approached us, looking disapproving. We thanked her for her concern. We said that we allowed our children to climb the tree, that they were doing it no harm, that they played here every week.

She told us they shouldn't, that they were damaging the tree. We said they weren't. They all know not to put their weight on branches that are too slim to bear it. It was a face-off, it really was.

"Make them come down, or I'll... I'll call the police," she wavered, beginning to rummage in her fanny pack for a phone.
"Okay, " we said. "Call them."

We stood there putting one child and another up and down according to their whims, as she ambled away and then back, and then took up sentry duty sitting on a nearby rock. She glowered. The children were a little worried and kept telling us she was still there. "That's okay," we said. "You're allowed be in the tree."

A few minutes later, when most of the kids had tired of the tree and run off to play hide and seek, a police car rolled up and came to a halt in that corner of the parking lot. The lady began to talk to the officer. As I approached from the other side, I heard him say "...it's not illegal..."
He looked over at me enquiringly.

"Thank you," I said. "We just wanted to confirm that it's not illegal for children to climb trees."
"It's not," he said, and I gave him a little thumbs up and a smile.

There was just one four-year-old still in the tree at the time. Then the officer leaned out of his window and asked his mother to take him down, because of "citizen complaints." So she did, because we are all good law-abiding citizens who do what the police tell us, even when we were abiding by the laws the whole time.

We were pretty disappointed in that. The policeman probably took the path of least resistance, and decided that appeasing a cantankerous old lady by removing a child from a tree was the easiest thing to do.

But it leaves us in limbo and with unanswered questions from our children. If it's not illegal, why should they have to stop doing it? Why should the cantankerous old lady win? Should we just take our children to a purpose-built playground structure if they want to climb so badly? But what if we want to enjoy the market at the same time?

And I feel bad for the old lady, who may be many years away from remembering how much fun it is to climb a tree, or even how it's nice to watch your children climb trees instead of playing computer games; who might feel that a tree like that, in a public place, is a treasure that must be protected from little limbs and weighing-down torsos, from children who are little more than vandals and their parents who are jumped-up rebellious teenagers in her eyes.

And I admit that there was a little thrill there, in standing up to an old lady. We tried to be as respectful as we could while letting her know we disagreed and felt she was overstepping the line. We tried to model - what? good rebellion? - for our children. We tried to show our children that we were the grownups who knew the right thing to do, that they could always trust us to be their moral compasses even when others who saw themselves as authority figures might have different messages.

Climbing trees is more complicated than you might think.

----------

To be clear, I don't want to make the old lady the villain of the piece. She has her opinions, and one of them is that our children shouldn't be climbing that tree. Like the Lorax, she speaks for the trees. And I don't blame the policeman, really, for asking us to get the kids down. His job is to keep the peace, and he probably knows that old ladies with nothing much else to do all day are more likely to disturb his peace than busy families who can just head on elsewhere.

It's just a funny story, really, about the day the police came to tell the children not to climb a tree.

That said, we'll all be back there next weekend, I think, and if the kids want to climb the tree, we'll be letting them.

Pope-ular

Yesterday I had to leave the house at 3.00 to get Dash from school, as usual. The new pope was due to be announced and I had the tv on, but even though I waited - "Come on, it's two minutes past, where is he?" - I had to leave without finding out who it was.

Not that I even knew who the contenders were. Dougal wasn't one of them, neither was Grumpy Cat, and they were the only possibilities my Facebook feed had informed me of in the past weeks; but suspense is suspense and the Vatican knows how to play up a theatrical moment. I asked my friend-and-neighbour, as we bumped into her on the way up the road, if she knew, and we reminisced about past popes, as you do.

"When Ratzinger was elected I was teaching middle school..." she started to tell me.

Hang on. What? But she was a teacher a lifetime ago, and Ratzinger is almost new. I know it's a lifetime ago because her kids are the same age as mine, and she taught before they were born. I was ... wait, I was in southmost Texas, so it was my kids' lifetimes ago too, but I feel like the election of the last pope is still a pretty recent event because I blogged about it.

Which just goes to show that I've been blathering on here for a long time. For more than a whole pope, you could say, using the ancient and irregular unit of measurement.

Everyone's saying - where "everyone" is the people I know who might discuss these things - that they hope this pope is more open to change and more forward-looking and more willing to let in tiny things like, say contraception or women priests to the Catholic church. I said it myself yesterday.

But I've changed my mind.

The thing is, if the Catholic church did all those things that I and many other Catholics and ex-Catholics want it to, things like accepting contraception, and considering married clergy or even women priests, and acknowledging that it's okay to be gay (not even touching on the more controversial topics like abortion and euthanasia), it wouldn't be the Catholic church any more. So I think I actually agree with what Benedict said about wanting a "smaller, purer church."

If all the people who genuinely disagree with the church's teachings but still wish to participate in organized religion voted with their feet and left, heading instead for some more inclusive and accepting place (Anglicanism is not a huge stretch), the church would be much smaller - and perhaps have fewer resources and therefore less influence.

So many people stay in the church for the sake of tradition: because they were raised that way and it's what they know, and they like the warm familiarity of the hymns and the responses and doing what they always did at Christmas and Easter. Maybe because your mother would be devastated if you didn't, because you've never heard of anyone moving church - sure one's as good as another, even because your in-laws wanted to know when the party was when you had the first baby, so you had a christening even though you hadn't been to mass in years, and things just snowballed from there.

But unless you're particularly attached to the other things that only come with Catholicism - transubstantiation and venerating Mary and the saints are all I can think of right now - maybe it's time to move on. My mother was never a big fan of "a la carte" Catholics who take what they like and ignore the rest, and I'm starting to come around to her opinion, albeit from the opposite direction.

I know many people talk about working for change from within, which is laudable indeed. But the Church doesn't want to be changed. The Church would rather you left, actually, if you want things like equality and contraception. God is God, and I'm firmly convinced that he/she/it doesn't care what religion you adhere to and whose rules you follow so long as they're not hurting anyone else.

Then again, I'm an atheist 85% of the time, so you can feel free to disregard my opinions on God altogether.



Disclaimer: As always when I talk about religion, I don't wish to offend anyone and absolutely acknowledge your right to believe whatever you want so long as you respect everyone else's point of view too. The flying spaghetti monster endorses this post.

Rebel

Last night, all over this great continent, some people were primping and priming themeselves and their wardrobes in preparation for today's celebration of love. Others were scrambling to order flowers online or find a card at the second-last minute. But everyone I know was cursing their children's classmates for their hard-to-spell names and their sheer numbers, and wrestling with printers or glue or tape or stickers, and wondering just how upset a class of three-, four-, five-, six-, or seven-year-olds would be if they didn't get a Valentine's card from every single other classmate.

Well, I'll tell you this afternoon, becuase my two went in with nary a card to their names. (That means nothing.)

Last week, as I think I mentioned, I was delighted to find some cute pre-made Valentine's cards in the local store. I got a pack of superhero ones for Dash, princess ones for Mabel. They, in turn, were also delighted, and sat down forthwith to write in the "To" and "From" names and seal them with a sticker. That was all they had to do. Crafts are for the birds, I thought. This is perfect.

They both got about halfway through their class lists. "That's great," I announced. We'll do a few more each day and by next Thursday they'll all be ready."
"Not so fast," said Fate to me.

The next day, Dash's teacher sent home a note saying that everyone should bring in 24 blank envelopes and a packet of candy hearts on Thursday. The blank envelopes confused me for a while - should there be anything inside them? How would the cards get to the right people if their names weren't on the outsides? Also, our cards didn't come with envelopes. Also also, I try to minimize the candy, especially the no-redeeming-features sugar-and-Red-40 type candy. If everyone brings in a pack, there's going to be a lot of candy in the classroom. (They plan to use them for math before eating them. So that makes it fine, right?)

A short consultation with Facebook enlighted me about the envelopes: what she meant was that the Valentines should have a sender's name but no recipient's name, for ease of distribution. Which makes it only almost, but not absolutely entirely, pointless. But Dash had done half the names already. Should he finish up the rest or not?

The decision was made by Dash deciding not to do any more, and not to bring any in. Mabel also fell off the wagon and gave up on her cards, so this morning I said:

"Right, are either of you bringing in Valentines today?"
"No," they chorused cheerfully.
"Okay then."

I did not say "Well, how will you feel if you're the only child who doesn't give cards in your class?" For one thing, the four-year-olds won't notice. For another, the six-year-olds probably won't either. And for the most part, I don't like being held hostage by Hallmark, the craft industry, the school, and some imaginary set of judgemental parents for yet another thing to think I should nag my children about if I want to be a good mother.

My children did not bring in any cards today. I'm fine with that. (But if I meet you I'll probably apologise profusely, just to be on the safe side.)

Official

The people in the waiting room had taken the American government's vague requirement to be "properly attired" in a fascinating variety of ways. There was a diminutive, aged Indian woman in a pale blue sari with silver embroidery. There were men in suits. There was a Rastafarian in his best dreadlock-covering hat, his best leisure wear and silver chain. There were women clearly dressed in their "good" dark-denim jeans with a plain sweater and clogs. There was Sunday-best and dressed-for-work. Some people kept their important documents in a plastic bag, some held manila envelopes. Mine were in a green cardstock file folder.

Mostly people came and went through the heavy door at the back of the room without expression, without incident. I read my book and tried to ignore the 24-hour news channel exploring an unimportant incident in far too much depth, from all the wrong angles. A young black woman bounced out of the room, smiling and making jubilant motions in the direction of her husband, who was minding the baby. She had obviously dressed with care: her tiny frame sported a shiny, teal, drainpipe-legged pantsuit, finished off with bright white bouncy sneakers. Her long cornrow braids shook with triumph as she kissed her little boy.

I had gone through at least three outfits the night before, rejecting the trousers that don't really fit any more because it was eight years and two babies ago when I used to wear them to work, and ended up in the exact outfit I wore for my mother-in-law's funeral last February: purple dress, teal slim cardigan, black boots. I was comfortable and felt like myself, not some other version of me that's not around any more or never was. And I looked as if I'd made an effort, which is all that "proper attire" turned out to mean.

My name was called. I followed the lady back to her room, where she shuffled and hole-punched and checkmarked pieces of paper as she asked me rote questions in a routine voice. First I had to stand up and promise to tell the truth, as if that would make any difference to an unscrupulous person. She wrote with her left hand at right angles to the pages, initialing and circling and numbering in red ink as she went, checking a whole row of boxes at once to catch up to what I'd already answered. I remained calm and collected and was a model student, getting all my civics questions right first time, even that elusively random number of Representatives in the House: 435. I wanted to say "Guam. Ask me the one about Guam. And that Benjamin Franklin was the first Postmaster General of the United States. Those are my favourites," but I didn't, and she didn't.

Then she asked me about my family, and whether I'd ever been in prison, and whether I'd ever conspired against the goverment, or been a Communist, and some other questions. And then told me that she'd be recommending that I be granted what I had come for. I could take the Oath at two this afternoon if I liked.

I didn't like. My town has a Naturalization ceremony once a month and I'd assumed I'd do it at that; I hadn't planned to be away all day. Beyond that, I wasn't ready to seal the deal just yet. One step at a time, without thinking too hard, is the way I'm doing this.

Midway through the questions, I had almost started thinking about what I was doing, as she leafed through my Irish passport looking for stamps and dates. I don't have to give my passport to them, I'm allowed to keep it. I'll never not be Irish. I just don't like that one line that goes "I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen..." That's a lot to take on. That's a lot to ask.

I'm just going to say it and not think about it, which I'm sure is exactly not what the people intended, but there you go. It makes sense to do this, it's the practical thing to do for our family, to make sure we can stay here, where we've made our home, as long as we want to rather than finding ourselves chucked out at some sudden date if things go wrong and funding goes away and the letter of the law must be adhered to. I'm a sensible person. In the end, it makes no difference to my day-to-day life. America needs me, I tell myself, to be a sensible liberal-leaning democrat-voting, atheist, lactivist supporter for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

I'll say it, and I'll do it.

But always and forever, if you cut me, I'll bleed green.

Homework, by popular demand*

*at least, one Lovely Commenter asked for it. But this is the abridged version - I took out a big wodge of irrelevant ranting and self-doubt.

**********

Oh God, Homework. I spent all afternoon yesterday stating my expectations - that Dash would start his homework now. Now after this snack. Now after this one game. Now in time to watch the TV show. As soon as dinner was done. He agreed, or said nothing, and then he just ignored it, and me, over and over and over. I threw in the towel.

I hate homework, but maybe there's more to it than that. I am the sort of person who does things first to get them out of the way: I used to eat my vegetables first so I could enjoy my dinner once they were gone; I used to do my math homework first to get it over with. To me, this seems like a good way to work, and the ethos and habit I want to pass on to my children.

But I know not everyone functions this way. (Their father did his math homework first too, but in his case because it was his favourite. I'm not sure what he did with his vegetables. Probably dropped them stealthily under the table.) Maybe Dash is just the sort of person who needs to leave things till the last minute. Maybe he'll pull spectacular all-nighters in college. Maybe he'll work up to the wire on every deadline and his work will be great because of it.

I just don't believe that can be true. How can you work up to the wire and have time to make your work as good as it should be? Is this a case of nature not nurture, or can good work habits be instilled at an early age to avoid all that nasty fussing over last-minute deadlines later?

This morning, Dash did his homework after breakfast, for his father (I was still in bed; Mabel slept well but I had insomnia), with little or no fuss. My new plan is two reminders an evening that homework exists, and one in the morning. If he sleeps late and doesn't have time for it, that will be his problem, not mine.

Will report back. In the meantime, I'd really like to know your opinions. Are you an in-good-time-er or a last-minute-er? Do you think you could be the other if you tried hard enough, or is it hard-wired?

Deceptemuffin

Today I was helping at a bake sale in aid of Mabel's nursery school.

Someone came up with the idea of a bake sale last autumn, and when the donations started coming in, we wondered why we had never done this before. Clearly, the parents of the nursery school are in need of some sort of baking intervention, I said in October, as I put my double batch of lemon scones down on a table already groaning under a surfeit of cakes, cookies, muffins, and pies.

So for today's event, I didn't go quite so overboard, and confined myself to just a single batch of banana-butterscotch muffins. Banana seemed to be the theme of the day, as there were also banana-oat-bran, banana-nut, and gluten-free banana muffins on the table, in addition to an impressive selection of chocolate-chip cookies, brownies, chocolate-brownie cookies, chocolate fudge squares, and a few delicious outliers in the form of snickerdoodles, coconut macaroons, and even soft pretzels.

Thing was, as the banana-nut muffins were arrayed on the table in their individual zippy bags, with hand-written labels listing the ingredients, we all remarked on their impressive size and uniformity. In fact, they looked very much like the sort of banana-nut muffins you might buy at the supermarket. Very, very much. In addition to which, the ingredients listed both milk and soy; as a parent of a child with allergies pointed out, nobody bakes with both of those at once. You use soy to replace dairy, unless you're a supermarket who uses soy because everything has soy in it.  We were pretty much, say 99.8%, sure that someone had just bought a batch of supermarket muffins and repackaged them for the sale.

Now, there's nothing wrong with that. Nowhere is it written that donations for the bake sale have to be homemade. If you want to help with the fundraising effort, it's perfectly kind of you to buy something - something you know many people like - and give it to the school to sell on. They were priced at $2 each, so we probably even turned a profit on the original outlay. And the customers didn't seem to mind - I was astounded at how many people's eyes lit up as they scanned the table, spotted the giant, "Texas-sized" muffins, and decided one of those was exactly what they needed. It's bigger, it must be better. I need bigger. Everyone needs bigger.

I didn't point out to any of these people that the muffins were clearly not home-made. Maybe they knew that. Maybe they haven't eaten as many store-bought banana-nut muffins as I have in my time, and don't recognise them. Maybe they don't care, they just like things that are big. But I did feel that we were duping our generous customers somehow by providing these at a stand otherwise full of honest-to-goodness home-baked goodies.

(I reserve judgement on the samoas that had been put two-by-two into small sandwich bags and marked at 50c apiece. I've seen recipes for samoas (reknowned as girl-scout cookies) online, and they were donated by a student's grandmother. Grandmothers have time for meticulous baking, right?)

What do you think? Would you donate store-bought goods to a bake sale? Does it matter, so long as it raises funds for a good cause?

Mommyfriends

I had this sitting around waiting to go, and then yesterday my friend Lauren said pretty much the same thing, much more succinctly, in a comment. Which just goes to show that I really did pick the right friends. (But also, I wanted you to know that I thought of it all on my own.)

-------

What sort of parent are you? But what sort of a parent do your friends think you are? And how can you ever find out for sure while keeping your friends your friends?

I've noted before that differences in parenting styles can make or break a friendship. But what if, despite having a similar attitude and being on the same page philosophy-wise, you vaguely suspect that your friend thinks you're too easygoing on your kids, and that your kids are some way to being undisciplined tearaways as a result?

Your friend is your friend, and as such is unlikely to tell you, if that's her candid opinion of your beloved offspring. You can passive-aggressively blog about it.* You can ask her outright. But, unless you have unusually blunt and outspoken friends, or friends who are looking to get out of being your friends, such approaches will only garner reassurances that you're a great parent and your kid is going through a particularly tough phase right now and it was also partly their child's fault for presenting such a delicious-looking body part right in front of your kid's bared teeth.

But then you remember that sometimes you might look less than favourably on some other people's kids too, but when those people are your friends, you don't hold it against them because you know they're good parents who are doing their best to battle against the forces of chaos as presented in the bodily incarnation of preschoolers. Because friends are people who still like you even when your kids are being horrible.



* I'm not doing that. This was inspired by real-life events, but I ran the blog post by my friends before hitting Publish.

Glass walls, class wars

SCENE: The kitchen, looking out to the back garden where the builder is paving the new patio. (Not my kitchen.) (In case you thought it was.)

CAST OF CHARACTERS: Maud, Monkey (5), Moose (5), Mabel (2-and-a-half), Len the Builder

STAGE DIRECTIONS: French door to patio is halfway open. Len sits down to have a quiet smoke. The children and Maud are sitting inside the french doors having a snack and a cup of tea respectively.

Monkey: Why is the builder using a cigarette?
Mabel: What's a cigarette?
Moose: I know what that is, it's a cigarette! Smoking is Bad For You!
Monkey: Yes, it makes black stuff go in your lungs.
Mabel: Mummy, what's the man doing?
Maud, cringing, knowing Len can hear every word: Well, sometimes grown-ups smoke. But it's not very good for them.
Monkey: It's very dangerous!
Moose: Yes, it's very bad!
Len, interjecting from outside to kindly put me out of my misery: That's right, Mum. You tell them. It's a filthy 'abit.
Monkey: But, but, how can he get one? Doesn't it cost lots and lots of money?
Maud, realising that Monkey is mixing this up with that talk we had about illegal drugs and how some people do bad things to get money to buy drugs, all stemming from that time his friend's dad was mugged, which may or may not have had anything to do with drugs at all, but how do you explain to kids that some people just hurt other people for kicks?: No, you're allowed to buy cigarettes. I mean, grown-ups are. They're a bit expensive but not very. Sort of like the way we're allowed to buy wine...
Len: Ah now, are you taking my drink away from me too?
Moose: But why do people use them if they know they're bad?
Maud: [Sigh. Ugh. Why do I get into these things?] Well, at first somebody might just smoke a cigarette and think it's okay. But after a while, their body starts to want one even though they know it's bad for them, and then it's much harder to stop.
Monkey and Moose, sanctimoniously: Well, my body's never going to want a cigarette.
Mabel [comes over and insinuates herself onto her mother's lap; stands up and bounces happily]: When I'm a grownup, my body's going to want a cigarette.

I am so in trouble when that girl turns 14.

Four degrees of separation

Just for the record, so we're all straight about this, and you'll tell me if I'm being unreasonable, right?

• If you are the designated person in charge of my child while I'm somewhere else, for five minutes or three hours, and he misbehaves, you are entirely entitled - nay, expected - to tell him off for it. With appropriate and not excessive force. I don't leave my children in the charge of anyone of whom I would expect less.
• If you are in the vicinity of my child when they do something they shouldn't, especially - but not solely - if your child is involved as the innocent party, and I am not nearby, you may by all means tell him off for it.
• If I'm right there but happen to be looking the other way when something happens, it's fine for you to admonish my child - but since I'm in your hearing, you might think about doing it in a way that's more about calling my attention to the event than about disciplining him directly. That would be tactful.
• If I'm talking to my child, looking him in the eye and taking him to task myself, right at this moment, for acting the maggot, please do not feel that you can improve matters by adding your voice of disapproval to the fray. Especially if you just met him for the first time today.

That's all. Kthxbye.

Superheroes: the root of, and solution to, all evil

As I left the supermarket with Mabel this morning, the man sitting in the car beside ours heard her babbling away from her vantage point among the shopping bags, and smiled. He asked me how old she was, told me I had a beautiful daughter, and remarked wistfully that his own daughter had just graduated yesterday, and yet it seemed only a few short years since she was two-and-a-half like Mabel.

I waved to him as we pulled out, and said to Mabel that he was a nice man.
"No, he's not."
"Really? Don't you think he's nice? He was very friendly."
"I don't like him."
"Why not?" I asked, hoping I didn't know what she was implying.
"Because he has a dark brown face."

Dun dun dunnnn. Where did that come from?

"Mabel, the colour of people's skin has nothing to do with how nice they are. Why do you think that he's not nice?"
"I just do."
Something occurred to me. She had been playing with the superhero action figures before we went out this morning.
"Is it because Bad Spider-Man is black?"
"Yes."
"But Batman is black too. And he's good."
"Oh." Thinks. "Then he was a nice man."

I named various people we know who have differing shades of brown skin. It transpired that, I think, though Mabel can recognise brown skin when she sees it, she doesn't retain people's colours in her memory. This is, perhaps, some small comfort. And I have no way of knowing if she would have the same reaction tomorrow - toddlers are fickle, after all.

But really. If this is how easily, and how early, and how literally, children interpret the lessons of colour symbolism - white=good, black=bad - we need to be very, very careful. Maybe I need to introduce some creepy albino bad-guy action figures* into our collection.


*Joking, joking. Calm down.

Reaction parenting

On Thursday, I finally did something I've been itching to do for quite some time. It didn't really improve matters, though.

I slapped Monkey.

Yes, you can come and revoke my attachment parenting card now, I hit my child. I'm sorry.

No, really, I am. I mean, if I could do it over, I wouldn't. But I can't deny that it felt satisfying, just for a split second.

It had been a long, hot day - the temperature hit 93, by far the hottest so far this year. My body is not yet inured to such things, and I'd had a headache most of the day, partly from the heat and partly from the incipient cold I was nursing. I had given the kids a bath and spirits were high. I left them tussling in towels on the sofa while I went to put the kettle on to make the rice for dinner. In the three seconds I was gone - of course - there was a thud and a wail and the beginnings of some hard crying, and I ran back, afraid that Mabel had done a Monkey and got herself a concussion.

She had indeed fallen - been pushed - backwards off the seat of the sofa, towards the table, and Monkey was standing on the sofa, clearly guilty, saying "I'd forgotten about the head-hitting thing" in far too good-humoured a way. As I picked her up and held her close, asking where she'd bumped and wondering if it was bad or really bad, the sight of her brother all unapologetic and - frankly, tantalizingly naked under his blue dragon towel - led me to some quick and rash thinking. I ran over it in my head for a second - would I? yes, I damn well would, because I had to hold Mabel and there seemed no other way to quickly get across the gravity of the situation - and reached out and gave him a smart slap on his thigh.

It was just hard enough to hurt, and it felt good. To me, for a second. Then he collapsed down into his towel and started to cry, and words like betrayal flicked into my mind. Mabel had stopped crying - it appeared she'd hit her leg off the table rather than her head on the floor - but now I had another fire to put out, and it was one of my own making. I put my arm around Monkey and apologised. I told him how I'd promised I would never hurt him, and now I had, because I was angry and he had seemed not to care, but I shouldn't have done it and I wished I hadn't.

Partly, I still thought maybe he'd learn something from the experience. Something about how if you push me too far, bad things happen. Something about taking things seriously. Something about doing what I say when I say it, instead of when he feels like it. I really hope he didn't learn that you can't trust anyone, not even those who love you the most, or that it's okay to hurt someone so long as you say sorry afterwards, or that the reasonable response to anger is to lash out physically. I hope he doesn't analyse it that much.

He came closer, still crying, and hugged me. We all three sat on the sofa, me and my crying child and my no-longer crying child and my consciousness that now I'd have to own up to the Internet about it.

A few minutes later he was jumping around and flagrantly disregarding me again, just like always. So much for lasting lessons, I thought. Hopefully the learning will be mostly on my part - that it didn't solve anything, it didn't teach anything good, and I don't want to do it again.

I was going to call this "Summer mugging, happened so fast" but that seems sort of tasteless

Why does my child have such a hot head? I mean, literally. I just kissed her hair as she sat on my lap for a bedtime story, and her (not feverish) head was radiating with heat. Poor girl: hers is the warmest room in the house, and the A/C just doesn't really reach all the way up there. Maybe her hair is actually pure cashmere, or perhaps it's just all the brain cells buzzing furiously in there that generate it all. She wakes up sweaty headed from naps and in the morning all summer long.

Which brings me to the fact that it was 94 F out there today, and it's not even June yet. It's amusing that in Ireland we consider summer to begin in May, when in reality of course it never begins at all, or might take place for a week in late April or a few glorious days in September, whereas in America the official start of summer isn't till June 21st. The fact that this date is also called "Midsummer's Day" doesn't seem to confuse anyone over here. Maybe it's only called that at home.

Anyway, we are technically still in Spring, but the weather is all gung-ho for getting as close to the magic 100 as it possibly can, with thunderstorms to boot. It was a while after moving here before I could get my head around the idea that "hot and sunny" could sometimes be a negative comment. In Ireland, there is no such thing as "too hot" in weather terms: now I am all too familiar with it, along with "frickin' hot", "bloody hot", and "too damn hot". Also, "disgustingly humid".

********

A friend's husband was the victim of a mugging last week. His iPhone was taken as he walked to work in broad daylight, and he was hit in the face for good measure. He's pretty shaken, and my friend wakes up in the middle of the night panicking about what might have happened.

They live close to us, in what might be called a slightly less "nice" part of town, which is still "nicer" than the area a little further down the road where we lived for four years. We never had any trouble there, or saw any (though my upstairs neighbour did say I was terribly naive and that there were drug deals going on on people's front stoops every day).

It does give one the heebie-jeebies, when someone blatantly disregards the social contract like that. I mean, we all exist here in some sort of harmony because we mostly agree to be nice to each other. If that's taken away, then it's just a free-for-all. Statistically, my friend's husband was just horribly unlucky; but emotionally, when something like that happens close to home, it makes you start thinking that every day you make through unscathed is amazingly lucky. It shouldn't have to be that way.

Anyway, Mabel heard about the incident and it's moved to the top of her list of things to perseverate about, along with why that boy fell off the slide, and the time Monkey had his face painted, and why Grandad hurt his leg (in 1971). The conversation goes something like this:

- Why did someone take his phone?
- Because they wanted it.
- They should have asked him for it.
- Well, he probably didn't want to give it to them.
- But he has to share it.
- Well, I don't think they were going to give it back.
- But why did they take his phone?
- They were just bad people, Mabel.
- I don't know why they took his phone. Maybe the bad guys should have just played checkers.

Yes, that's the solution to the world's problems. If only the bad guys would just work out their differences with a nice game of checkers, and we could all feel safe.

Overrun

One day last week I had four children in the house, and just me looking after them. This was a new situation for me. I think it showed why I do not have four children of my own, nor any intention thereof.

I suppose it was a milestone, of sorts, because it was the first time we've had a drop-off playdate, rather than a playdate that was set up because I wanted to get together with the mother for coffee/lunch/gossip and she had a handily aged child to bring along as an excuse. In this case, I don't really know the mum at all, but her son is in Monkey's class, she has a daughter a year older than Miss, and it turns out they're having somewhat of a family emergency and people were asked to pitch in and offer to take the kids off her hands every now and then. As we now have plenty of room and my children are equivalent in age and sex - not to mention the there-but-for-the-grace bit - I felt I should ante up.

They were fine, really. Perfectly well-behaved children. But four at once, galloping all over the house as Monkey was his over-exuberant showing-off-his-new-bedroom self (on a previous playdate he gave the tour to a shy, bemused friend and his mother, mentioning such thrilling features as "This is the glass I use to rinse when I wash my teeth") and then all charging outside equipped with vehicles (bike, scooter, tricycle, dolly stroller respectively) and expecting me to keep up with four different children going in four different directions - at least, I kept them to two and two and employed a lot of long-distance yelling to corral the half I wasn't with - and then being herded back into the back garden where the visitors were clearly bored but Monkey wasn't done showing all the amazing blades of grass and threads of ivy that were just waiting to be pulled up... it was a bit tiring. (There was also the nice moment where he leaned over the deck, where I had pulled up some impressively huge interlopers the day before and asked me to get him some weed. Hope the neighbours were listening to that one.)

Finally I got sense and shunned healthy fresh air for the gated-off family room, where I could at least be sure nobody was about to be run over or fall down the basement steps or barge into some heretofore-unseen poison ivy. The elder visitor tried to coax Monkey into putting on a rock concert with his (plastic) guitar and Sid-The-Science-Kid microphone, while the girls pootled around with their own self-appointed tasks, sorting out game pieces and planning a tea party. Peace (almost) reigned and I sighed a deep sigh, afraid to move lest I break the spell, wishing their mother would pull up outside right now and see how good I am at this.

She came a little later, when things were falling apart just a little bit again. But they waved goodbye enthusiastically and we're doing it all again next week. Maybe I need to plan some activities or something, but I'm not a day camp, you know.

I'm also pretty sure that while the little girl was in a car seat, the four-year-old didn't appear to have a booster seat or even to have his seatbelt on as they drove away. I can't say anything - they're having a family crisis at the moment, and maybe it's a cultural thing, or maybe she was just totally distracted and forgot to buckle him in for the first time ever... Maybe. I don't know whether we're just inveterate rule-followers, but whenever I see a family with kids not in carseats, I just can't understand how they can prioritise so differently. (I know, I've done this before. But those people were strangers. These are kids I know.)


********************


On a completely unrelated note, we have a new sofa. It's beige. It's still in packaging and various pieces, so I can't tell you yet how it looks in the green room. But I'm pretty happy with it. We went to one of those enormous furniture places and hated all the huge and ugly things there, and then merrily took our modest European sensibilites back to IKEA and bought the one we'd wanted all along. (At least, we were reasonably merry about our decision. The kids, somehow, didn't enjoy a day of sofa shopping as much as one might have liked. There was chocolate milk in IKEA, followed by inevitable sugar rush and craziness and screaming and prompt but unpopular removal from the vicinity.)

Carseats, other people's business, a rant

I was in line in Old Navy this morning (where, incidentally, I bought a pair of shorts without trying them on, due to the sleeping baby strapped to my back, and lo they actually fit and are nice, which makes the first pair of shorts I've bought in, what, eight years? Since my old pair - singular: Irish people don't need many pairs of shorts - are from Dorothy Perkins and go up to my belly button, but they're a good length so I keep them around... this is not the point I was trying to make...) as I was saying, there were two women in front of me with a baby in a carseat on top of their shopping trolley/cart. The baby was about three months old, I'm guessing, fairly big, but not very mobile. Certainly not wriggly like mine would have been even at that age, because I realised as soon as I looked at him that he wasn't strapped in and the angle the seat was at on top of the trolley made him look as if he would slip out at any moment. (You know, or you do if you've ever used one for this purpose, that when you rest a carseat on top of the kiddy-seat part of of a shopping trolley, it always puts it at some precipitous angle, so that your child is either staring straight up being blinded by the ceiling lights or about to slip out onto the floor. Your strapped-in child, that is. Only Babies R Us, I've found, have big enough spaces there to fit it at the right angle.)

Breathe. New paragraph. I'm getting a headache again, that's how much looking at this baby stressed me out. I was trying to figure out what sort of gravity was keeping him there, and when he'd start fidgeting and slither out, and if there were even any straps behind him at all - you can see that these people were having a long discussion about where their Old Navy card was and who had lost whose card and so on while I was thinking all these thoughts - and I would have really liked to say something but I didn't want to look like a superior sort of busybody who felt she was better than these people and somehow was accusing them of not loving him, especially when his grandma (I think) took him out and started kissing him just as I would have done. And I saw that there were straps in the seat but they were down too low for him, since he was a big baby and they hadn't been moved since the very first newborn slots, and I tried to make excuses for his mother, that maybe she was run off her feet with five other kids in the house and a full-time job and no husband and maybe she really didn't have a second to check the manual every time her baby grew another half inch and maybe standing here buying sweaters that she was saying she didn't really need was all the time she had and who was I to tell her to spend it looking out for her baby's safety. (I fully admit that Miss was badly secured in her carseat for at least a week after we got our new car, before I took it to a carseat safety event thingy where they told me not to use the Latch system after all, that she was much more secure if we went back to the old way of using the seatbelt, just while she's still rear-facing in the convertible seat: I merely mention this as a PSA in case it happens to you.)

But they I noticed that both women had inch-long nails with swirly designs painted on them. And I got a bit annoyed and thought, You could at least have maybe skipped the salon for one week and checked out the car seat manual to keep your baby safe. And they finally finished up and put him back in the carseat and proceeded NOT to strap him in, and THEN the mother said to him, crossly, "Sit back. Sit back. You gotta sit back," as if this scrap of a thing had any clue what that meant, and as if that would keep him safe. Does she tell him to sit back in the car as they hurtle down the beltway at 60mph? Or did she actually use the straps when she put him into the car?

I don't know. Steam was coming out of my ears as they left the shop and I bought my shorts with a very bad grace, wondering still if I should have said soemthing. Did I keep quiet becasue they were two large African American ladies who would have thought this skinny white girl with the baby whose head was clearly lolling unsupported on her back thought she was better than they were? Would it have been racist? Sizeist? Classist? Might it have helped the baby? I think I said nothing mostly because I'm non-confrontational, and also because I doubted it would do any good except to get their backs up. Maybe they got the seat second-hand and don't have the manual. Maybe the manual got lost, or burned up in a fire, or eaten by wild animals. Maybe they have no access to a computer and no time to look it up, and don't know anyone to ask, or maybe they just don't care. I know that it's not nearly as easy to get your carseat checked out at a police station or fire station as it's always made out to be - last time I called our local police station they said "We no longer offer that service," and when I asked where else I could go locally they had no idea.

So should I have said something? Would you?