Everyone's a Critic

My son was running around the house, butt naked and carefree, having flung his dirty nappy into an (upsidedown) heap on the carpet, leaving the fulsome fug of fresh poo wafting on the breeze behind him. I was in full chase, roaring at him to get into the shower NOW! when my partner said quietly, "You're always shouting at them."

His comment literally stopped me in my tracks. Of COURSE I was always shouting at them. They don't bloody listen. But his comment made me feel bad. REALLY bad. I suddenly found myself wondering if I was a good parent - because good parents don't shout at their children.

Having your parenting choices criticised starts as soon as their head is clear of your vagina. There's always someone around who is happy to tell you how to do it better. With my daughter, it started when she was about seven weeks and in the full throes of colic. Colic is beastly. The baby screams and writhes for no apparent reason for hours and hours every evening until that sweet blessed day when they don't (again, for no apparent reason).

My daughter suffered terribly from colic. Nothing Plunket recommended worked. Massage, warm baths, tilted cot, rocking, diet changes, nothing. One evening she screamed for eight hours straight. It was awful. Eventually at around 2am I stripped off her and myself and covered up with a soft blanket, belly to belly, skin on skin. And we both slept deeply and sweetly for around five hours. It was great.

The next day I happened to mention to a Plunket person my brilliant technique for settling my daughter. There was a disapproving silence and she said, very stiffly, "You shouldn't do that." That same feeling of badness washed over me but this time it was tinged with a little indignation. Where was she all those weeks when my baby girl could be heard over three provinces, face resembling a squashed tomato, back arched in a pose that would make a Yogi proud?  I never called her again.

(I did have marvellous success with Bowen Therapy. If you can get hold of a practitioner, do it, do it, do it. If you're living in Whanganui there's a practitioner who does Bowen free for babies because her own babies suffered terribly from colic and she feels sorry for mums. How nice is that? Click here to check out this awesome woman of goodness).

Then there was the time a mad old lady at the park told me I shouldn't put my girl on a backless swing because she was too little and she would flip off backwards and kill herself. I, who had been pushing my daughter on a big girl's swing for some weeks, was at a loss. Who was this person, this complete stranger (who was wearing Crocs and a tea-cosy hat for f's sake), to tell me how to play with my own child?  As I stomped her interfering face into the mud, I didn't feel bad at all.

In conclusion, I can only surmise that if someone you know and love criticises your parenting, it cuts deep. If a so-called expert tells you you're doing it wrong, you'll feel slightly less bad - after all, they may know a better way. But if someone you wouldn't be able to pick in a line up of random assholes criticises your methods, it's your god-given right to tell them to bollock off.

Now, where did my children get to? Excuse me. I think I may have to raise my voice.

Whatever Happened To Privacy?

"I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what is the use of him is more than I can see..."
- Robert Louis Stevenson


Obviously that was a dude who had children.
The departure of all things private is yet another one of the multitude of things that never crossed my mind when I decided to have kids. As a PG, privacy is easy. Switch off the phone, swish the curtains, close the door and it's time to get butt naked and dance the hoochiecooch. You can't do that when you have toddlers. They want to know what you're doing, why you're doing it and how come your arse looks like a spotty, crinkly jelly.

There is no such thing as closing the bedroom door and dreaming the whole night through in blissful aloneness. There is however, leaving the door ajar and dozing with one eye open, lurching into the zombie waltz at three hour intervals to the tune of, 'I'm thirsty", "I'm wet", and the optimistically plaintive, "Blanky!!!! Where are you?"

The Lack of Privacy Act 2010 reaches new heights of annoyance when there is a small child beating its fists against the bathroom door screaming, "Mummy, Mummy, Mummy!!!" Don't bother rushing your shower, makeup or dump. When you hastily (half) finish and throw open the door in a panic expecting to see your child writhing in a pillar of flame or similar, it will merely smile at you happily and say, "Dere you are!"

Privacy is a thing of the past and starts very early on - when your child is a mere bean-like foetus. Suddenly your body is not your own. You have to share it. Not just with your growing sprog, but also with that swirling madness of new hormones, raging cravings for ridiculous things and baby brain fog. 

And then there's the people! People who like to shove an ultrasound wand up your faff (not as fun as it sounds) putting the results on TV and then printing it out so all your friends and family can see what your insides look like. Horrible, gropey strangers at the supermarket who think it's Okay to fondle your fat belly without asking. The oh-so-jolly party atmosphere of the labour ward with its horde of gate-crashers (but by then of course you don't care if News of the World is taking pictures and posting them online as long as they get it out now!)

Privacy and children are two words that do not go together. So my advice is to dance the hoochiecooch as often as you can while you can - and do it like no one's watching.

Who Gives a Crap?

We are going through toilet training at the moment. And when I say we, I mean me. My son is already brilliant at going to the toilet - in his nappies. He has zero interest in exchanging bulky, uncomfortable, plastic wadding for the sleek, streamlined comfort of cotton. He does not care that he will be able to run faster, smell better, and be able to strut around the playground knowing he is worthy of the title 'Big Boy' (which is something I imagine all men would be thrilled to be called). And I have no idea how to make him care. Obviously, my toilet training techniques are... crap.

My enthusiastic "Come on, bubba, let's go to the bathroom!" is met with the cheerfully firm, "No". "I'll give you chocolate!" is countered with the barefaced lie, "Don't like chock-wit". Even "Come on and we can tell Daddy how neat you are" is answered with the improbable yet admirable, "Sorry Mummy, I'm working right now."

Some people have star charts stuck up on the fridge. Wees earn gold stars, poos earn... well... brown stars, I suppose. My son could care less about stars. Sticky pictures just do not compare to the sticky pleasure of being able to defecate wherever and whenever he likes.

And I don't want to push it for fear of instilling some deep seated paranoia of toilet seats or similar. Even now I have a recurring nightmare that I have to go to the loo but the cubicle has no doors and everyone walking past can see me. The sense of shame is terrifying. I like my toilets fully enclosed and locked. An underground vault with combination lock would be a utopian dream come true.

He's due to start kindy soon. When I shamefacedly told the kindy teacher that he wasn't toilet trained yet, she rolled her eyes and said with the complicit smugness of the sisterhood, "That's boys for you." All the experts (ie, friends with children a little older than mine) assure me that he'll do it when he's good and ready and that boys do take a little longer than normal people. This is something I do not understand - given how much pleasure men seem to get from spending as much time on the toilet as possible later in life. Although now I think about it, the extended visits are probably making up for the excessive amount of time they spent in nappies as toddlers. Hmmm.

When we did our kindy visit, a little bell rang for lunch and all the kids rushed off to the bathroom to wash their hands. Naturally I, with my innate sense of herd mentality followed them. And what do you think I saw? A row of toilet cubicles with no doors. As I blindly hyperventilated my way out of the room, I thought, sod it. Toilet training can go stuff itself.

I'll do it when I'm good and ready.

Two Terrible Twos

When my son became a Terrible Two, it was a slow and gradual thing, like growing fingernails, hardly noticeable at all until he turned 3 and by then he was already oozing his way out of it again.

Not so with my little girl. She hit the TT's with not so much as a hiss and a roar as a scream with fists pounding against the floor. Overnight my sweet, placid, marshmallow-soft baby girl transformed into an expletive-spitting demon. Asking if she wanted toast for breakfast - a request that usually would have been answered with a melodic sing-song "Alwite Mummy," - was instead met with a furrowed brow, an out-thrust lower lip and a petulant (yet ear-shattering) "Nnnnnnnnnnnnno!" followed up with a defiant "Go 'way!" and a crash as the toast hit the floor in a pile of both broken crockery and rose-tinted lenses.

I was not so much outraged as confused. Had I accidentally served her a steaming dog turd? No, a quick check confirmed that yes, it was indeed a buttery piece of additive-free bread, toasted to perfection and slathered with her favourite homemade jam. Then what the - ?

It was while I was hunched over, inspecting bread, jam, broken plate and shattered dreams that she kicked me in the face. Granted, her foot is soft and pudgy and has hardly even been used, but it still managed to deliver a surprising amount of force.
"Go 'way!" she shouted. Quickly I backed out of the room as she began singing 'One, Two, Buckle My Shoe', only it sounded rather too much like the Freddie Krueger version for my liking. And it may have been a trick of the light but I swear her head spun around - just a little.

"She's a changeling!" I whispered in horror to the Universe At Large. "And she's only two!" And then in a blaze of revelatory light it hit me. Two. Of course! The Terrible Two's! Which means that - heave sigh of relief - it's just a phase. Just a phase!

Just a Phase is a lovely expression. It implies that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, that one day the phase will eventually be phased out. The Terrible Two's, so the Parenting Blogs tell me, are a fun-filled time of temper tantrums, mood swings and overuse of the word "No!" (hmmm, so, a lot like PMT then). It's a time when children want to be more independent but can't let go of Mummy's leg. They want to do more physically but they can't because their legs and arms don't work properly. And they know what they want - but they can't tell you because they only speak gibberish.

The Terrible Two's must be a hellish time for kids. More hellish for them than it is for parents because we at least understand what's going on in their psychotic little brains and they are just in it, living it, letting the craziness wash over them (perhaps rather like dementia or acid).

Anyway, I resolved then and there to be super kind to my two year old and try and do whatever I can to help her through this trying time. She can't help being a nut-bar. It's just a phase after all and should be over in.... I counted off on my fingers and suddenly realised a hideous truth.

She's not actually two for another three months!!!!