What Happens When You Don't Listen to the Experts

I did one of those things today that parenting books and experts always tell you not to – I got over-involved in my daughter’s school project.

It’s a major project due for a major program she is involved in. It’s a big deal that she is on this program, but she treats it as part of her normal school, so she gives it her normal level of care and attention.

Our assessment of this ‘normal level’ varies wildly. While she would probably say she does enough and her grades are fine, I say she does a half-hearted effort at the last minute which is well below her ability.

In reality, we are both probably correct.

With her major assignment due tomorrow, I finally pinned her down and convinced her to read through her Powerpoint presentation for me.

Clearly she hadn’t proof read it, or if she had, she’d decided the small typos weren’t an issue. She didn’t capitalise her last name. Spaces inside the brackets instead of outside the bracket. Starting a sentence with a lower case letter.

I wanted her to fix them, which she did without complaint.

But then I realised there was a major point she had missed – maybe she had thought it too obvious to include, or maybe she hadn’t made the connection yet. Either way, my suggestion was met with an eye roll, and then she rolled off the chair to play with the puppy.  

On her last assignment she had received a comment about her bibliography being incomplete. I asked to see it. It was a few dot points that listed the URLs of two websites, then ‘google’ ‘google maps’ and ‘google translator’ making up the last three items.

Ummmmm

She’s ten, I get that. Apparently they haven’t actually taught the kids what a bibliography is (so she says) but if that’s the case, then I don’t think they should assess them. Either way, I’m pretty sure listing ‘Google’ as a reference is not considered the height of academic authenticity and I may have said that.

So she left. In a huff. With yelling.

More yelling (hers and mine).

She wanted comforting, so she grabbed the dog.

The dog didn’t want comforting so she bit my daughter.

Now my daughter was angry not only at me but at the dog, and kept chasing her and yelling at the dog, and I was chasing her and yelling at her. The other two kids were open-mouthed, watching us run around the couch like something out of a cartoon. It would be stupidly funny if not for the words we were shouting.

‘You’re trying to make it your assignment, Mum. It’s not mine anymore,’ she finally screamed.

I stopped. She was right. Totally 100% correct. I was trying to correct her ten year old mistakes and omissions and add the knowledge of a forty year old.

A forty year old who was making a rookie mistake: don’t do their work. Don’t even try ‘to help’.

Keep your fingers awaaaaaaaay from the keyboard, lady.

It pained me (it actually pained me!) to select ‘don’t save’ as I removed her USB from the laptop, but she needed to submit her own mistakes, not my corrections. [She refused to come back in the study at this point.]

There are two possible outcomes tomorrow. The first is that her teacher is happy. The second is that her teacher isn’t happy. If it is the first, then I will be happy for her, and know that next time I should definitely keep my fat trap shut. If it’s the second, then she may feel upset or embarrassed. She will learn that she might need to work harder next time. She will learn (hopefully) from the experience and she will be better for it.

The bigger lesson in all of this is that I need to trust her more.  I think as a parent I was right in offering advice and pointing out where she could improve. It’s her choice whether or not to take that on. 

I said at the beginning it’s a big deal she made it into this program - she’s bright and they saw something special in her. I need to sit back and let her make that something special shine. Even if it means sitting on my hands.

The Ugly Mother

‘Can you put this in the bin?’ I asked my seven year old daughter, holding out a wet wipe her sister had just used to eradicate the half bottle of tomato sauce covering her face.

She wrinkled her face up and motioned at her younger sister. ‘Why can’t she do it?’

I shrugged. My hands were full of shopping bags. ‘You have to put your rubbish in the bin, can’t you put this in too?’

Stop.

Who else has had a conversation like this? A seemingly reasonable request, in my eyes at least, that ends up being the catalyst for a string of events that ends up with public announcements over Radio Lollypop and being accused of shoplifting. Yes, that comes later.

I had taken the three girls to a local fete. They had been on a few rides each, harassed some bunnies in the petting zoo, chosen various knickknacks that I was now lugging around and they’d eaten their way through icecreams, donuts and hot dogs. It was a good day.

Asking my middle child to put some rubbish that didn’t belong to her in the bin though, clearly, was unacceptable. She refused. I got angry and turned my back. There’s nothing more fun than having a screaming match with a child in a public space, so I was channelling as many mindfulness meditations and as much bloody rainbow breathing that I could muster. I didn’t need to lose my bundle in front of the seniors a Capella choir who were all watching intently as they did their warm-ups nearby.

And then she was gone.

In a fete with hundreds, maybe thousands of people, my seven year disappeared. It’s her way of protest. ‘You don’t love me,’ she will cry. ‘I’m going to find a new family who will love me.’ Then she will grab her little purple bike and strap on her kitty helmet with the fuzzy pink Mohawk and ride around the block till she calms down enough to come home.

But we weren’t at home. She was swallowed up by the crowd and I could no longer see her. I wasn’t afraid. Not yet. Even when she’s angry she won’t go too far, as though a long piece of elastic keeps her attached to me. But I couldn’t see her curly head and fuzzy tutu. So I marched right up to the Radio Lollypop van, who were hosting a range of performers and made announcements throughout the fete.

‘I have lost my child,’ I told the lady. ‘Well,’ I admitted. ‘She’s run off.’

The lady looked at me kindly. ‘Middle child?’ she asked. How did she know?

Having someone make a lost child announcement with hundreds of eyes on you, judging you for losing something so precious, is never fun. But neither is being that small child, slinking back through the crowd after hearing her name called out over the speakers. It would have mortified her completely, being as private as she is. She curled into my arms.

The Lollypop Radio lady then took her aside for a chat. She had lost children before. She had been a lost child herself.  She knew how both of us were feeling, and with a kind word for me, and an activity pack for each of the girls, we headed towards the car in disgraced silence. But then…

‘I really want fairy floss,’ the eldest whined as we neared the edge of the fete.

‘The machine was broken hon, I’m sorry. Besides you just had a hot dog and icecream.’

‘But they had hotdog and icecream and something else as well. I want three things too. It’s not fair…’

Stop.

One day she will read this and her stomach will clench at how petulant she sounded. I know I was a grotty kid, but I didn’t realise this until I was an adult and it was too late. But at that point in time all she could see was the scales of justice tipping in favour of her younger sisters, and she wanted them corrected.

I had to stop on the way home to buy a birthday gift for a friend, so I said she could buy something at the bakery while I stopped at the florist. [At this point if you are shaking your head, admonishing me for being such a suck as a parent and letting them get away with too much crap – you’re absolutely right. I clearly suck at this.]

The middle child, still seething with resentment, refused to get out of the car. I flicked the lock and walked with my youngest into the shop while my eldest, clutching a handful of coins went into the bakery. [I already said I suck at this]. I was standing in the queue with a bunch of sunflowers in hand when a car alarm sounded.

My gut clenched. I knew exactly whose car that was. I could see the headlights flashing as the alarm wailed. I could also see the top of my eldest daughter’s head as she pulled on the door handle of the car, clearly not cluing into the fact that the doors were locked.

Flowers in hand I began running towards the door. I could see the register attendants reaching towards me as I ran out of the shop clutching a $17 bunch of flowers.  Hearing mutters behind me about shoplifting, I spun around, ran back inside, dropped the flowers onto the register and then ran back out to the carpark.

I shouted at my youngest to ‘wait there’ pointing at the fellow selling the Big Issue [I KNOW!] and I ran across the carpark in front of cars, while everyone stared at me and the ten year old trying to break into a car, and the seven year old inside wailing even louder than the car alarm.

Stop.

What a bloody nightmare.

Can I use a stronger word here? It was a fucking nightmare.

I turned off the alarm and unlocked the car.

I don’t think I even used words to tell my eldest daughter to get in the car. It was more of a guttural cry so deep and primal I think blood started dripping from my eyes and butterflies fell out of sky, dead, for miles around.

I stomped back across the carpark, muttered thanks to the Big Issue guy and grabbed my youngest’s hand. Back in the car, the silence was so thick it was almost smothering. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to cry or scream. I tried a bit of both. Nothing helped.

We were only minutes from home. I let the kids run into the house, to tell Dad how beastly their mum was (isn’t beastly a great word, we should use it more). I slunk in and went straight to my office, shutting the door like a sulky teenager, and proceeded to write.

One thing the Radio Lollypop lady had told me was that I needed to acknowledge my daughter’s anger, that I couldn’t shut it down, even if we were in the middle of a public space. She’s right. But what about my anger? What about my exasperation and embarrassment? What about my frustration? My fear?

I could tell by the faces of people around me that I clearly wasn’t allowed to express how I was feeling. I’ve seen other mums who lose their shit with their kids. While a large part of me understands and empathises, the rest of me recoils at the ugliness of a mum unable to control her anger at her kids.

And that’s how I’m feeling right now. Ugly.

But at least I have this space to share how I am feeling. I never got anything so right as the name for this blog. Relentless. Parenting is relentless.

And now I have had my whinge I will open the door and rejoin the world.

Thanks for listening.

Is This the Worst Birthday Present Ever?

It looked totally awesome in the box. A marvellous contraption for polishing rocks, teaching kids not only about natural processes and turning dull rough rocks into beautifully polished gems, but then they could also turn the gems into their very own handmade jewellery. What could be bad about that?

Ah, how about everything…

When the box was unpacked my ten year old daughter eyed it suspiciously, glancing over at the outrageous monster dolls with terrifyingly high shoes and eye-popping outfits that her younger sisters had received for their birthdays. Instead, as the eldest child, she was unwrapping a pile of grown-up gifts, books, craft – things that educated and probably made her smarter, but probably rated high on the disappointing-gift register.

But this was a rock polisher. Looking like something out of a Pokemon cartoon, it contained an electronic tumbler, an assorted of rough looking stones, and four bags of grit.

What fun, I thought, as she pulled everything out of the box and began glancing through the instruction book.

A few minutes later, she wandered past, having poured the rocks into the tumbler and added the first, most coarse level of polishing sand. How educational, I thought.

The she turned it on and the entire house was instantly filled with a grinding, rattling sound as rocks bounced off plastic and a cheap motor guzzled up electricity. My smile wavered a bit.

‘So, ah, this first stage will take four to six days,’ she said tossing the instruction booklet in front of me and picking up a book.

Wait, what?

Four to six DAYS?

My husband shot me a dirty look and went to hide upstairs.

‘Yeah,’ she said mildly, ‘the whole thing should only take about four weeks.’

Four WEEKS?

With a nervous twitch I picked up the instruction book and began to desperately search for proof she was wantonly mistaken.

My daughter noticed my panic and pointed out that if left up to nature, polishing rocks would normally takes years, so really, this was very quick. I wanted to point out we could probably BUY lovely polished gems from the local market for a couple of dollars and save ourselves a lot of headaches.

I did some calculations in my head. Four WEEKS. That was definitely long enough to initiate divorce proceedings, I was sure, especially given the angry stomping coming from upstairs, where the vibrations from the rock tumbler were coming through the ceilings.

Ignoring the nasty looks and thinly veiled comments from my husband over the next few days, we established a buffering system which included boxes, cork mats, piles of tea-towels and shutting doors all in a desperate attempt to block the relentless, agonising sound of that damn rock tumbler.

After a couple of days my husband spat the dummy and turned it off at the wall.

‘I have a headache,’ he moaned.

I’m the one who works from home, I thought. I have to listen to it during the day as well as the night.

My daughter was beside herself. ‘I have to reset the timer now, Dad. It goes back to the start of the four days.’

I shot my husband a dirty look. He rolled his eyes and left for work.

We established that we could pause the timer overnight, a compromise that meant that the house would be quiet(er) overnight, but it would now take EIGHT days to complete the first step.

Suddenly, about a week later as I was working at my computer at the kitchen table, the house suddenly went quiet. It took a moment for my brain to adjust to the silence. The tumbler had stopped. 

The first stage was over.

That afternoon, my daughter unscrewed the chamber and poured out the dirty, gritty water. A pile of rocks followed. She was excited about the changes she could already see in the stones. I just saw a pile of dirty rocks.

‘The next stage goes for seven days,’ she informed me happily as she poured the Stage Two powder into the chamber and set the timer. Immediately the house started vibrating again and I felt my head begin to pound. ‘This is so awesome, I can’t wait to see them at the end,’ and she skipped off to school.

We are currently at the end of Stage Two and still have two packets of increasingly fine grit to go. As per our agreement the tumbler is only ever on during the day after my husband leaves for work, so I am the only one who gets to enjoy the brain-numbing repetitiveness of the worst present ever, penance perhaps and well deserved, considering I bought the damn thing for her…

NOT worth it!

The Pain of Invisibility

I can’t even recall how the conversation started.

I think she had been complaining about her youngest sister, upset that the little one got to sleep with her Dad by simply crawling into bed with him. The truth being, she was sometimes afraid of being on her own, and was jealous of her youngest sister.

She couldn’t understand why her four year old sister had everything she needed while she, at nine and a half, still had to battle to get noticed across the noise.

I tried to explain:

“You are all different people and you will succeed in the world differently,” I said.

“Your youngest sister walks into a room and immediately fills it. She is bright and bubbly and is happy pushing herself forward into situations other people would feel scared about. It is as though she fills the room with little explosions of glitter and noise and song and people can’t help but notice. They draw energy from her but it can be wild and unsettling for some. Some people back away from her or are put off by her energy, but underneath it all, she has a heart of gold and has a caring soul. It’s just that it comes wrapped in a Mardi Gras. She will impact a lot of people, especially those who are drawn to her energy and vitality.”

She nodded, silent.

“Your middle sister, on the other hand is less obvious and people underestimate her. You have to scratch beneath the surface to see her true value – in other words, you need to take time and make effort. The way she will impact the world is neither immediate nor obvious, but for those who persist, she will be immensely powerful and influential.’

I stroked the hair off her forehead. It was late, well past both our bedtimes, but I could see she was needing to talk, to make sense of her day.

“You, on the other hand, carry your golden heart in your hands, offered in front on you. You will enter the room and be silent. You won’t draw attention to yourself, you will simply hold your heart up in front of you. Many people won’t notice you or see you. But there will be special people who feel you, who can sense you through the crowded room and be drawn to you. You will make a powerful connection to the world, especially through these special people who are like you, and notice you and seek you out.”

It was at this point that I noticed the tears slipping down her cheek. She simply nodded quickly, as if by agreeing with what I said, would make it come true.

In a room full of people, my eldest can be the last one noticed. Her middle sister is also quiet and often unseen – the difference being that my middle doesn’t mind and she prefers her own company.

When you want to be noticed, and aren’t, that is when it begins to hurt.

“I have no doubt that you will all be incredibly successful in your lives,” I continued. “It’s just that you have such different ways of interacting with the world. So don’t judge yourself by your sisters’ benchmarks and by what – and how – they achieve things.”

“You are totally unique and so your impact will be felt differently, but I have no doubt it will be incredible.”

With a little nod, she smiled. I kissed her on her forehead and said goodnight. She was invisible no longer.

The Sperm and the Egg

‘But how does the man’s sperm actually get inside the woman?’

I hesitated.

This was the most direct, specific question she had asked to date and it deserved an honest answer. 

Then again, she was only nine. Barely.

We had started with a general chat at bedtime. She wanted to know when to expect puberty. She wanted to know if you could choose a boy baby or a girl baby. She wanted to know if boys bled every month like girls. They were thoughtful questions that I answered easily and as simply as I could. 

Which meant in reality, that I used ten words when two would suffice but that’s just me.

I had recently been to a seminar at school about how to talk to kids about sex without screwing it up. Pardon the pun. Originally expecting around 30 people, over 120 parents had crammed into the library – we all knew what we had ahead of us. And we were all bloody terrified.

One of the take-home messages was ‘teachable moments’, taking advantage of naturally occurring situations where you can ease sex into conversation. The other was ‘always answer their questions’.

‘Well,’ I said, crouching beside her bed, delaying this as long as I could without being too obvious, ‘with his penis. The man puts his penis inside the lady’s vagina and the sperm comes out. And if there is an egg there, it can make a baby. It’s called sex, people have sex and it can make a baby’

She ducked her head under doona for a moment before peeking out at me.

‘Does it hurt? Doing, that thing?’

‘Sex?’ No,’ I said. ‘’It shouldn’t. It actually feels nice.’

She screwed up her face. ‘Too much information, Mum’, she said. ‘You could have just said “I’ll tell you when you’re older”, like you did last year.’

Inwardly I groaned. Outwardly I remained calm. ‘You are older, now. Old enough to know about it, definitely not old enough to do it.’

‘Ewww, don’t worry about that!’

I stood up, unsure if I did well or if I had made a monumental mistake. Her head was under the covers and she wriggled around.

‘Ewwww.’

Methinks I need to tell her tomorrow morning not to repeat this conversation at school. Or to her sisters.

The Cook and the Chef

There was a tear rolling down her cheek. Her big blue eyes were wet and her lip was trembling.

She was crying over egg white and I was finding it difficult not to walk out of the room in frustration.

She wasn’t crying because she had broken a bone, or had a fight with her friend or because people are dying in refugee camps across the globe. She was crying because I had been unable to find freeze-dried egg white at the local grocery store.

Frigging freeze dried egg white?

Her misery had started because she had found the recipe for peppermint creams in one of those Christmas craft books that I always buy in anticipation of the festive season, but forget about until sometime after Valentine’s Day.

The ingredients consisted of dried egg white, half a fresh eggwhite, peppermint essence and icing sugar.

What was I meant to do with the other half egg white, I wanted to know?

I had warned her that it was an unusual ingredient, but she is rarely one to let reality get in the way of a good idea. I trekked around the shop three times, looking at various sections before admitting defeat and asking one of the shop managers to look it up on the computer.

The strange look she gave me was probably deserved. ‘Yeah no. We don’t have that here,’ she said. ‘I don’t think anyone has that anymore,’ she said rather unnecessarily.

When I told the Bombshell I couldn’t find the dried eggwhite, she seemed to take it quite well. We’d try at a different shop, I told her. People make pavlova from it, I said. Someone will have it. And she had shrugged and walked away.

But as usual, bedtimes congeals the smallest disappointment into a puddle of distress. A puddle that needed to be dealt with so that I could make my escape to my own bed.

And so the tear was rolling down her face, and something she had clearly been dwelling on for 12 hours was bubbling up inside her.

Frigging egg white.

It took some gentle prodding to get to the real issue. Already a competent baker of muffins and cakes, brownies and biscuits, she wanted to try something new. She was getting stale (my pun, not hers). She needed to branch out. She wanted to make lollies and sweets.

Aware of what I was getting myself into, but too tired to care, I went to my stash of cookbooks and came back with an armful of books: ‘Pies and Puddings’, ‘Sweets and Toffees’, ‘Ice-creams and Sorbets’.

Her eyes widened and she greedily grabbed at the books.

‘Tomorrow,’ I said. ‘You can tell me what you want to make tomorrow.’

And with that I disappeared upstairs to shower.

Ten minutes later the door slid open. I shouldn’t have been surprised but I was still annoyed at having been caught unawares. And nude. ‘Always knock,’ I warned her. ‘Or one day you might walk in on something you don’t want to see.’

She looked at me, puzzled, but decided it wasn’t the time to ask what I meant. Instead she held a book out in front of her.

‘I found something,’ she said. ‘I want to make this and I am sure we will have the ingredients.’

‘Ok,’ I said, noticing she was holding the Ice-cream and Sorbet book. ‘Which yummy treat do you want to make?’

‘Pumpkin ice-cream!’ she said with glee, showing me the recipe.

Pumpkin, friggin ice-cream.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

When Your Eight Year Old Daughter Starts Thinking About Boys

‘I’m going to need talking time tonight, Mum’ my eldest daughter whispered to me.

Just shy of nine, the Bombshell is in that twilight zone of wanting to be a kid, but knowing that something big is just around the corner. Tall, bright and thoughtful, she is a lovely person to be around – except when she is practicing to be a teenager, which seems to be happening more and more often these days.

Talking time, which usually happens in bed before lights out, is our way of connecting with each other. A one-on-one chance to discuss things that might be troubling her or just a chin-wag without pesky sisters listening in.

‘You know how you said I couldn’t get a boyfriend until I was 18…’ she began.

I didn’t recall saying that exactly, but it seemed like good advice and it hardly seemed the time to debate the point.

‘Yes,’ I said in my best non-panicked voice. Where was this going?

‘Well, do you think it is ok if I have a friend who is a boy?’

She looked up at me with her big blue eyes, hopeful and pained at the same time.

I knew exactly who she was talking about. Earlier that night we had been for a class dinner at the local food court, and despite the enormous turnout of a dozen families and more than 45 adults and kids, I had seen them at one point, sitting by themselves at a long, otherwise empty table. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, or if they were talking at all.

It seemed like one of those moments in the movies, when the world continues to rush around you, while the main characters remain motionless, unaffected by what was happening around them.

My other two kids were part of the crowd, running like ferals through the food court. The youngest (now a Kindy kid) was bailing up the Year Five boys and threatening them with her water bottle, while my middle was flirting with someone’s popular older sister. Kids were everywhere. Parents were chatting over each other, moving around the tables, greeting each other warmly. Food was being passed around, drinks were being poured, everyone was in a state of flux and action.

Except those two. Heads together, a moment of solitude amongst a carnival of noise.

It didn’t last, but later that night it was obviously on her mind.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I would hope that you have friends that are boys as well as girls.’

‘But...’ and I could tell there was more, but she couldn’t articulate it.

‘Do you want to hold his hand?’ I asked, choosing the most innocent of activities I could think of. Kissing is still considered gross and shocking in our house.

She screwed up her face. ‘No!’ she said with disgust.

Ooops, too far, I thought.

‘Do you get excited when you see him?’ I said.

She rocked her head side to side thinking, then shrugged.

‘No… not excited’ she admitted.

I thought again.

‘Are you just glad when you see him, and glad to know he is at school?’

She smiled broadly – ‘that’s it,’ she said. ‘I’m just glad he is there.’

I couldn’t resist cupping her face in my hand. ‘I’m sure he feels the same way, and that’s how all good friends feel. You feel reassured to know they are nearby. Girls, boys, whatever. What you are describing is just special friendship, and that is totally ok to feel like that.’

She smiled, obviously reassured.

I was reassured too. Earlier that night I had heard parents of older kids discussing the fact that boys and girls who had been friends since pre-school, were worried about being teased for walking to school together. While the divide between the sexes was inevitable at some point, I hoped it was a long way off, and that my daughters could just look at people as friends and evaluate them on what type of person they were, as opposed to whether they were a boy or a girl. Naïve, perhaps, but still a worthy dream.

‘Thanks Mum,’ she said and reached for her book, her problem obviously sorted.

I wandered out, feeling the thrill of managing to solve a problem without stuffing it up, the warmth of affection towards my growing daughter, and the stab of panic of what might come next.