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Category Archives: Parenting
My new hate – Topsy and Tim
The boy has a new love. Postman Pat has all but been resigned to the reject bin. About 100 quids worth of crappy merchandise lies broken and forgotten.
You may wrongly assume me to be jumping for joy. I am not.
You see his new love is Topsy and Tim.
I will leave aside the topical issue of gender stereotyping that the programme has stimulated much debate for (for i am nothing if not shallow) and talk about the thing that really riles me.
All the god damn enthusiasm.
It’s not the kids, we all know that kids are irritatingly enthusiastic at the best of times. It’s the parents. It’s the fact that every bouncy twin request is met with an ‘Oooooh weeee yes of course!’ from mummy and/or daddy.
I sit staring at the TV willing one of them to shout ‘JUST BLOODY SHUT UP FOR FIVE MINUTES AND LET ME READ THE PAPER IN PEACE.’
Not living in fear.
Imagine this scenario. You are at the beach and your kids are playing by the surf with friends, making sand castles and climbing on the groynes. A man comes up and asks them to pose for a quick shot, they happily oblige and wave at the camera.
This is all unbeknown to you until you stumble upon a tourism brochure with your kids plastered across the front. You didn’t give permission for the photo to be taken and you certainly didn’t give permission for it to be used as a form of marketing.
What do you do? Complain, go absolutely nuts, contact a solicitor, try and get it banned, sue them, have a stiff drink and blast them in every forum you can think of?
I’d certainly do some of those things if it happened to me.
But you see that scenario did happen to me, except i wasn’t the parent i was one of the kids. I’m in the blue swimming costume with the daisy and my older sister is in black on the left.
The perils of a chatty kid
F will pretty much talk to anyone wherever we go. I like this. it’s nice and for the most part it’s very well received. Builders, postmen or the local crazy cat lady all seem happy to be interrupted to discuss what they are doing any why; For the bus stop drunk, it’s a rare chance to converse with someone on the same level. Everyone’s a winner.
If unfriendliness is whats wrong with modern day society then i often think i could take a leaf out of his book myself, but then perhaps telling window cleaners you admire their big ladders might not be as well received from someone in their mid thirties; Or i guess, too well received, depending on how you look it.
Exchanges i am not quite so keen on are the ‘do you have a beard?’ interrogations aimed directly at women in small, inescapable places (train carriages are a particular hot spot). It would not be half as bad if they actually did and i could convince myself that his frankness was for want of the greater good. But In most cases they don’t even have a hint of peach fuzz, so what do you do? Arguing against it just draws the conversation out making things even more awkward. I’m sure he has caused at least half a dozen young women to run home and scrutinize every inch of their lower face in the mirror before stalking Groupon for electrolysis deals, just to make sure.
One’s World
Of late I have been spending a relatively high proportion of my time hiding in dark corners, no not drinking gin (oh how I wish), but furiously churning out Google search after Google search in response to the boy’s increasingly curious mind.
You see there is nothing like the application of a small child to your life to make you feel inexorably stupid. Apart from my specialist subject of Watership Down, my general knowledge could best be described as dire. I am useless at a pub quiz and may even struggle to remember the name of the Prime Minister under pressure (It’s a mind blank thing ok).
Over the the years i have also become far too ready to accept the status quo. If I were to be asked something like ‘how do planes fly?’ I could chuck in a few choice words (something about pressure, velocity and drag) but in essence I don’t really know. They just ‘do’ fly despite the fact it doesn’t exactly look like they should.
Do you have days like this?
A Gin Day
It’s a day that started badly
The kind of day that you can’t win.
It’s a day that has you asking
‘Can my cornflakes come with gin?’
You see I love my dear sweet boy,
But can’t abide his evil twin.
Till he returns from where he’s hiding,
I’ll be day-dreaming of gin.
A memo to all toddlers re. your diet
I’ve noticed an alarming trend at pre-school, some of my fellows seem to be eating what is presented to them on their plates without query. I have also witnessed some voluntary consumption of vegetables. It makes me sick.
Take heed people, follow these simple rules and exert some fricking authority!
- Set the tone – spend a week detoxing on jam toast.
- Refuse anything but Cheerios for breakfast. Have them without milk on Mondays, Thursdays and every other Friday. Hyperventilate if they get this wrong.
- Don’t try anything new EVER.
- Just because you liked something yesterday does not mean you have to like it again today. It is perfectly acceptable to change your mind and you do not have to explain yourself.
- Fruit as a pudding is bullsh*t.
- Be suspicious of anything that was recently alive. Beige, dead looking stuff is safer.
- Request a wide variety of food at the supermarket and then a, deny all knowledge of it upon your return home or b, allow it to be cooked first and then say you don’t like it.
- Spend some time revising brand names so that you can legitimately refuse cheaper derivatives.
- Any amount of cooking or food preparation time above 30 seconds is wholly unacceptable.
- Ask for updates of when things will be ready every 10 seconds, protest with your fists on the floor if things are taking too long. This may result in the meal being served half frozen but it doesn’t matter as you are not going to eat it anyway. Continue reading
The law of the Babybel
It’s easy sometimes, to despair, when you hand a Babybel to your child and they kick off because you took the skin off first and then refuse to eat it.
The tantrums and the strops stem from the most minor or ridiculous things and the reward chart you created with the aim of aiding co-operation just blows up in your face. One measly Milky Way for all that – just one?! How very dare you.
But you see you can’t have ALL the toys you ever want, It’s not ok to exist on a diet of Cheerios, we can’t just buy and live on a boat and the whole ‘DON’T WANT MY FEET ATTACHED TO MY LEGS’ gate? Well I’m sorry but that’s just basic human anatomy.
Google pray tell me – why is my child such a dick?
The tipping point
We have a super little park about 3 minutes stroll from our house and If the weather is dry then we can be found there most days. We live in a neighbourhood with no through roads making it a pretty safe walk; as such I place a degree of trust in F to ride his bike ahead as long as he always stops at the curbs.
I’m proud to say he’s good at this, and for the most part, very aware of road safety; but at the end of the day he’s still just 3 years old – energetic, excitable, distractable.
The other day we were racing home (him Lightning McQueen, me Francesco Bernoulli and the baby Jeff Corvette – characters from Disney Cars if you don’t posses a child within the target demographic) when he darted out into the road without thinking. No harm done, no traffic, but that’s not exactly the point is is?
I lurched forward and pulled him back onto the pavement; I explained why what he did was so dangerous and told him he needed to be very careful of cars or he might get ‘squished‘. On reflection this was perhaps a slightly more graphic choice of adjective that I should have used, but one that stopped him in his tracks.
‘And then would you go to the shop and buy a new me?’
Reader problems – How do I dress my baby appropriately in cold weather?
Question
‘It seems too cold out for a normal coat, but when people see my baby dressed in a snowsuit they tell me he will get too hot. I also get told to take off his hat in shops but i don’t like to disturb him if he is asleep. What should i do?’ (Anon, 31)
Answer
Firstly don’t feel bad, you can’t possibly be expected to make such a critical judgement for yourself. The best thing to do is to bring several different outfit changes with you when you leave the house and adjust layering based on public opinion.
It might seem rude and unnecessary for people to comment on your choice of attire but they are only acting in interest of your babies safety. Learn to appreciate genuine concern.
Never make excuses. Yes your baby may be asleep but you should always remove their outerwear the minute you cross the threshold of a shop. It doesn’t matter if you are only popping in for a tube of toothpaste, babies have been known to spontaneously combust from overheating within 5 minutes. FACT.
