In Praise Of Older Children

I often find myself wishing I could turn back the clock and relive all those early stages with my children. How much easier it would be with the benefit of hindsight, above all with the knowledge that time passes so quickly and, almost in the blink of an eye, your children are no longer cute little bundles but handsome young adults who tower above you. I have loved all the different stages of my children's lives; I was one of the really lucky ones for whom breastfeeding was a breeze (which is fortunate as I could never get the hang of sterilising bottles), I thrived on lack of sleep, was super organised and an ace at multi-tasking. I adored having lots of little people around me who all thought I was the most wonderful person in the universe. Life was hectic, I was always exhausted but I was happy. It was always so easy to solve my children's problems and so easy to make them happy; I literally could "kiss them better." How different it is as your children grow older. My mother always said to me, "the problems don't go away as your children grow, they just get bigger." How right she was! It is so difficult to watch your older children face obstacles and problems and to be unable to do more than offer reassurance that you will love them no matter what. And sometimes you have to stand well back and let your children do it their way even when you know from experience that it will all end in tears. Sometimes you have to adopt a policy of tough love and leave your child to deal with the problems they have caused, all the time desperately wanting to demolish all the obstacles in their path like a giant wrecking ball. Letting go is hard but necessary and definitely gets easier with practice.

I remember when I was a teenager telling my parents to have faith and I often remind myself of that when dealing with my own children. I always told my parents that they had done a good job bringing me up and had instilled good values in me so why were they so worried? Now, of course I understand perfectly - the worry starts the moment they enter the world and never abates, just the same as the total all encompassing love you feel for them no matter what.

So I look at my own children and yes, of course I worry for them but at the same time I can see that I've done a good job and that I've succeeded in raising five incredibly gorgeous children. They can be infuriating, untidy, lazy and inconsiderate but if I'm honest a hundred times less so than I was at the same age and I wasn't a difficult teenager. Most of the time they are a joy to be with. They make me laugh every single day, they support one another, they are interested in one another and always take the time to ask me about my day. They behave well at school, make polite conversation with my friends, and show an interest in visitors. Yes, they often need to be reminded to put their dirty dishes in the dishwasher or throw their rubbish in the bin and even after five years still need to have the recycling system explained to them but they do respond when being nagged (eventually) and will pull together if the house is a mess and "I absolutely must have it tidy right now or I will explode!" And sometimes they surprise me by emptying the dishwasher without being asked, by making me a cup of tea just when I need it most or by just giving me a hug when it's all getting too much and I feel on the verge of tears.

The teenage years are tricky ones but also so much fun. I love the discussions about world issues we can have over dinner, I love the fact that sometimes my children will tuck me in at night when I'm so tired I just need my bed, I love the way they put so much thought into birthday and Christmas gifts for me. I love how they introduce new music to me and check my downloads list to see if there's anything they can steal. I love how polite their friends are when they come round for meals and how kind they are to the eleven year old. I love how protective they are of me and how thoughtful they can be about keeping in touch by text if they're out late or are away from home. I love how they have the courage to tell me very calmly when I'm in the wrong and have taken the wrong approach with one of their brothers and I love how they are also kind enough to tell me when I've made the right decision even if they didn't agree with it at the time.

I would hate to be a teenager in today's world. There is so much pressure on them from such an early age to perform well, to look good, to be sporty, talented, cool. And all the time they seem to get such a bad press. Yet for the most part the teenagers I see on a daily basis are incredible; they are confident, caring, polite and enthusiastic young adults who, for the most part, do us all proud. I know that tomorrow I will have to nag my teenagers to make their beds but I also know they will hug me when they leave for school, hug me when they return from school and when they go to bed, and they will make me smile and laugh many times in between.

He's Not That Bad! (ex-files#2)

In my last ex-files post I berated my ex for his lack of support with our children. But this week I've been feeling a little like Bridget Jones when she's talking to her fellow inmates in the Thai prison about how badly treated she's been by her boyfriend only to hear just how awful things really could have been.

I've had a number of discussions with my ex over the last week or so which show that we are at least singing from the same hymn sheet in respect of the values we want to instil in our children even if we disagree over how best to achieve that. It's good to know that we can put up a united front rather than fall into one of those awful situations where children with divorced parents learn to play one off against the other. That doesn't mean the boys don't ever try to do this, just that their dad and I seem to have a sixth sense about when we're being played and can communicate enough to avoid falling into the trap. I think it probably also helps that having five children there is very little that any single child can ever get away with since there is always at least one sibling who will drop him in it, either accidentally or very, very deliberately.There have been many instances since our divorce when I have felt very isolated in dealing with the children but at least I have never really had to deal with their father blatantly sabotaging and overturning my parenting decisions. To be fair to him his lack of input into the boys' lives probably has more to do with his faith in my abilities rather than a lack of concern. There have been many instances when I have felt alone but at least he is still part of the boys' lives and hasn't given up on them like many parents in a similar position. And even though he couldn't for the life of him tell you which year of school they're in, the names of teachers or friends or current favourite foods and will often forget their birthdays and other key events, he does love them and will always be there for them in some shape or form.

Bringing up children alone is hard work; I have a multitude of roles to fulfil and the bottom line is if I don't do it then it won't get done. There are times when I feel like I have so many demands on my time I just don't know which way to turn and I can end up feeling like a dog chasing its tail, in perpetual motion but getting nowhere. Life with children involves constant change, just as you get on top of one phase you enter new uncharted territory. And life has a habit of throwing a few curve balls in along the way so the best laid plans tend to go awry. Some days feel like one long series of decisions and the only thing I desire is to have one decision to be taken out of my hands. As children become older the decisions become more complicated as they start to involve alcohol, sex, partying. It becomes difficult to make those decisions in isolation particularly if you, the decision-making parent, had a particularly strict or particularly relaxed teenhood. It's equally difficult to involve the absent parent who may have little contact with other children of the same age or with parents of teenagers . I am very glad that my children know that it is up to me to make those decisions and that there is no use going whining to their dad if they don't like it. This certainly isn't the case with many divorced parents I know or, for that matter, in many families where the parents are still together. Rather than backing each other up each parent seems to vie for position of cool parent and will suddenly change the rules to achieve this. My boys' dad often doesn't know the current rules and, although there have been a few occasions when he has made totally the wrong decision (a quick text or call would have helped!), he will normally be sensible enough to ask at least two of the boys ensuring of course that neither has had the chance to confer beforehand and that any decision would not benefit them in the slightest.

I am resigned to the fact that I am both good and bad 'cop' and to be honest I think it works in my favour. The boys know that if they please me in little ways then I will be more inclined to be flexible when it comes to their social lives. They know that if they help me with things around the house I'll be in a better position to transport them to meet friends. There's no-one else to do it so they need to work around their siblings and my schedule, understanding that they are one small cog in a very large wheel. Their dad totally escapes the job of taxi driver and the evening spent trying to stay awake until it's time to pick up, something that I do naturally resent from time to time (I'm only human after all) but at least he does frequently remind the boys that they are fortunate that I will provide this service and reminds them that they shouldn't presume to make plans before checking with me first. And although I get all the late nights to deal with, the nagging over homework, laundry, laundry and even more laundry, and constant demands for food, I also get all the good things and I get to be with my children virtually every
single day of the year.

So this week I'm feeling pretty good about my status as divorced mum, I feel like we're working OK together and that my ex is providing moral support albeit very much in the background. Will this last? Of course not!  He's due to collect them on Saturday for a weekend visit (a night of freedom - YAY!) so will probably say or do something so annoying that my hackles will rise again but that'll be another story.

Teenage Tantrums

Being a parent of teenagers I remember fondly the days of toddler tantrums although at the time they could be inconvenient and trying to say the least. I was lucky and never had to cope with the mortification of a full blown toddler tantrum in a public place; my children kept such behaviour for the privacy of our own home (or sometimes car). So it was relatively easy to deal with, either by distraction techniques or by exhorting them to stop by the time I counted to three - I never did get to three and never worked out what I would do when I did although there was a time when my toddler finished the counting for me and told his brothers and me that we could all go to bed. Instead we deposited him in his cot to scream it out while we beat a hasty escape before dissolving into gales of laughter.

Oh, for the days of being able to scoop up my cross child, place him in a safe place and give myself time to take a deep breath before having to deal with things. And oh, how quickly did my purple faced child transform into his usual happy smiling self. There were never any recriminations, every bedtime ended in kisses, cuddles and 'I love you's, every morning was a fresh start. Sulking would never last more than a few minutes with the child becoming bored, forgetting they were cross or being distracted by a sibling, a game, a silly song.

How different it is now! My teenagers are physically bigger and much stronger than me, I can't help but feel at a disadvantage when having to look upwards when telling them off (and I'm not short). They seem to have amazing memories when it comes to previous decisions, my misdemeanours, my promises even though they forget everything else. They will bring up the one occasion when I wrongly blamed them for something another family member did and ignore all the millions of times I have supported them. If I'm lucky they will actually tell me what they're cross about but most likely they'll just mooch around being uncommunicative and surly and generally making everybody else's life a misery. If I try to talk calmly that will be portrayed as a lack of concern, if I disagree with their argument that means I'm not listening to them, if I raise my voice even slightly to be heard above the general hubbub of family life then I'm shouting. Basically no matter what I do I'm in the wrong. With teenagers the sulking can go on for a long time and can often be accompanied by snide comments either directed at siblings or parents. The worst thing is that they reach the stage of knowing exactly which buttons to press to exact a feeling of guilt in their parents. This can be hard to shake off and tends to linger at the back of our minds with the result that we become convinced that we have made a total mess of parenting and that our child is beyond hope. It is only when we look at things in the cold light of day or have talked things through with friends that we can accept that it's not that bad and that our teenager's behaviour is perfectly normal.

Teenage tantrums are challenging in the extreme although the basic premise is still the same: tantrums are a way of testing the boundaries and teenagers are just the same as toddlers in that deep down they are happier if you can stand firm and stick to your guns. Just as toddlers are negotiating their path into being more independent prior to starting school teenagers too are preparing themselves for the adult world. It's a good thing that they are prepared to question and challenge rather than blindly accepting what they are told. And it's imperative that they learn how to deal with conflict and stress and to develop an appreciation of how their actions impact on other people.

I'm not sure that a teenage tantrum will ever make me laugh in the way that a toddler tantrum could but I can accept that this is a necessary and important phase. It's exhausting and emotional but really worthwhile when one day they turn round and thank you for being firm but fair. That really has happened with some of my boys, with others it's still a work in progress. Unfortunately I failed to get it in writing so they'll probably deny ever having expressed such sentiments.

Guilty Pleasure

OK, it's time to own up to my guilty pleasure, a very embarrassing one for  a caring, gentle, nurturing mother. I love watching films and television series about organised crime, things like The Godfather, The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire all of which I have watched many times over. Part of my interest in The Godfather stems from the historical aspect, I love the scenes portraying the family's arrival at Ellis Island and their early years in the US, but I am also fascinated by the way in which the characters switch so quickly from warm family men to sadistic killers. This is particularly in evidence in The Sopranos where the main character does everything he can to shield his children from his "job" and to steer them towards academic achievement and lawful futures. I am amazed at the almost Jekyll and Hyde personalities of these people, one minute acting as the loving, dutiful son but the next beating a waiter to death for serving the wrong food.

I abhor violence; I really am a gentle person who is patient and loving and kind. I have five sons who have been brought up not to resort to their fists in settling arguments and I can honestly say that I can count on one hand the number of times my children fought each other (they did have horrendous verbal arguments but that's another story). I don't like blood or dead bodies (I can't even remove a mouse from a trap) but when it comes to entertainment the more blood and gore the better. When my children were young I could only indulge my guilty pleasure once they were all safely tucked up in bed and fast asleep; I would watch with the volume turned down low not wanting even the faintest sounds of violence to penetrate the innocent ears of my children. My children gravitated towards gentle toys like cleaning sets, play kitchens, play shops, arts and crafts and spent hours immersed in an imaginative world where violence played no part. As they grew older they started to show an interest in the history of the World Wars and learned about the weaponry and battles but still were gentle and non combative.
We had many discussions about the futility of warfare and how violence did not solve problems. Little did any of them know my guilty pleasure.

But boys grow up and become men and become aware of the cruelty that exists in the world. At some point my eldest son wanted to watch The Godfather films, mainly as background to learning about 1920s America, but also because he'd heard what amazing films they were.  I was happy to oblige and dutifully sat to "supervise" his viewing. I think at some point during the films it must have become obvious that I had watched them many times before. The proverbial cat was definitely out of the bag! The bonus was that the two of us could dust off the boxed set of The Sopranos (hidden away during those years when the boys went to bed too late to allow me to watch alone) and we could start watching together from the beginning. Interestingly he too was fascinated in the psychology of the gangsters rather than watching purely from the point of view of the violence. He too is the gentlest of people, proof that watching violence doesn't make us condone it or become violent ourselves. One thing these films has taught us though is that you can't always tell what a person is like from the outside; many seemingly innocuous people are in reality monsters just as some people who appear gruff on the outside are really pussy cats.

My eldest child is away at university and my youngest still far to young to watch such things so my guilty pleasure is once more on the back burner, although I have been watching Game of Thrones, which has no shortage of bloody scenes, with two of the teenagers, so for the most part now I indulge my totally innocent pleasure of romcoms; one extreme to the other! But I am sure in time I will return to the gangster movies, perhaps I will become like my own Grandmother who loved watching films in which Charles Bronson played a vigilante. Actually, I seem to remember having to stay up to watch with her to make sure she got to bed afterwards. Perhaps that's where it all started.....

Anyone else out there who shares my guilty pleasure?

It wasn't me!

I think we must have sprites living in our house. Every time I go to the loo, there's either no paper left or just one solitary piece clinging onto the cardboard tube for dear life. Whenever I ask who used the last piece I'm always met with the words, "it wasn't me."It's the same with so many things: who drank the last of the milk, who wee'd all over the floor, who forgot to flush the loo,  who forgot to feed the cat, who ate all the chocolate (probably the worst crime of all), who left the taps running and flooded the house? And whenever I ask for help tidying away all the day's clutter, it seems that no-one got anything out. Evidently things just magically made their way out of bedrooms and downstairs. I'm so glad I have angelic children who never do anything wrong but for the life of me I don't know what to do about these sprites. Sometimes I think it would be a good idea to instal CCTV cameras in all the rooms and then I can catch them in the act but knowing my luck the cameras would probably stop working just at the very moment that the misdemeanour happened.

 My biggest hope is that someday I can actually go a whole 24 hours without having to nag my children to carry out the simplest tasks. How difficult is it really to hang up one coat, put away one pair of shoes, remember where you've left your PE kit, homework, money, brain? I think I have particular problems as I only have boys and they definitely seem to develop a certain tunnel vision at around age 8 or 9 when they seem totally incapable of finding anything and also can only do one thing at a time except for homework which magically they seem able to do while watching TV, playing on a laptop and texting at the same time- how does that work? Gone are the days when I could make a game out of tidying up and when dusting and vacuuming were exciting things to do-my boys' favourite toy was a cleaning set for heaven's sake! Now, it's very much my job; they don't seem to see the mess and seem convinced that they would be depriving me of one of the greatest pleasures in life should they empty the dishwasher or take out the bins.  Perhaps they too are convinced that we have sprites in the house who magically appear to do all these jobs; I knew it was a bad idea to read them "The Elves and the Shoemaker" so often when they were little.

Oh well, unless someone can come up with a brilliant way of bringing about a radical change in their attitude I guess I will just have to resign myself to the role of chief cook and bottle washer for the foreseeable future. I'll  have to wait patiently until they have their own homes and then take great pleasure in being one of those visitors who allow themselves to be waited on hand and foot. And how about, if I have grandchildren, buying them lots of arts and craft sets with glitter galore. They do say that revenge is a dish best served cold, can't wait!