She who would valiant be

Why is being a parent of a teenager such a tough call these days?

We want the instruction manual. Remember those early days with a baby, when you thought "why doesn't it come with an instruction manual?". It's like that all over again. I don't know if it's our education system, or our nanny state, or just human nature, but it always feels like there's a right way of doing something, and our job is to find it. We know this isn't true, but somehow it feels like it is.

Where to look for the ultimate advice?

• A book - but which one to choose? 
• A bunch of friends - but they all have slightly differing opinions, and there's that dangerous thing of asking a friend, and then deciding to ignore their advice. 
• The science - which can help (folic acid during pregnancy, that was an easy one, once they'd worked out that the advice should be just to take a tablet and not to try to eat a small field of broccoli or spinach every day - which actually was the advice when it first came out and I should know because I was pregnant during that tiny window before the advice changed to a more manageable course of action), but can also be seriously anxiety-inducing (MMR jabs, anyone?), and disempowering (Vitamin K jabs for newborns - have they decided whether that is risk-free yet, or are parents still having to decide between the rare bruising disease and the unproven link with some childhood cancers?)
• Parents - can be complicated.
• Blogs - always good, but they don't know your children. Only you really know your children.
• Intuition - usually good, but I think we're a generation of parents who have totally lost faith in our own intuion. 
• The Waltons. Yes. There's always a good parenting tip or two on The Waltons, and my friend has the complete box set readily available for borrowing. I am well set up.

Seriously, though. It is hard to be a parent of a teenager, and I'll tell you why. Because it plays on our own insecurities and fears. I'm guessing that few of us reached mature adult life (and I'm talking mid-twenties here) without some bumps and scrapes. Even though we may know that those were all part of a process, and though we may know that people get through and emerge ok, we are also hard-wired to protect our off-spring, and somehow we want them to have a smooth ride. Because if we had the instruction manual, and followed the instructions, then they would. Or so says the false voice in our heads.

I have found the whole Duke of Edinburgh thing very hard to navigate through....

At this point, I wrote a couple of paragraphs, explaining the exact circumstances. Then I realised that all I was doing was justifying myself to you. So I went back and deleted them. That's the very point I'm trying to make. I feel so out of my depth when I think about how to go about parenting this son of mine, that I just slip into self-justification mode. Because I don't want to fail. I want that instruction book, I want to follow it, and then no-one will be able to say I haven't done my best. But meanwhile, instead, I have a head full of questions that go round and round, and the gist of them is this: Have I prepared him enough? Have I done too much for him? How have I done, tightrope-walking that line between being over-protective and under-protective? 

It brings back all those feelings that we went through (I say "we" because I don't think it's just me... I've read enough blogs about this...) when we were trying to do well with our babies and toddlers.  That time in the park when your toddler fell over, and you picked him up, and your friend said "he needs to learn to get up on his own... otherwise he'll be too dependent on you". Or the GP who told you you were over-reacting when you thought your child was ill. Or that new mum group where it turned out that everyone else was doing x and you were doing y, and you'd been quite happy doing y until that moment, and then you went home and tried to do x instead, and it didn't work, and you didn't draw the conclusion that y was fine after all, but you felt like somehow you were getting it all wrong, and that it was your fault, and that you were letting your baby down.

16-yo is in London today (and this is one of the complications, that he arrives back at 10.00pm tonight and then goes off on the Duke of Ed trip tomorrow at 8.00am). He's been there for 3 nights, meeting up with a group from his old high school in America, who are on a trip to Europe. Before he went, I was so full of self-congratulation at how hands-off I am as a parent, and how he will find his own way and learn from his mistakes, and just what could go wrong, honestly? While he was away, all that fell by the wayside, and I was checking my phone for texts all the time, cursing the bad reception that meant a call from him dropped just as I answered it, sneakily texting his aunt who met him for lunch, to see how he was doing... I so don't want to be an anxious mother, and I so am.

I think he'll do fine, though. I put him on the train, having bought him a cup of tea and helped him find his carriage and seat. (You forget that a seat reservation isn't an obvious thing, to those who've never encountered one before...). As I walked away down the platform, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was him. "Mum, you're holding my tickets!" And I was. In under a minute, he'd realised the lack of tickets, tried to phone me, tried to text me, and then decided to run after me. Good call. Top marks for competence. I think he'll do fine. 

And the title? Well, you do have to be valiant, to be a parent of a teenager. 

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He who would valiant be

I still feel I'm new to this "parenting of teenagers" lark, but oldest is 16, so I suppose I have a certain amount of experience. Can I pass on to those of you who may be embarking on the journey one small word of warning?  Forewarned is forearmed, and all that. There is something you need to know about, a beast that rears its ugly  head from time to time during the teenage years. Learn to recognise the monster, and when you see him, turn tail, run, flee, as if your sanity depended on it (it may, in reality, do so). Those who stand and fight are courageous, but usually live to regret it.

The beast seems innocent enough. It starts off as a "letter home". The warning sign is this (take it from a seasoned recipient of the "letter home"): the letter home includes words such as personal development, initiative-taking, leadership-training, challenging, team-building or responsibility. These are the tell-tale indicators of the poison within.

Yes, dear Bloggy Friends, it's the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme Expedition. Enough of a monster in its own right, with its kit list, and its early morning start, and its production of dirty laundry mounds the size of mythical giants. But, worst of all, let it be known among you brave warriors of the teenage parenting cause, this challenge, this adventure, this quest, is not your child's but your own.

Thanks, Prince Phillip. Thanks very much. You thought you were giving young people the chance to flex their muscles, to develop their personalities, to grow in character. But, bless your recuperating cotton socks, you couldn't have foreseen how the way young people are treated would change, and that in fact you were creating a challenge of gargantuan dimensions for parents.

It starts with the letter home, and the request for a cheque. (Do some kids have to earn the money to pay for these trips themselves, or do all we parents just cough up?)

Then there's the kit list. This is the parent's first challenge. How do you get the kit list? Some parents, sneaky devils, ask the school, or download it from the school website, or even look it out from the pile of paper that arrived home at the end of the previous term. But there are noble saints, valiant champions of the cause of "teaching your young person leadership skills", who stand firm, and request the list, repeatedly, from their off-spring. Was it Don Quixote who tilted at windmills? I know how he felt. An honourably-intentioned, but fruitless, activity.

Then the second challenge. Buying the items on the kit list. I'm told there are those who go to shops and do so. Others, we of strong mind and valour, talk to our child of "taking responsibility", and set mind-taxing challenges such as "when can we find a time for you to come shopping with me?" We have close to our heart, the development of our child's problem-solving skills.

These foes must be vanquished, before the young adventurer can move onto the most difficult obstacle he has yet encountered. Packing. You must metaphorically hold his hand, as he advances forth into the bedroom, to extract the rucksack from the deep monster's lair known as "the wardrobe". Then you must stand sentinel, warding off maleficient younger siblings, as the young knight lays his belongings out on the floor, and grapples with the task of fitting them all into the rucksack. He who displays moral stature will succeed. Others will be distracted from the task by their trusty iPods, and expect the packing fairies (who they still believe in) to do the deed for them.

I could go on, but you get my drift. This is the second such trip my son has been on. Apparently they are "designed to give opportunities to develop leadership skills and show responsibility", but it's all a huge myth. The teachers and parents run around getting them ready. They jump into lochs, or go abseiiling, or climb over an obstacle course, but it doesn't teach them anything to do with responsibility. It teaches them abseiling and obstacle courses. Every time I try and inject a bit of "taking responsibility" into it, I just end up with a ridiculous dilemma, such as today's which is "do I let my son go off hiking in the Scottish Highlands without walking boots that fit, and learn through blisters and pain that it might have been better to have made preparations, or do I figure out a way of buying him some boots even though he now doesn't have time to get to a shop, and make it all ok for him on this occasion, thus implying that if you don't make preparations, it doesn't matter because someone will bail you out?" Neither seems a very good option.

I tell you, if I was King for a day, I could design an award scheme which would teach young people plenty of useful skills. It would involve

• several hours of picking up dirty laundry from bedroom floors, followed by several hours of putting clean laundry in drawers
• workshops on how to unload a dishwasher (with those who show exceptional ability given further training in how to unload a dishwasher without even being asked)
• lock-in sessions where they are kept in an enclosed space with younger siblings and not allowed out until they have worked out how to share the space without aggravating those siblings, physically, mentally or emotionally
• trips to the corner shop with a  pound coin to buy a pint of milk, including compulsory use of the pedestrian crossing, and with optional instruction in how to complete the task cheerfully and without implying to others that you are being asked to trek across half the city
• and finally - but mind you, this would only be for the gold award - how to get ready for a school trip without stressing out your mother.

And to any of my offspring who might be reading this at some point in the future, let me just say, wait till you have kids of your own and they start going on these kinds of trips, and you'll see what I mean.

Finding my new normal - Part III

One of the things that you become aware of when you become a parent, is how very much your idea of "normal" stems from your childhood.

We think we're going to fathom out how to be parents on an intellectual plane (plane as in level, not as in aeroplane, though I do quite like the idea of working things out while travelling on an intellectual aeroplane). Then we have a baby, and we are taken by surprise by how very much our gut feelings take over, and how much those gut feelings are the instincts that we inherited from our own mothers, fathers and forebears (no, not four bears, forebears). That phrase you hear yourself shouting after your disobedient toddler... where did that come from? You sounded just like your mum! Your Christmas traditions are, well, just the way Christmas IS. Other families' Christmas traditions are other families' Christmas traditions. They're not proper Christmas, somehow. Your own rules for playing childhood games are THE rules (like if you don't say "thank you" when someone hands you a card in 'Happy Families', you have to give the card back). You might agree to play with other rules, but deep down, you know they're not the real rules. (I know of someone... not a million miles away from here... who turned up at university thinking that the person who was losing at the end of each round of croquet, had an extra go, though she had at least worked out that it wasn't necessarily the youngest who got to choose their colour of ball first.)

My parents both love classical music. When I was a child, I thought that children listened to Radio 1, and adults listened to Radio 3. I thought that was the way the world was. I assumed that as you grew up, you developed a taste for classical music, just as you developed a taste for alcohol and olives, and learned to drive a car. I remember going to a friend's house, and hearing the radio, and it was voices. Not music. Voices! People talking. Imagine that. Very odd. I was puzzled. I asked my friend what her mother was listening to, and she said she didn't really know. I probed. What are the people talking about? She didn't know. I went home perplexed. Didn't all grown-ups listen to classical music on the radio? Why would a bone fide grown up be listening to voices on the radio?

I think that the world has loosened up a little. I don't think this feeling of normalcy will be quite the same phenomenon in our children's lives as it was in ours. There isn't the same sense of there being one proper way of doing things. Homes are much more varied. Children mix much more with children of other ethnicities, religions, backgrounds. But even so. It will still be there.

I want my children to question the way Husband and I do things, the beliefs we hold, the attitudes from which we operate. It's part of maturing, it's inevitable, and it's healthy. But I also know that at the ground level of their psyches, certainly for some while yet, they think that our family is the norm, the way things are, the way things rightly are. It's an awesome responsibility. But as I've decided (see my previous post) that there is no normal, then it's probably all ok.
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Ramblings about teens

Everyone warns you about having teenagers, but I have to say, so far, I'm enjoying it.

Good. Got that out of the way. A disclaimer, in case you're reading this at some point in the future, 15-yo. Hello to you, now you've got children of your own and you're thinking it might be fun to see what your old mum whittered on about when she was writing that blog. *waves*

Seriously. The teenage years bring a new dimension to family life, for sure. There is loss (you hardly see them, and this loss is felt by younger siblings as well as parents), but there is gain. You can watch unsuitable comedy together, and discover a shared love of naughty humour. You can expect more help about the house. You see a person emerging in his own right. There are some rather nice hoodies to borrow if you get bored of your own clothes. You have a live-at-home babysitter for a Saturday night. They self-function, so you no longer have to remind them where to be at what time, what equipment to take, what to wear. There's no more chivvying in the morning, have they remembered this? have they remembered that? have they finished their homework? So if you hate that morning chivvying, take heart; it won't go on forever. They even tell you in advance if they need a particular piece of kit to be washed and ready by a particular date.

Although come to think of it, laundry... ah, laundry... that's actually my big sticking point. I know you people with babies and toddlers think you do a lot of laundry, and I don't want to do that irritating "oh, just you wait till they're teenagers" thing that used to annoy me so much when I had wee ones, but... at least the items are small and cute. A whole drumful of sleepsuits, vests with poppers, tiny socks... Now, it's a pair of jeans, a hoodie, a couple of t-shirts, some track suit bottoms, and the drum is already overloaded. (I miss that American way of putting "already" at the end of the sentence. The drum is overloaded already. There that's better.)

Then there's the other issue, which is the placing of the laundry. Dirty socks, pants and other smaller items, are strewn around the bedroom floor - well it's my bedroom so what does it matter? Large clean items, worn once, are put in the laundry basket - no it's not because I was being lazy and didn't want to put them away, it's because I thought they were dirty, see there's a mark there, um, there, um, somewhere, um, I'm sure I saw one.

But I wouldn't be the Iota you know and love if there weren't some laundry woes involved.

Brag alert: I came across this email the other day, when I was looking for something unrelated, and I forwarded it to 15-yo. It was written soon after he'd started High School, and joined the soccer team. His coach said "I want to let you know that 14-yo has been one of the best young men I have ever had the privilege to coach.  He is very polite and has quite a sense of humor.  He has also been a great impact on the team. With his quiet sneaky style of play he surprises people including us coaches on a ever more frequent basis.  I dare say he is probably my favorite all around player/student/personality on our team." Boy, I miss America. Not only that "already" at the end of a sentence thing, but also, people say gushingly nice things about your children on a regular basis. I add that in to tone down the bragginess of quoting this to you. You have to remember that in Scotland, the equivalent sentiment would be expressed to me with a sniff, and a "yeah, he's doing ok". I also have to add that I had been reluctant to let 14-yo (as he was) join the soccer team, for various reasons which were almost entirely those of cultural misunderstanding and disconnect (*waves and says sorry about that, Son, but it worked out ok in the end, didn't it?*), so I'm thinking that maybe the coach was trying to butter me up a little.

Anyway, I feel I've now prepared the ground well enough, in case he's reading, to be able to share one of those "hopeless teens" stories about my son.

The other evening, I was in the study on the computer. The kids were finishing dinner on their own. 15-yo came in and asked if they could have custard for dessert. Ambrosia custard is one of his favourite things in the whole world. (He has a point.) I said yes. A couple of minutes later, he came back and asked where the tin-opener was. I replied that I didn't know, probably dirty in the dishwasher. He responded, "How do I open the tin, then?" It was a moment for a personal problem-solving challenge, I felt, so I replied "I am confident that if you really want custard, and if the other two also want custard and start nagging you, then you will work out a way." And then I very deliberately didn't go and check up on the situation.

And the end of the story, dear Bloggy Readers, is that later on, I found the tin of custard unopened... and in the fridge.
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A parent's moral dilemma: the reveal

Great answers, everyone. I really enjoyed hearing from you all.

In reality, what happened was this. I asked Husband, who, after all, does teach RME (Religious and Moral Education) and has whole shelves of books on ethics, so you would think he would have an opinion. Failing that, he could quote Socrates or Bonhoeffer and I could get cross and accuse him of being irrelevant. Either would be possible. In the event, he asked

"What did you actually tell 11-yo you'd do?"

I thought about it, and I replied

"I told him that I would ask the neighbours and the postman next time I saw them, because they were the obvious people who could have dropped it.* So yes, I had said I would ask the postman. "

This made it much simpler. [At this point in the story, you may feel unfairly treated, like when a murder mystery author introduces a new fact about a character or situation which you couldn't possibly have worked out for yourself, and which is key to the denouement. In my defence, may I point out that when I was pondering the rights and wrongs of the case, I was in your situation too. I didn't see this piece of information as relevant. It took Husband "just call me Hercule" to dig it up, shine a light on it, and reveal it as important.]

So I told 11-yo, that I'd asked the postman, that the money belonged to him, that I'd repaid him, and that 11-yo needed to give me the cash. I was fully prepared to be met with disbelief, annoyance, accusations of being unfair, and 11 year old wrath, and I was ready to argue my case. But 11-yo said

"Oh, ok then. Well that's his good luck, isn't it?"

and coughed up the dosh, without a murmur of hesitation.

Being a parent is full of surprises, isn't it?

But one moral dilemma leads to another. As I was telling Husband the end of the story, I said I was glad for the postman, who's such a very nice and helpful guy. And then I paused to reflect, would the issue have been the same if the postman had been a miserable, grumpy geezer? Would I have done the same thing? Should I have done? At this point, Husband muttered something about being late for work, and hastened off, shaping his moustache between thumb and forefinger, tapping his cane on the ground, and practising rrolling his Frrench rr's.


*in the front garden, where it was found, to those of you still wondering why the postman would be snooping round our back garden.
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The shape of childhood

Talking about jam sandwiches, as we were, this seems a good moment to try out one of my theories on you. I have decided that childhood - from a parent's point of view - is like a sandwich. It goes like this.

The years from 0 to 5 are full of change. You can hardly keep up. As soon as you've got used to one stage, you're through it and into the next. Each one greets you not in some considered way, but in a bewildering moment that you feel unprepared to deal with. Your child grows, changes, evolves all the time, and it's easy to feel you're hurtling down a bobsled run without a clue of what's round the next corner.

Then they go to school, and it all calms down a bit, after the initial learning curve (less of a learning curve than a climbing wall where you are roped together with other parent climbers, all of you puzzling how to use the crampons). Between the ages of 5 and 13 or 14, the whole process slows down. The child still grows, still learns about the world, still explores themselves. They have their highs and lows, their joys and woes, and you are part of that. But it feels like it's more of the same. More birthday parties, just with the participants getting bigger year by year. More homework and projects, just with the subject matter getting harder and the level more challenging. More fun and activities, just with the children's energy levels and abilities increasing, whilst your own ones are decreasing. Time can go by frighteningly fast, but the milestones become familiar, and it's a question of "gosh, another school term over already", rather than "what the heck is happening here?". The bobsled run has levelled out into a road that you can see ahead, winding across a gently-sloping plateau.

You've been lulled into a false sense of security. Watch out. When your oldest starts secondary education, you're hurtling down the bobsled run again, banging into the sides, rolling round the corners at alarming angles. Secondary school is a new, bigger climbing wall, without any crampons at all. The parent ropes are much harder to tie, because you're not meeting daily in the classroom or at the gate. The kids are growing, changing, evolving with the speed that they did when toddlers. They suddenly develop new skills and interests, and want to know where the boundaries are. Those boundaries aren't just a gentle expansion of existing ones, as you've become used to, but the edges of whole new territories. You are careering downhill again, and the speed is faster and you have less control than ever before. It feels like there's more at stake, too.

When I had a toddler, I hated that remark that was sometimes tossed my way "Oh, just wait till they're teenagers". I vowed I'd never say that to anyone. But I do offer you my sandwich model. The three stages of childhood. What do you think?

More second grade homework

I wrote recently about 7-yo’s homework, and how I hate the way she is being taught ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ ways to interpret passages of English. It’s getting worse. Could you bear it if I whinged on about it again? Given that you, my readers, are among some of the finest writers I've ever come across (and I sincerely mean that), let's see how you'd fare in second grade English homework.

Sam swims quickly.
Sam swims well.

Question : What is the best way to combine these two sentences?
Answer (choice of 4):

1. Sam swims quickly and Sam swims well.
2. Sam swims quickly, well.
3. Sam swims quickly, well too.
4. Sam swims quickly and well.

The right answer is number 4. But 7-yo had chosen number 1. I have to say I agree with her. That sentence has a lovely rhythm. It’s almost like a nursery rhyme or chant. It echoes the movement of someone swimming front crawl. It has a symmetry. It swings along. I actually quite like numbers 2 and 3 as well.

Of course it depends on your definition of “what is the best way…”. I note that it doesn’t say “what is the correct way…” (thank goodness). I would prefer to see it rephrased “what do you think you’re meant to think is the best way…”. At least that would be good early training in exam technique.

I’m sure you’re going to say that it’s important for second graders to learn grammar, and that these are just grammar exercises, and won’t quash her literary creativity. And you’re probably right. But the words “dumbing down” spring inexorably to mind. (Perhaps I wouldn’t mind so much if the letters that have come home from the three primary schools my children have attended weren’t sprinkled with typos and grammatical mistakes.)

Then I stopped to think. Do I care so much about how her brain is being trained in maths? Or any other subject? Do I have a strong opinion on what she should or shouldn’t be doing in PE? Do I react so strongly, either positively or negatively, when she talks about what she’s done in Art or Music? The answer to all these is no, not really. Opinions here and there, varying from mild to strong, but nothing gets under my skin to the same degree as her English homework. This says more about me, than about the education system (though I think my opinions stand, none the less).

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt about being a parent, it’s that you learn such a lot about yourself in the process. I knew all along that I love words, and that how we put them together is important to me. I didn’t need the reminder of 7-yo’s homework really. But it’s interesting to see what things push our own personal buttons.

Mummy guilt

I have been thinking recently about guilt (she says darkly and mysteriously). One of the main ways I come across guilt is that syndrome known to all us mummy bloggers: Mummy Guilt. Here is what I think we should all do about Mummy Guilt (and I include myself as a prime culprit): stop it!

Mummy Guilt is actually a misnomer, if you think about it. It’s not really proper guilt, is it? It’s not guilt as in “I’ve done something that is ethically and/or morally wrong, and I feel remorse” is it? It’s an indistinct sense of inadequacy. It’s the feeling of being not good enough. And… (drum roll at this point, as you all wait for Iota’s pearl of wisdom to drop from your computer screen and roll across the table onto your lap)… of course we’re not good enough, because that is part of the human condition. In fact, here is a paradox (ooh, I love paradoxes). If you were the perfect parent, you wouldn’t be a good parent, because you wouldn’t be preparing your child for a world where people are imperfect. Ta-da! Mummy Guilt solved.

I think we English speakers need a few more words to cover the guilt spectrum. I’m told that in other languages, there is a bigger vocabulary for the thing that we gather under one guilt umbrella (though of course we are good at gathering things under umbrellas, what with our climate being the way it is). Guilt, inadequacy, shame… we tend to put it all in the same basket. The basket that’s keeping dry under the umbrella. So Misnamed Mummy Inadequacy gets in with proper “I’ve committed a heinous crime: guilty as charged, M’Lud, life sentence coming my way” guilt. That’s a bit of a pity, if you ask me. Just makes us mummies feel even worse, labouring under such a weighty term. So, if you’re a passing linguist, perhaps you’d like to toss in your ha’penny worth. In the murky recesses of my memory, I catch a glimmer of a recollection that someone once told me that Russian is good in the guilt arena. Any passing Russian-speaking bloggers?

This is what I notice about Mummy Guilt. We confess to it for random irrelevant things. Things like not taking home-made mince pies to the school Christmas party, or helping your child do her homework ten minutes before you have to leave for school because you forgot about it the night before. Everyone knows that shop-bought mince pies taste nicer, and that you are doing your child a big favour if you are developing in her the ability to produce a piece of work quickly at the last minute and make it look like you spent hours over it. That is an indispensable life skill, if I ever saw one.

Here’s another thing I’ve spotted. Mothers feel bad about not always putting their children first, and sometimes putting themselves first. They know, however, that they must bring up their children to be sensitive to other people’s needs and wants, and not to be selfish. Another paradox. Yum! Why does pursuing the first half make us feel guilty (ie putting ourselves first), and not the second half?

I have plenty more to say on the subject of guilt (dark, mysterious) but I’m going to stop now, because it is 10.30pm on a Sunday night, and I’ve had at least one glass of red wine and am ready for bed, or at the very least a hot bath, and still haven’t come to a satisfactory conclusion on whether 13-yo can do soccer AND tennis in the last quarter of the school year, or whether one sport is enough, and whether we are going to be able to be fair to the younger two children and treat them all the same as they grow up if we set the bar as ridiculously high as to allow for TWO sports as well as TWO musical instruments, and talking of setting the bar high, would perhaps track (that’s 'athletics' or 'field events' to you British readers, at least I think so, I can't really remember any longer - it's not something I ever talked about very much when I lived in the UK) be a better option than tennis anyway since the school has recommended it as a help in transitioning from the middle school to the upper school because the two teams train together? and thinking that whatever we decide, this one issue will seriously scar them all, the three of them, for life, and therefore I am a TERRIBLY BAD MOTHER.

Does parental experience count for anything?

You'd think that 13 years of being a parent would count for something. It appears not. That is why, with Husband away this week, the following things happened.

1. I was pondering to myself how some things do get easier, and reminiscing silently how one of the children always used to be ill whenever Husband went away, and how once I even booked a doctor's appointment in advance - which I did then need (or perhaps I was just proving my point), but how they seemed to have grown out of being ill so much. This is known as TEMPTING FATE, and as a parent, you don't do it. We all know that. It's in Chapter 1 of all the baby books.
2. I have not had my antennae tuned recently. We all know that parents need fully-functioning antenna, which can pick up any hint of a "wouldn't you just know it" story before it becomes reality. For the week Husband is away, I am working on Monday and Tuesday, and the boys are off school on Thursday and Friday. This leaves Wednesday as the one day for me, me, me. So when 6-yo creeps into my bed at 5.00am on Wednesday morning, complaining of a tummy ache, why do I not see where this is going? Why do I operate my mind-over-matter strategy on her, saying "I'll get the bucket and we'll put it by the bed, but YOU'RE NOT GOING TO BE SICK"? And then in the morning, when she hasn't been sick and says she's feeling a bit better, but has a temperature of a little over 99, why do I optimistically say "oh, we'll take it again in an hour... it'll probably go down... people often have a slightly raised temperature first thing in the morning" and not remember that that's just when you're ovulating, which, at 6 years old, she probably isn't?
3. When we are driving home from taking the boys to school, and 6-yo announces "I'm going to be sick", I reply "but we're nearly home, very very nearly home, I can see the house, just hold on ONE minute". Yup. That's what I said. Even the most inept parent knows that when a child says "I'm going to be sick", the correct answer isn't any sentence including the words "just hold on". We all know that stopping the car is the only workable strategy at this point, and who cares about the neighbour's lawn?
4. I didn't have a receptacle of any description to hand in the car. Any decent parent has a plastic bag or two in the car, don't they? In the few seconds available to me, I looked at the box of tissues, and wondered if she could be sick tidily into the little window at the top of it. I even looked at her adored dry erase board, and wondered if she could hold it horizontal and keep it level, as a sort of vomit-receiving tray (though I knew this would be cruel beyond measure - she loves that dry erase board so much). So as I sped up the road, the best I could do was to say "open the window - if you're being sick, do it out of the window", forgetting that those stupid electric windows in the back of the car don't open all the way down.

So serves me right, eh? Forty-five minutes wiping vomit off the inside of the window, the inside of the door, the seat belt, the car seat, the car seat cover, the floor, and out of the retracting cup-holder and all its niftily designed little hinges for which no doubt some studious Japanese designer received great credit from his superiors, because none of them thought "this flips shut very neatly, but I wonder how easy it would be to clean vomit out of all the small crevices".

But there's one thing I HAVE learnt as a parent, and it is this. There is NO SHAME in putting the tv on when you have a poorly child, in order to buy you time to write a blog post. So I guess 13 years do count for something.

[Stephen Hawking, by the way. The bad taste joke in the last post...]

Mother's Day

It was Mother's Day here in the US on Sunday, so I was thinking about, well, being a mother. I know. Pretty original, huh?

I have a confession to make. I cyber-stalk people about to have babies. I do. Not many - just one or two, here and there. If I come across a blogger about to drop, I add them to my reader, and await the birth. I love the excitement. Ooh, there's a post! Has she had that baby yet?... No, just another post about being fed up with waiting, and a trip to the hospital for monitoring... Ooh, another one! This time?... (Hello, Stockholm.)

I used to love waiting for friends' babies, but now I'm of an age and stage where there aren't too many of those in my immediate life. So I have to get my fix of enjoying babies arriving via the internet (the fix arriving via the internet, that is, not the baby - though in this galloping century, who knows? maybe that will be the next thing).

I love those first exuberant announcements. I love seeing the photo, and the details, and the boasting comments of the parent. We become all childish in our excitement, don't we, when we see them? It's a bit ridiculous, honestly. I mean, take the photo. Let's be honest, that photo of your beautiful newborn... it looks like, well, a baby, doesn't it? Not very different to all those other photos of newborns. Maybe less or more hair, maybe sleeping or awake, maybe scrunched up or not quite so scrunched up. But there's not a whole lot to remark upon, is there?

Then we read the details. Weight, length, and um... there's not much else to say about a baby at this stage. Usually these days there's not even a surprise regarding the gender. Weight - well, there's not a huge variation, honestly, is there? Length - no-one ever even bothered to measure my babies so we couldn't tell people their length, but I didn't feel it was a huge loss. (Isn't it interesting, incidentally, that we talk about length, rather than height? I suppose you have to be able to stand up to have a height.)

So it can't really be the photo and the information. No. I'll tell you what it is. It's the pride of the parents. The bursting, unembarrassed, overwhelming pride that they can hardly contain, in this little scrap of humanity. When we sent out an email announcing the arrival of our third, a friend emailed back "May you always be as proud of her as you are today".

I have often thought of that comment. With a newborn, it's pride at its purest. You're not proud because your child has learnt all his spellings, or because she's got into the netball team, or because he's been nice to his brother and shared his lego, or because she's on the podium at graduation, or because she looks unbearably sweet with her first pony tail, or because he's managed a poo in the potty. You're not proud because anything. You're just proud that the baby is who he or she is - which actually, you know almost nothing about at that point. In fact, all you know about this creature is that it has caused you 9 months' worth of pregnancy complaints, then a few hours of exquisite pain, and that it has the ability to yell, blink a lot, and fill a nappy. It's not a great list of endearments.

Pure unprocessed pride. When you are wanting to throw open the door of the maternity wing, and say to the assembled company "Look, look, LOOK at my baby!... MY baby!..." surely that is parenthood at its finest. Unconditional, all-accepting, unquestioning pride. Dare I say it reflects the divine? Yes, I think I dare.

Of course some people don't feel the parent pride thing straightaway. It may take hours or days to feel much for that scrap of their own, that everyone else seemed so excited about. And that's fine too.

I wonder if animals feel it. I saw a duck with a brood of 10 ducklings in the park the other day. She kept a watchful eye on me as I stopped to watch them, but I didn't think she was very afraid. I wondered if she was actually enjoying showing off her brood (and yes, I did talk to her, out loud, congratulating her on her fine off-spring and saying what a good job she'd done with the eggs, and that's why I like being anonymous in my blog, so that I can confess to weird behaviour like that).

Mother's Day. Well, I wasn't at my best on Mother's Day. I shouted at my kids, and I'm never proud of that. So I'm preaching to myself here. "May you always be as proud of her as you are today." Of course it gets a bit more complicated as life trots on. It is part of the job of a parent to teach good behaviour, good attitudes, spelling, so it becomes appropriate to be proud of your children's achievements and efforts (though can't we just drop the spelling, now they've invented Spellcheck?). But it's good to remember, as much as we can, the more important pride that undergirds it all: pride in them just because they are. And now I sense I'm beginning to ramble, so I'm going to go to the park and see if I can find a few more mother ducks and geese to talk to.

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Really Rachel shrieks

Where was I? Oh yes, just off to kiss some babies. And if you want babies, the blogging world is full of them, often with pictures. Scrumptious to the point of being edible. I'm in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on my baby-kissing tour today. That's the home of Really Rachel, who has two adorable daughters. If you read her most recent post, it looks as if they're called Splodge and Voila, but don't be fooled. That's her description of their artistic activities.

Rachel has this cunning plan, whereby she has a series of guest bloggers on a Friday. She asked for volunteers, and so I put my virtual hand up. But then I had a cunning plan too. I told her my policy (and I've been a civil servant, I know how quickly you can invent a policy when you need to) was to do guest post swaps. She fell for it, and that is how it comes to pass that you can read her here, and me over in Newcastle-upon-Tyne at Really Rachel.

I'd like to offer you a clever connection between what we have each written about, but sadly, there isn't one (unless someone can spot it). I've written about how much I miss the sea; Rachel has written about shrieking. Since I've been going to Olde English Teas, and practising English demureness and poise, you know there is no shrieking at my place, oh no, (though I think I did use the words "small shriek of delight" in yesterday's post), so I take no responsibility for anything she says.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you.... Really Rachel!

Making Mummy Shriek

Mummies make some funny noises. There’s talking, obviously. That goes on and on sometimes. And there’s shouting, which is just a waste of energy, really. Laughing is good – you can’t help but join in, even if you’ve got no idea what’s so funny. But shrieks are the best: unexpected bursts of unusual noise. Such fun! And even if you’re less than a year old, there are still plenty of ways that you can make your mummy shriek.

• Pull her hair – An obvious one, but a good one. Try grabbing a small amount of hair and pulling hard. Dangly earrings or necklaces are also good to tug. Your mummy might shriek in pain or she might shriek about her delicate jewellery. If anything does break off, try eating it for a further shriek-effect.
• Climb stairs – Become adept at noticing when doors and stair-gates are left open so that you can take every opportunity to climb the stairs. Giggle loudly as you climb to ensure that your mummy will come to see what you are doing. When you reach the top, turn round as though you are about to launch yourself head-first down the stairs. If your mummy doesn’t shriek as you climb, she might shriek when you threaten to descend. NB The shriek-effect wears off if you appear too competent.
• Eat marbles – Any small, hard object will do but marbles are excellent and easily obtainable from older siblings. Simply pop them into your mouth and display bumpy cheeks. Don’t swallow the marbles, of course. That would be silly. Just let everyone think that you might. Mummy will stop shrieking about this after the first day or so but new visitors will always find this horrifying.
• Touch toilets – You don’t, in fact, have to actually touch the toilet to elicit a shriek. Simply toddling towards it with an outstretched arm will do. That said, nothing can beat putting your whole arm into the toilet for obtaining a really satisfying shriek. If you can be holding your teddy at the same time, so much the better.
• Empty the bin – Again, the very idea of this can cause shrieking but actually pulling items from the bin is more effective. For maximum shriekage, choose a bin that contains something soggy and unpleasant. If the shriek is slow to occur, raise some rubbish towards your mouth. This is guaranteed to bring mummy shrieking and running, which is very funny indeed.

So tell me: How do you make your mummy shriek?

You can read more Really Rachel (when I'm not hogging her space) by clicking here.

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Significant others

A friend of mine who had a boy, then a girl, was once discussing with me how lovely it was to have a daughter. She had been thrilled to have a son, of course, but what a relief to have a girl. “Boys are so… other”, she said. I hadn’t really felt that myself, and became increasingly annoyed throughout my third pregnancy, when people told me (often in front of my sons) “a girl would be nice”. Part of it was to do with the assumption that it is fun to have a mix, but I think some women do feel that a daughter is easier to relate to, and that sons are… other.

I was the other way round. I’d never been a girly girl. I had one dolly, given to me by a godmother, and I hated it. I never played with it, and I remember feeling a certain scorn for girls who did like playing with dollies. The same went for Barbie; I never owned even one. I had an older sister obsessed with pink and, fed up with pink hand-me-downs, I staked out blue as my favourite colour.

When I had sons, I found it easy to get into playing trains. I confess to relishing the challenge of creating a wooden track using all the different junctions and bridges we have accumulated over the years. I have become strangely fascinated by JCBs, I enjoy building Bionicles, and I’m quite partial to a light sabre fight.

When I had a daughter, I felt a little daunted by the whole idea of girly play, never really having practised it very much in my own childhood. I’ve tried my best. I have learnt to enjoy lining up small plastic things with over-sized heads that look like aliens but are marketed as Littlest Pet Shop animals. I’ve spent hours fiddling around with pieces of velcro the size of a lentil, in order to dress Barbie in microscopic fabric shapes that she thinks are clothes (doesn’t she have anything between her moulded plastic ears, for heaven’s sake?). I’ve had more pink in my laundry than I would agree to under torture. I have my hair done regularly by a small-fingered hairdresser standing on the chair behind me, as the only way to get a fair run at writing a blog post.

It’s a good thing we are designed to be flexible. It’s amazing how “other” you can become, when needs be.

Wonderfully Weird Parenting: Part lV

Last one in the series, I promise.

I am wonderfully weird, because I actively seek out opportunities to talk to my children about sex, while they are young. Don’t get the wrong impression. I don’t sit them in a row on the sofa, and address them with the aid of a flipchart, or a power point presentation. No. It’s more just a question of, quite literally, the birds and the bees. There’s always some hanky panky going in nature, which you can use to bring the conversation round to where little fledglings come from, and from there, you’re just one tweet away from where human babies come from. (Interesting phrase, come to think of it, “the birds and the bees”, because for all my own sex education, I do know how birds reproduce, but I don’t really have a clue how bees do it.)

We have a book for young children, which I occasionally slip into the bedtime reading pile. On a given evening, I might read The Three Little Pigs, Where do Babies Come From?, and Dazzling Diggers. It used to cross my mind that it might be hard for the kids to distinguish whether the Babies one was fact or fiction, especially if interspersed between the pigs and the diggers, but children are remarkably good at filtering information over time. Perhaps they start off thinking it’s a fairy story, and a rather bizarre one at that, but at least I’ve introduced the subject to them. Now we also have a couple of books suitable for older children, which are more detailed. No doubt the second and third children in the family will read those ones at much younger ages than the oldest has done (I’m a third child myself, I know these things).

The reasons I decided not to wait until the children asked, and then deliver ‘The Talk’, are fairly simple. I didn’t want to miss the boat, and find that some well-meaning but ill-informed friend at school had done the job for me. Or worse, some ill-meaning one. It’s so much easier, as a parent, to pick your own moment. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself cornered, and the moment will pick you. It’ll be the night before the lesson when they’re going to cover it at school, when your child thrusts a grubby letter into your hand saying “Mum, you’re meant to have signed this by last week to say it’s ok for me to be there, but I forgot to give it to you”. Or it’ll be at Sunday lunch with relatives, when your 5 year old pipes up “how did the baby get into Auntie Moira’s tummy?”, and you have to mumble something about “tell you later, now get on with your spaghetti” while Uncle Peter says he’s just getting another beer and disappears to the kitchen.

It’s just easier to talk to younger children. It’s like apologizing. The longer you leave it, the harder you make it for yourself. Younger children are unembarrassed, and don’t say “that’s gross” as often. You don’t have to go into any more detail than you want, because at a young age, they are happy with very little, and often not terribly interested anyway. And here’s something experience has taught me. It’s not a question of having ‘The Talk’. It’s more a question of ‘The Talks’. For a start, you’re never going to cover it all, in the right level of detail, with all the associated thoughts on relationships and responsibilities, on one occasion. So unless you want them to find out most of their information from other sources, you’re going to have to reconcile yourself to more than just ‘The Talk’ in any case. You might as well start early.

Incidentally, if anyone knows where bees come from, then do let me know. Or do you think I should ask my mother?

Wonderfully Weird Parenting: Part ll

The next way I'm weird is that I didn't really want my children to believe in Father Christmas. I never did, since my older sister had been terrified at the idea of a strange man coming into the house, and so my parents had never had the chance to spin the story. I never felt I missed out. Parents talk fondly of the magic of Christmas, but I always had plenty of that in the sheer excitement of waking up on Christmas morning and kicking at the end of the bed to feel the lumpy stocking there. It hadn't been any less fun for knowing where it had come from. As a family, we enjoyed the whole charade, and played along with the story, while we all knew it wasn't true. It was like a great shared secret.

When our first child reached Christmas-appreciating age, I'd rather planned to go down the same route. Then I discovered that to the great majority of parents, it was hugely important to keep the Father Christmas myth alive for as long as possible. I honestly had had no idea before then, that this was of such consequence. I didn't really want to get my son to believe the story because of my own experience as a child, and because I anticipated a day when he would find out and would then wonder what else I'd been fibbing to him about. I wanted him to be able to trust me 100%, always. It made me uneasy to sell him a fiction as a fact. I also knew of older children deeply upset on finding out they were the last child in their class still to believe.

The assumption at my son's preschool was so strong, that we were all doing the Father Christmas thing to the Nth degree, that it would have been very difficult to opt out. I heard tales of mothers who had let older siblings tell, and how this had ruined Christmas in previous years. I heard of the devious tales that children were told to explain how Father Christmas managed to get gifts to the right place, when a child was spending Christmas away from home. It was a huge conspiracy, carefully guarded, and even if I'd been brave enough to have broken out myself, I had to think through the ramifications of that for my son. For him, it would have been a hard burden to bear to be the only 3 year old at the Christmas party who knew that Father Christmas was in fact one of the dads with a pillow up his front, and to know that he must not tell any of the other children under any circumstance. I certainly wasn’t going to risk letting him be the child who spoiled Christmas for 20 families.

So I went along with the majority, but I confess that I did sow seeds of doubt. I would tell my son "it's amazing how Father Christmas manages to get round all the houses in the world in one night - I wonder how that can be", or "you know that song about how you only get presents from Father Christmas if you've been good? well, the funny thing is, when it comes to it, ALL children get presents after all". Call me subversive, but hey, in this house, the children imbibe doses of irony along with their mother's milk, so even at 3, I was fairly sure that my son was picking up at least some vague sense that when we talked of “Father Christmas", we did so with invisible inverted commas.

The saving grace for me, was a Canadian couple who hosted a St Nicholas’ Day party, early in December the following year. I hadn’t known before then how the Father Christmas legend had developed from an early East European bishop (Saint Nicholas becoming Santa Claus). He gave money and food to the poor, leaving it tactfully in the shoes they left outside their doors, which over time became the presents in the stockings. To me, this gave the perfect half-way house between truth and fiction, with the divide nicely blurred. Now, I talk about how there was a real man, a long long time ago, who was the real Santa Claus. But when they've asked me outright what happens to the stockings by the fireplace, I've started by fudging with "who knows?", and then over time, have come clean and confessed that it is really Mummy and Daddy. But we say "it's fun to pretend it's him", and we do just that. We do the carrot for the reindeer and the mince pie and whisky for Santa, and on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, we act it out just like proper believing families. There’s plenty of mystery and magic, but no room for future disappointment.

But here’s the really intriguing thing. Even when I have debunked the myth, my children have each believed, because they have chosen to. For each of them, there have been 2 or 3 years when they have known that Santa isn’t real, but they’ve believed in him anyway. I don’t know whether it’s peer group pressure, or the desire for fairy tale, but they have taken the lead and acted the story out so hard, that Husband and I have followed along. For you non-weird parents, that may well be an argument to support your approach of keeping the myth alive from the outset. I prefer to interpret it as an argument that it doesn’t really matter which approach you take, so long as everyone has fun.

Wonderfully Weird Parenting: Part l

Well, it was a pony tail holder, so congrats to those of you who got it right or came close. The petals were a bit misleading, I know. Originally 5-yo had said "it's used by girls" and I, in a proper politically-correct non-gender-delimiting way, encouraged her to add in the "mostly". I pointed out that we do have a male friend (adult, not Kindergarten) who wears his hair in a pony tail, although it must be said that I haven't ever seen him wear it in a bright yellow elastic band with decorative petals.

At the wedding service of Mike and Phoebe in Friends , Mike says to Phoebe "I love the way you're so wonderfully weird", which is where I nicked the title of this series of posts from. Now I have muddled my way through all my children's preschool years, I can look back and say that mostly I have toed some kind of majority line, and gone with the prevailing flow. But there have been some things on which I have found myself out on a limb. One of the great things about mummy blogging - parent blogging, I should say - is that it gives me confidence to be a little braver than I might otherwise have been. And certainly braver in talking about it. I have learned that if I want to do something a little differently, chances are that someone else out there agrees with me. I’ve often read posts which have made me say “Ah, so it’s not just me, then”.

So I thought I’d do a little series on the ways in which I have found myself wonderfully weird, as a parent. Feel free to join in my weirdness, or to confess to your own. There’s nothing as cleansing as divulging some personal weirdness amongst friends. You should try it some time, if you haven’t already.

The first way I’m a wonderfully weird parent, is that I hate sleepovers. Who on earth invented the sleepover? You invite my child and a few others to your child’s birthday party. You are going to give them all pizza and have them watch a movie. Fine. Stop there. It’ll be 8.00pm or 9.00pm. I will come and get my child. Everyone will have a lovely time, presents will be opened, photos will be taken, and the birthday will be duly celebrated. But oh no, no, no. You insist on keeping him overnight. This means that he will go to bed at midnight. He will wake up at his usual time, or earlier, perverse though that seems. You will feed him a high-octane sugar breakfast of pancakes or waffles. Then I will collect him, and for the rest of the day, he will be intermittently grumpy, close to tears, unable to amuse himself, and will bicker with his siblings. If I suggest he is tired, he will shout “I’m NOT tired, I keep TELLING you”. The best I can hope for is to wuther through the day, get him to bed relatively early, and hope that normal service is resumed tomorrow. One day, may I just point out, is half the week-end.

So far, I have avoided sleepovers as much as possible. I have never hosted one. If given the option, I have collected the child in the evening. I have even stooped as low as quickly organizing something for the next day, to give myself a feeble mummy excuse about an early morning start. This week-end, since we have had a week of allergies, I sent along a night-time Benadryl tablet, hoping this would somehow encourage an earlier bedtime, or at least a modest lie-in. It didn’t. I have managed to sneak by on minimum sleepovers so far, but with a 5 year old daughter, I fear I am soon to enter the era of major sleepover activity.

What is this ridiculous enthusiasm for sleepovers? At best, if hosted by a family you know well, you have to endure a day on the receiving end of the behavior of an irritable toddler in the body of an older child. At worst (and this hasn’t yet happened to me, but I can imagine the dilemma it poses), if hosted by a family you don’t know well, you spend an anxious evening wondering what on earth possessed you to let your child stay in a strange house, and then you have the endurance trial the following day as well.

Does anyone share my weird hatred of sleepovers? Am I not as weird as I think on this one?

Christmas party

I was helping at 8-yo’s class Christmas party. My duty was to organize one game. In the car on the way there, 4-yo was asking me all about the event. Who was going to be there? Were other little brothers and sisters invited? Would the brothers and sisters be allowed to join in the game? Would they be allowed to have the snack?

I explained to the best of my knowledge (I wasn’t entirely sure what the party was going to be like myself, beyond my own game). Then she asked “How will the kids know how to play the game?”

“I’ll explain the rules to everyone before we begin”, I replied.

“Will the little kids understand the rules, or will they just watch the big kids and do what they do?” she asked, in such a matter of fact way that my heart melted.

Of course it didn’t need to melt. I know that second, third, and subsequent children “come on” much quicker than first children. Parents are amazed at the way their second children whizz by the milestones, and make sense of life so speedily. Perhaps it’s a little unsettling to think that all that careful parental input lavished on the first child, is less effective than the contribution of the sibling toddler, who does no more than potter on with daily life, oblivious of his or her role as a teaching model to number two.

As it happened, she was the only little sibling there, understood the instructions (it wasn’t a difficult game), was taken under the wing of her brother so that they both dropped out of the game together, had at least as much snack, if not more, than everyone else, and thoroughly enjoyed herself. She can't wait to start school. I sometimes wonder if we parents are more in danger of getting in the way of our children’s learning, than of not helping them enough.

Making the grade

Back to school again. All well in general. We now have a preschooler, an elementary schooler and a middle schooler. Middle school is a bit of a step up: classes in different rooms with different teachers, changing for PE, having a locker, and no recess. 11-yo is horrified by the thought of having no time off during the day, and only half an hour for lunch, and I have to say, I do rather agree with him. How can you expect kids to function well from 8.00am to 3.00pm with only half an hour off? They do have PE, and “electives” which are less academic and more fun (though not the ping-pong that I’d been told would be on offer, and which I’d held out as a recess-alternative bone to 11-yo all through the summer). Useful training, I suppose, should any of them end up perchance living in a society where a long-hours work culture prevails.

Middle school, we were told, would bring increasing expectation on the kids to take responsibility for themselves and their work. Yesterday, 11-yo came home with his first History homework. “I don’t really know what I’m meant to write,” he said, “but I’ve got to do two sheets. On the first I’ve got to say what grades I expect to get, and how I’m going to behave, and on the second, I’ve got to say what grades you expect me to get, and how you want me to behave.”

On the first sheet, he duly stated that he hoped to get A grades, or at least Bs, that he would turn homework in on time, that he would work hard in class, be respectful and honest, make friends with people who need friends, and a few other undertakings, which had me looking for the “for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health” clauses by the time he’d finished. He discussed with me what he should say on the second sheet, and paraphrased our conversation as follows: “My Mum says she doesn’t mind what grade I get, so long as I do my best.”

Fffffff, sharp intake of breath through teeth. What do you mean, you don’t mind what grade your kid gets? Well, I appreciate that we can’t all be good at everything. So, 11-yo might be gifted in History, or he might not. Time will tell. He might get As and Bs, or he might not. If he doesn’t, he might get those As in other subjects, but, well, he might just not be terribly academic, and end up with all Bs and Cs, and excel at being a sportsman, or the piano, or cooking, or nothing at all. He might just be a thoroughly nice rounded individual who is happy in himself and contributes to society, and that’ll be mighty fine. I did say I would encourage him to aim high, be diligent and punctual in doing his homework, attentive and respectful in class, and contribute well to discussion. I thought that was the least I could do.

This grades obsession, though. It’s a bit sad. I know parents who reward their first graders each week-end (with playstation time, I think) according to their weekly grades. I know parents who say “I don’t care what he does at home, how much TV he watches, whatever, so long as his grades don’t suffer”. I know a first grade teacher who has to operate a system of grading in which 5 and 6 year olds are graded for reading ability, so those who can’t yet read have to be routinely given a C, and then she has to deal with the parents freaking out about it.

Anyway, back to 11-yo. He then asked his father to contribute, and added “My Dad says that he isn’t worried about my grades, but wants me to develop a life-long love of learning”. Fffffff, again. So you differentiate between a good education and good grades? That’s definitely pretty crunchy (have I used that word right?). Probably got 11-yo put on a list of children at risk.

We may have got good at understanding the school supplies list, we may even be able to operate the complex drop-off and pick-up procedures, but I’m afraid our performance at this first middle school hurdle will have ruined our chances of being straight A parents.