It's all gone to pot(ty) . . .

When we potty trained our son two years ago, we prepared physically, mentally and spiritually.

We borrowed the Gina Ford Potty Training book from a friend (after the small fortune spent on useless books about sleep I now borrow rather than buy childcare books), bought an upstairs and a downstairs potty for the house and one for the car, waited for a week where we had a clear social diary and embarked upon Mission Potty Training.

This time around, with our daughter, it was more, “Bugger. We’ve run out of nappies. Shall we just do it?”

To be honest, she has been ready for potty training for months. The ‘experts’ tell you there are certain signs that a child is ready to be successfully potty trained: ability to follow instructions, ability to take their own pants down, ability to communicate that they need to use the toilet. When I tell you that she chooses and puts on her own clothes, orders for herself when we eat out and lays out a nappy, wipes and cream before laying herself on a changing mat, you may question who it is in this scenario that is not ready for potty training.

There is one reason and one reason only. This time, I know what I’m letting myself in for.

Nappies are so easy. With nappies, you don’t need a GPS reference for your three closest toilets. Although obviously you try to change a nappy as soon as it is necessary, you have more time to find somewhere to do it. Changing nappies isn’t pleasant, and they’re unhealthy for the environment and your bank balance, but they are the devil you know.

Day three of potty training and I needed to go to the shops to buy a birthday card. Slightly bored by her mother’s perusal of the shelves, the girl decides she needs to go to the toilet. Right now.

Cue panic stricken mother: ignoring queues of people to demand the shop assistant tell me whether they have a customer toilet (which of course they don’t, although I hear them being very sorry as I hot foot it from the store.); running at break neck speed to Debenhams because they have a toilet; waiting an interminably long time for the lift to come; dashing into the toilet; wrestling the potty out of the bag; yanking knickers down; putting the child on the potty. Then . . .

Nothing. Not a trickle. “No mummy, it won’t come.”

It takes every ounce of patience that I possess (not a very deep well to begin with) not to scream, “But you said you were desperate!”

Then begins the debate. “Just sit there until it does come.”

“But it won’t come.”

“Just try. Squeeze.”

(Pathetic squeezing noise.) “No, it won’t come.”

Eventually, I give in. Knickers back up, potty back under the buggy, hands washed. We go back down in the lift, back to our original shop and, yep, you’ve guessed it.

After the third unproductive trip to the toilet, I seriously begin to consider whipping out the potty in the middle of the shopping centre and accepting the disgusted looks from the more civilised people walking past. (I understand, I want to tell them, I was you once.) I am only prevented from doing so by the realisation that I would then need to dispose of the contents somehow.

As I’m sure you can understand, this kind of erratic behaviour is not my idea of a good time.

However, when she does manage to perform the requested task, her delight in her own achievement is infectious. I tell her that she is a good girl, that mummy is very proud and. as I watch her twirling around, proud in equal measure of her new abilities and her Minnie Mouse knick-knacks, I realise that a baby without a nappy isn’t actually a baby anymore. She is, in her own words, “a big girl now.”

And maybe that’s the real reason I’ve been putting it off.

Applying for school

Choosing a school for a child is one of the most important decisions parents make. The school - its teachers, curriculum, educational philosophy, and values both explicit and implicit - will affect the child's day-to-day life. It will help shape the child's personality, view of life, behaviour, and destiny as an adult. And it will also deeply affect the lives of the parents and the life of the family as a whole.'

Ronald Koetzsch (American Educationalist)



"Isn't it all just sand and water at this age?"

 My husband



Visiting schools fell firmly into my domain. My husband's reasoning for this was:
(a) I wanted to look around the schools, ask pertinent questions and assess what they had to offer our child
(b) He didn't.

To be fair, he made a good case for just sending the boy to our local school: logistically, socially and morally it was the obvious thing to do. I agreed with everything he had to say, then made arrangements to visit all the schools in our area on my own.

The first thing I noticed was that I got a gut feeling about each school as soon as I walked through their doors. It was very similar to when we were house hunting: some properties had it all but didn't click whereas others had a small box room and a crap garden but felt like home. I couldn't put my finger on it (and wouldn't want to because I know how many bogeys get wiped behind school radiators) but I always knew within 3 minutes whether this was a school I would send my child to.

Obviously the whole school is on best behaviour when the parental tours are being conducted. At no point do you see a child being given timeout, in tears because another child has whacked them or complaining about the boring work which they have to do. I tried to hang behind and peek back into the classrooms five minutes after we'd left but I didn't manage to catch them out.

At the end of every tour there was a time for questions. I would always hold back, hoping other parents would ask some of the questions on my list so that I was left with only a dozen or so. I didn't want to get a black mark next to my name before our boy had even started. Sometimes people would ask nothing (Really? There's nothing you want to know?), sometimes they clearly felt the need to seem interested and would ask something inane (What time is lunch? What kind of pencil case do they need?) and there's always some pushy parent who wants to know what the Gifted and Talented Policy is, what reading scheme they follow and whether or not they have a hotline to Mensa. (OK, that was me.)

There are obviously some questions that must be asked. If your child has a specific educational need (at either end of the ability range) you need to ensure it will be addressed. It’s imperative that you are fully confident that your child will be safe and cared for. You need to know that they have an effective Anti-Bullying Policy (any school that says they don’t have bullying would concern me. Bullying happens, you need to know how they deal with it.)

On the whole though, you are walking blind. There is no way to really know if this school will be right for your child until they are actually there and no amount of research, visits and grilling of parents in supermarket queues (again, all me) can give you that guarantee that you are making the right choice.

When it came down to it, we chose the school closest to where we live (cue smug eyebrow lift from husband) which I actually felt very happy about as it was one of the two schools I had most liked. I continued to try to feel happy about our decision when, about a month after we completed our online application form, Ofsted visited and put them into Special Measures. (It could only happen to me.)

There is then an interminably long time between the date school applications have to be in and when you actually find out whether your child has a place at your first choice school. This is usually the time in which you hear the most horror stories about the school you have chosen and Ofsted try and tell you what a bad choice you've made. (Like they know anything.)

Because we'd chosen the school at the bottom of the hill, we felt pretty confident that we would get in. Then, as the day got closer, we - and all the other parents we knew - started to feel less sure. It's our local school, of course we'll get in. It's extremely unlikely we won't get in, isn't it? What will we do if we don't get in? Before you know it, you're waiting up past midnight for the damned confirmation email to arrive.

Then it arrives and the relief you feel is immense. You haven't let them down, you've got the school you thought was best, everything is ok.

But, as the excitement subsides, another feeling creeps in to take its place. The realisation of what this actually means.

What it actually means is that your son or daughter is starting school in a few months time. The baby you were bringing home from hospital just a few heartbeats ago will be putting on a uniform and waving goodbye to you at the school gate. Your precious child will be spending six hours of every day with someone who is not you. They will make friends you don't know, learn skills you didn't teach and won't remember a word of it to tell you later.

You realise that this is just the beginning. The first step on a road that will lead to college, university, work and a life all their own.

You realise that you won't be their only influence any more.

That they won't need you as much.

That they are growing up.

That they are going.

To school.

Soon.

Letter to my pregnant self

Dear Me (8 months pregnant),

You are going to have a C-Section. Yes, I know you believe you have a strong pain threshold, you've been to all the birth prep classes and read all the books. It doesn't matter. This child (I won't spoil the surprise and tell you the sex) is going to get stuck and there's nothing you can do about it. Don't let anyone make you feel bad about it.  Some women (yes, I know we're supposed to support one another but some girls didn't get that memo) will enjoy telling you how they managed the whole thing with the merest whiff of gas and air and that some women 'make a fuss' or 'didn't try hard enough'. I repeat: your baby will get STUCK, there is NOTHING you can do about it. Don't get angry with these women, don't come home and cry because you didn't have a 'real' birth; smile sweetly, walk away and pray that karma will ensure they get horrendous teenagers. 

(Incidentally, these are usually the same mothers who will tell you that their child slept through the night at two weeks old, ate a full roast dinner with a knife and fork at six months and was sitting on a potty, reading The Guardian, weeks before their second birthday. The advice above continues to apply.) 

Your child will not sleep alone for a whole night for a long long time. Give in to it, you will get more sleep if you do and life will be a lot easier. Don't spend all that money on 'How to get your child to sleep' books - you won't stick to their advice and you're better off spending the money on expensive make up to cover the bags under your eyes. You will want to kill anyone who tells you that their child puts themselves to sleep, stays that way all night and doesn't rise til 8am. Just wait it out, often their second child is not the same. Then you can make supportive noises whilst internally laughing your head off. Eventually your child will choose to sleep in their own bed and not end up in yours by 2am. Surprisingly, you will miss it.

 Breast feeding proves to be much trickier to get the hang of than you think it's going to be. You might want to start rubbing your nipples with sandpaper now in preparation. It does get better and eventually becomes pretty great. You will have friends who try to breastfeed and find it doesn't work out for them. Be extra kind to them; they often feel crappy about it, and you need to balance out the judgement they feel from the super mothers. 

 You are not going to write a novel whilst you're on maternity leave. I know you think you will have lots of time but what you don't know yet is that babies eat time when you're not looking. Your husband will ask you what you've done all day and you will only be able to remember two hours worth of activities. The rest of the day has been eaten by the baby. Don't stress: the novel will happen one day. 

Nothing I can say now will prepare you for how you are going to feel about this small person. Remember when you first fell in love and couldn't bear to be away from that boy for a second? Multiply that feeling by 100 and you're getting close. That doesn't mean you won't also feel exasperated, overwhelmed, emotional, angry, frustrated, isolated, terrified and exhausted (sometimes all within the same two hours.) It just means that, when they are asleep in your arms, you will look down and feel a passionate love that you could never have imagined. 

 In summary, I know that this is something which we don't like to admit, but in the coming weeks and months, you will need to accept that you are often going to be wrong. 

 Firstly, you will think you couldn't possibly be any more tired. You will be. 

 Often, you will feel overwhelmed and think you can't do this. You can. 

 Sometimes, you will think you are the only one who finds it difficult. You are not.

 Lastly, you will look at that tiny creature and think that you could never love another human being as much as you love that baby.

And then you will have another one. 

When the class toy comes home. . .

 Parents of preschool and above aged children will be aware of the practice of sending a class mascot home with each child in turn, so that they can take pictures of him (Her? It?) and themselves with a little write up about what they did together. A lovely idea to bring together the worlds of home and school and something a lot of children love to do. 

 When the boy was at preschool, I was pathetically eager to have the school bear home on a visit. A lot more eager than my ambivalent son, who could barely remember the bear's name. (Edward, in case you're interested.) 

 Unfortunately, my plans for exciting and artistic shots of Edward having the time of his life were scuppered when the bear came home on a Wednesday. Wednesday being the day that daddy collected the boy from preschool.

 Thursday evening, around 6:30pm, as we get the children into their pyjamas, husband says in passing, "Oh, I think we're supposed to take that bear back tomorrow."

Dramatic pause before I turn my head 180 degrees and ask, "WHAT bear?"
Husband, still unaware of his impending doom, continues, "You know, the bear they all take home. Edward, is it?"
Cue 45 minutes of me redressing the boy, dragging him outside with Edward bear (henceforth known as 'that bloody bear') to take photos of them bug hunting in the garden. Then, leaving husband to do bedtime (only the beginning of his penance), I quickly print the photos (lack of ink in the printer giving them a nice green tinge) and cut them out ready to stick in Edward's diary. 

Thinking we may have got away with it, I open the book to be greeted with the previous entry. Four pages of meticulously written text which described how Edward has been to the fire station, ate out at a restaurant, had a ride on a motorbike . . . probably found time to scale Ben frickin Nevis. No wonder the poor sod looked bored out of his brains at our house. 

Now the boy is in reception at big school and apparently there’s a new toy in town: Leo the bear has now commenced his home visits.

 This time I am planning to tell the truth. Our entry into Leo's diary is likely to read something like this:

 Leo watched TV for three hours with his friends W and S. He had chicken nuggets and chips for dinner. (No, make that homemade chicken goujons and potato wedges) He then ran around the house for an hour brandishing light sabers and making unfunny jokes about poo before mummy had a mini-breakdown and sent them all to bed. Leo was then stuffed unceremoniously back into William's bag after mummy had taken a picture of him which she could later superimpose onto pictures of really exciting places. 

 Because that's the kind of mother I am now. I don't need to impress anyone by pretending my weekends are full of exciting child-friendly activities that any bear would be lucky to be a part of.  I am confident that I can show the world what our leisure time is really like. I will not be intimidated into competing with the adrenaline-fueled excitement which accompanies the visits of a small stuffed toy! 

 Yeah, who am I kidding? We're taking him to Hawaii. 

Craftily Creative

A recent study from the University of Illinois suggests that drinking alcohol does in fact make you more creative. This may explain why doing craft activities with my children makes me want to lay down on the kitchen floor and drink gin from the bottle.

I do not have a creative bone in my body. I have friends who are able to take toilet rolls, cereal boxes and tissue paper and construct scale models of the Tower of London. I am able to take the same materials and turn them into life size models of . . . toilet rolls stuck onto cereal boxes. 

I do try. I have a big plastic box full of sparkly pipe cleaners, tissue paper and stickers. Unfortunately, it appears that just buying the stuff is not enough; you then need to work out what to do with it. 

Mr Maker is my freakin' nemesis. I try my best to turn my children away from the TV before he makes an appearance. Both my children worship him, watching his creations with hushed reverence. Unfortunately, as soon as he is finished they look at me with eyes full of eternal hope and (misplaced) parental belief: "Can you help us make that, mummy?"

If, by chance, we happen to have all the resources needed, I reluctantly agree to try. (Any attempts to get out of it by telling them that I'm not very good at making things only prompts the boy to hoist me with my own petard, "You won't get any better if you don't practice, mummy.")

Despite following the instructions meticulously, it never ends up looking as it should. Anyone who saw our dinosaur with legs made of rolled up newspaper would no longer question why they became extinct: the poor creature could only stay upright for about 3 seconds. 

At least my children have obligingly low expectations. Although sometimes there is something more than a little patronising when a four year old tells you that you are "getting very good at cutting out." 

 My other sticking point, if you'll pardon the pun, is Mister Maker's obsession with 'googly eyes'. I'm pretty sure you'll find his brother is the UK distributor for the damn things. How the hell do you get them to stick to anything? Pritt stick (my non-spillable glue of choice) just doesn't cut it. If you use PVA they slide slowly downwards until the imaginary creature is looking out of its imaginary stomach. There is double-sided sticky tape, but if anyone out there has found a way to cut that small enough to fit a googly eye and still be able to peel the back off of the bugger, I will shake that person by the paint-covered hand. (Actually, they do stick to something. I was in the middle of admonishing a Year 8 for their lack of effort in class when the confused looking child said 'Miss, why have you got eyes stuck to your buttons?' It's quite difficult to maintain your authority after that.) 

 Also, what the heck do you do with all these projects after you have made them? I used to get away with filing them in the recycling bin pretty soon after they were made (don't gasp in horror, supermothers, this blog is not for you) but lately they have taken to want to display them for indefinite periods of time. Sometimes I can get away with persuading them that that particular collection of painted pebble monsters would look lovely at Nana's house, but most of the time they are adamant that they want to litter my lounge with them. My latest plan is to implement a genius idea shared by a friend who takes a photo of the current masterpiece and then 'loses'' the original. Now, that's the kind of creativity I can run with. 

 Back to that study from the University of Illinois: the researchers believe that 'intoxication may lower one’s ability to control one’s thoughts, thus freeing the mind for more creativity.' On reading further, however, they note that 'higher doses of alcohol were not tested, nor was the study done with female volunteers.'

 Never let it be said that I would stand in the way of scientific progress. Or that I am unwilling to offer my services to further the advancement of the human race. Anyone else fancy joining me in a bit of research? 

 

                      

Don't invite the children!

I love my children.

I love going to large parties.

I do not love going to large parties with my children.

 

There, I've said it. Going out for the evening with my offspring is not fun.

 

My heart sinks when we get an evening invitation to a party and are told, very kindly, "the children are invited too." It triggers an internal battle between what I feel is expected of me (to bring the children) and what I want to do (leave them at Nana's so that I can actually enjoy myself.) 

 

Sometimes I forget the potential horror of it. "They're a bit older now," I tell husband, "they'll be fine this time." He shakes his head at my naïveté. Unfortunately he is always proved annoyingly correct.

 

The evening starts ok. We arrive, both children looking picture perfect. We find an area in which to base ourselves (husband already pulling the 'how loud is this music?' face), get ourselves a drink (arguing with children about coke vs orange juice before compromising on lemonade) and try to locate a friendly face in the crowd. 

 

We are then thrust straight into a balloon battle. The boy has a balloon fixation of huge proportions: he spots the balloons as soon as we enter the room and begins a war of attrition on my ears which consists of a repeated "Can I have a balloon now? Can I have a balloon now? Please can I have a balloon? When can I have a balloon?" He has no understanding of the fact that our hosts have placed these balloons decoratively around the room and do not wish a small child to rip them down and run around the room with them like a chimpanzee on acid. 

 

This is just the beginning. I may even have had a small chance of tuning out the balloon mantra if husband didn't then add a second acapella-style chorus about 20 minutes into the party with his own rendition of "How long have we got to stay? When are we going home? Shall I take the kids home and leave you here?" The male members of our clan are not known for being party people. 

 

At least the girl enjoys a dance (I have high hopes for the future where the two of us attend parties alone and leave the other two at home with a balloon each) but that brings a different form of stress in the fear that she will be trampled underfoot by an over-enthusiastic mummy putting double turns into the 'Uptown Girl' line dance. I know how easy this is due to my own experiences over the years clumping small children during the Macarena. 

 

Other people seem to manage quite successfully to attend parties en famille - chatting, laughing, even having a little dance whilst their children are off playing elsewhere. Whilst I admire greatly their relaxed attitude and faith in their offspring, I have a deeply embedded need to have visuals on my children at all times:  presuming that anytime I can't actually see them they are either destroying something, are being pinned down by another child or have escaped onto a busy motorway. 

 

This is a fear often vindicated when I do lose sight of them for more than 5 minutes. If there is a leg-breakingly high stage, they will be attempting to jump from it. If there is a wallet-bustingly expensive piece of DJ equipment they will be tripping over it. And if there is a tottering toddler barely walking who doesn't want a large balloon bounced on his head . . . you get the idea. At least at a large party the music is so loud you can't be heard threatening your children under your breath. 

 

The end of our evening is usually heralded by the over-tired tears of one or both children. Husband leaps on the first teardrop as evidence that we must go home and it is left to me to find our host or hostess and make our apologies. 

 

So, my friends, I would love to come and celebrate your birthday, wedding or anniversary. I will laugh and joke and dance and sing. Just please don't ask me to bring my children. 

Small Child V2.0

Dear God

 Whilst I appreciate that you have been in the business of creating human beings for a long time now, I would like to humbly suggest some modifications should you decide to revise the current version of small child.

 1. Ear functionality - small child V1.0 seems to experience intermittent audio loss, otherwise known as selective hearing. This can vary between acute deafness and the hearing of a superhero i.e. an inability to hear the phrase 'Sit down and eat your dinner" whilst being able to hear the crinkling of a sweet wrapper from three rooms away. (NB Husband V2.0 could also benefit from this bug fix.)

 2. A glitch in brain synapsis which renders an incomprehension of the word 'no'. This incomprehension manifests itself when the small child continues to repeat a question if it is answered with 'no'. As in:

"Can I have sweets before dinner?"

"No."

"Please can I have sweets?"

"No."

"Pleeeeease can I have sweets?"

This can continue through several cycles and often ends with an incessant whining sound and leakage from the eyes.

3. Lapses in memory. This takes two forms: inability to retrieve information (("I don't know where I left your purse after I was playing with it.") and general memory loss (" I forgot that I'm not allowed to help myself with biscuits from the cupboard.") 

4. Shutdown malfunction. I have been reliably informed by several user manuals that you can program your small child to automatically shut down at a set time each evening. My model seems unable to perform this effectively and often requires me to perform the shutdown sequence several times. It also turns itself back on too early or at random times in the night. Also, the younger of my two models sometimes crashes mid-afternoon which makes the evening shutdown even more difficult. 

I hope you are not offended with my suggestions to improve your otherwise excellent model; those of us in the field can often experience practical issues which may not have been considered important in the design phase. On that subject, there are a number of modifications which would greatly benefit Mother V2.0: an extra set of hands, larger reserves of patience and the ability to concurrently cook dinner, supervise a craft activity and negotiate a peace treaty to name but a few.

 Otherwise, I am very happy with both of my small child V1.0 although I regret to inform you that I will not be purchasing further copies.

 Yours humbly,

 Mrs A. Mother