Too Many Children
« Previous EntriesHow do you deal with such bad behavior in a five year old?
Friday, November 9th, 2007It’s been a dreadful week, culminating in all four of us crying at some point on the school run this morning, Harry because he didn’t want to go to school, Ben because I insisted on holding his hand on the road to stop him from throwing himself in front of a car, William because he felt caught in the anger-crossfire that punctuated every other minute of this morning’s preparation for school and me out of frustration when it was all over.
Everything in our family life feels out of kilter at the moment. Harry bounds out of school in the afternoon saying he’s had a good day but by the following morning he is tearful, dragging his heels over getting ready, saying he doesn’t want to go to school and behaving really dreadfully, making me lose my patience over and over. Then more tears when we get to the classroom, clinging, begging to go home. By the time I have dropped him at school I feel like I have been through an assault course, physically and mentally.
On top of that, I don’t know what’s happened to my lovely boy. I don’t know where he’s gone. I don’t know if school has made him like this or whether it’s just a (very bad) phase. I feel at my wit’s end with his kicking, punching, screaming, answering back and bad attitude. I’m tired and very stressed. We all are.
Something has to give. But if it’s not school that’s making him like this (although I’m fairly certain it is) and we remove him from school, what then? We’ve taken him out of school unnecessarily.
After six years, you’d have thought I had this parenting thing sussed but then another new challenge comes along making me feel completely incompetent. I try to remember that like all challenges before, this too shall pass. And, as always, I should give it just a bit longer to see if it resolves itself. But I’m going to lose my sanity before it does.
Subscribe Via Email OR
Subscribe Via RSS
OR
5 Comments »
Posted in Homeschooling and School, Too Many Children
Morning rush hour
Wednesday, October 17th, 2007I pause at the garage door, boots on, coat and hat pulled tight, and look up at the ominous sky. It’s still dark and more than a little bit foreboding even though I know our walk like the back of my hand and even though I know sunrise will be here within a few minutes. Yesterday the field was subsumed by thick fog, rendering me blind beyond my own fingertips. The dog, familiar with every bump in the terrain and being blessed with better senses bounded ahead, unafraid of the white wall ahead of us. Today no fog, but the rain starts to fall thick and heavy. The thick mud will be slippery enough that I will lose my footing at least once, sending me painfully over and making me flush with embarrassment and annoyance even though no-one is around to see me. As I step away from the shelter of the door, the wind blows stinging rain into my eyes and cold air down anywhere my coat is not glued to my skin. I haven’t even set off yet I long to be back, hot cup of coffee in my hands.
As I reach the gate my thickly-gloved fingers struggle with the latch. I look back at the house, lit up like a Christmas tree, lights twinkling in the rain. I see Harry, fresh from sleep and energised in the way only small boys can be, shouting and running up the hallway like a demented creature, his face distorted in the wet glass. I see William, with a twelve hour night of sleep acting as catalyst, clinging to Matthew’s legs in a dawn rugby tackle. I see Ben sobbing over the latest toddler injustice, building his daily list of grievances that we can neither anticipate nor solve. I see Matthew looking exasperated, cross and defeated in just one facial expression.
I pull my hat down against the wind and smile smugly because I know at this point of the morning, despite the cold and the rain, I definitely have the better job.
Subscribe Via Email OR
Subscribe Via RSS
OR
No Comments »
Posted in Too Many Children, Daily Life
More ice for my balls
Thursday, August 31st, 2006Over the summer I have been taking both my eldest boys to speech therapy. I was dreading loading all three into a hot, sweaty car on a hot, sweaty day when all of them would probably rather be in bed, comatose with exhaustion from occupying each other for a whole morning. And also when I would probably rather be in bed, comatose with exhaustion from occupying them for a whole morning.
But much of the summer has been halted by rain and the Wednesday afternoon speech therapy has been a welcome diversion from the joy they have trying to kill each other in slow time. Last week however it was sunny and the boys wanted to go to speech therapy as much as I wanted to have them home for the summer ALL OVER AGAIN so I dragged them, flailing like Kate Bush dancing in one of her eighties videos (them not me), into the car and off to the hospital. We had twenty two minutes of moaning and shrieking, alternated like an ambulance two-tone siren for maximum effect, followed by seven minutes (and I was counting by this stage) of refusing to get out of the car, nimbly bypassed by the promise of seeing the dirty, old drunk man that had graced us with his sweaty presence the previous week (they could see he was dirty, but they mistook his mental illness for drunkeness which would be a fair point except I’m wondering how they actually knew about drunkeness given that nobody in our house drinks at the moment, although god knows I’ve thought about drinking two bottles of red wine straight down without stopping in the hope that I might sleep, or the baby might sleep, or preferably both). So I took another two minutes to explain how some people had a problem in the head and that it made them act funny.
We made it into the waiting room. ‘Where’s the drunk then Mummy?’ Eldest Son asks too loudly. ‘I don’t know and remember, he was a poorly man, please don’t talk like that.’ ‘I’ll wait for the smell to come then I’ll know he’s here,’ he says sniffing the air for confirmation of the man’s absence. The receptionist looks at me with pity. You poor mother with too many children, what were you thinking, have you not encountered birth control? her look says. My look back probably said something like, you’ve NO idea what my day has been like so far, don’t look at me like that or I may be forced to tell my children, ‘I bet that nice lady would love to tell you all about what happens at a doctor’s office’. Or it would have if I’d had the courage to look her way.
Sam our speech therapist, a lovely, young and very patient woman came to get us. The boys adore Sam, she smiles indulgently at their silly behaviour but I feel like saying, you’ve no idea what my day has been like so far, don’t smile at them because it makes them worse, but it’s to no avail because now they’re hyped up like dogs locked the wrong side of a door from a bitch on heat and not only that, but now they have An Audience. The session starts well but soon deteriorates as the heat rises and their attention spans drop. Soon, everything she asks them to do is greeted with a silly comment or action. I take them aside repeatedly and tell them to behave. Eventually I threaten them with the Big Guns: behave or Lightning McQueen gets it. I’m reduced to using a Disney Character to discipline my children. I feel like weeping. Or drinking those two bottles of wine.
‘But we just being silly Mummy.’ No kidding.
After ten minutes even Sam realises today is a lost cause and begins to wind things up. She tells me what we need to work on before next week. We are, jointly, teaching the children to lisp in order to get rid of their speech impediment. How’s that for a solution! I don’t have a lot of faith in this but she’s the expert and without it, the way things are going, they’re going to grow up to sound like Sean Connery: ‘More ishe for my ballsh, Missh Moneypenny.‘ So I listen with one eye and watch the children with the other because with the din they are making my ears are rendered useless. The baby decides he has had enough milk and lets me know by biting me in an attempt to tear the nipple off my boob so he can consume it whole and in the process burps long and loudly enough for us all to hear. I look down and see rivulets of posset dripping down my stomach.
For a moment I sit there with my head bowed. I wonder whether I can tie all three up, bundle them like firewood, put them under my arm and get out without having to look Sam in the eye. When I look up, Second Son William is starting to pull his trousers down. ‘William, wait,’ I implore. ‘Do you need to go to the loo?’. He is looking at Sam, oblivious to my question. He pulls his underwear down. ‘Stop,’ I’m shouting now, envisaging having to drag him back through reception to the bathroom with his bottom half naked. But no, he stands there, in his full glory, pauses for a moment for effect then with both hands he scratches long and satisfyingly between his legs like a monkey.
I am mortified. I feel weak with parenting-exhaustion. I want to crawl up in a hole and die. So I do what any self-respecting mother would do and I laugh. I laugh uncontrollably. Until tears are running from my eyes and I remember how I should be doing more pelvic floor exercises.
And when I look across at Sam her eyes say it all, ‘If I ever thought about whether or not I might have children you’ve made up my mind for me.’
And just then, I might have wished I was the person I was before I had so many children too. But I was laughing too hard.
Subscribe Via Email OR
Subscribe Via RSS
OR
8 Comments »
Posted in Parenting, Too Many Children
Surviving the summer
Monday, July 17th, 2006There is one week until the summer break and I’m dreading it, incrementally, by the hour. I’m relying on getting together with friends to share the sheer and utter joy that will be Having Our Children At Home All Day. These friends will be chosen carefully for their child-load: parents with at least two preschool boys or three or more preschool girls are on the same level as me in terms of Desperation for Things To Do and also in terms of How Much Energy and Hard Work the Children Are and therefore there will be the unspoken agreement that we will be willing to take on each other for a fun-filled day of noise and tantrums.
The headteacher at my sons’ preschool dreads me asking again whether or not she would consider running a holiday club. I know she won’t because most of the teachers at the school have their own, older, children but I’m grasping at straws. She has that look of a rabbit caught in the headlights when I turn up at the school gate and sometimes I let her relax by asking about something totally unrelated, like my son’s speech therapy sessions or isn’t it politically incorrect to teach my children about Indians rather than Native Americans? before I jump in with my daily request about a holiday club.
So I am preparing to go into survival mode. With not enough in the way of toddler friendly things to do around here I have stocked up on craft items, second hand toys from the preschool’s fundraiser and other such parent approved stuff, but mostly on water guns and chocolate treats to bribe them with when all of my best-laid plans fail. I am praying for continued good weather so the garden will be their home (day and night if I can persuade them that the tent with the cold hard floor is their friend), but also hoping it will be just a little cooler, weather gods if you are reading, because, my God!, it is so fecking hot and the baby is beyond misery: tetchy, itchy, eczematous and heat-rash rashy. I love him dearly but, also my God!, not at the moment.
Meanwhile I am making the most of the two mornings a week when it is just me and the baby to go shopping, to write and, when I am feeling more virtuous, to Get Stuff Done. Sometimes this means chores, less often it is very important things like remembering to register my son for big school. My sleep-deprived-induced-confusion at moments like this makes me say things like What? I Have A Son? And He’s School Age? But, indeed, in September Eldest Son starts big school and Second Son will be going to preschool five days a week. I signed him up for three days a week last Christmas but as his behaviour at home has become increasingly more, um what’s the word I’m looking for? oh yes, HIDEOUS, so his number of days at preschool has been extended.
I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to this. If the summer break is my endurance test then Autumn Term will be my reward.
Now I just need to find a pre-school that will take the six-month-old.
Subscribe Via Email OR
Subscribe Via RSS
OR
6 Comments »
Posted in Parenting, Too Many Children
Ten minutes
Wednesday, June 14th, 2006So I’ve decided to stop wallowing in self-pity and to get on with Life. I chose this path, right? So I should just suck it up and get on with it. And the baby? Oh, well I’m going to pop him in the cot in the corner and leave him to work out how to entertain himself and get himself to sleep, because clearly he has too much attention. Too much, you hear? While he’s there he’ll probably learn to scrabble around for a few crumbs that fell in there when the children climbed all over it, because he’ll be wondering if he’ll even get fed, right? What was I thinking, spoiling him like that? Okay so now that’s clear, I can spend all my time with you, blogging. Or reading tat celebrity magazines. And there’ll be no stopping me because the baby will be crying but I’ll be doing what makes me happy and that’s much more important.
And I must learn to see the humour in things. CareerGirl has two children close together and gets depressed staying at home so has another, stays at home some more and gets depressed again! You couldn’t make this stuff up!
Boy, I’ve got this chippy thing down to a fine art!
I’ve had some sleep. And until yesterday, the weather has been fantastic, almost too good. Wish-I’d-had-a-pedicure-and-lost- all-that-pregnancy-fat weather. So my sense of humour and ability to keep things in proportion has been somewhat restored. I’m not at a stage where I need antidepressants. What I need is a better balance in life. Meds would just make me happier about the fact that I don’t have a good balance in life. I need someone to provide support, an extra pair of hands round the house, someone adult to alleviate the constant background noise of whining, crying and shouting that is life with three small children. I need ten minutes to myself each day.
After all, I can’t be expected to read about Brad Pitt’s baby in anything except concentrated solitude.
Subscribe Via Email OR
Subscribe Via RSS
OR
16 Comments »
Posted in Too Many Children, Post-Partum Depression
« Previous Entries