Killing Christmas with Kindness

When the eldest child comes of age, there is a nasty job to be done. If like my son, the fantasy element runs strong and you passionately believe in dragons, magic, time travel, gremlins and vampire-zombie-mutant-house-pets, then this day may come later in life than for others. If you have a daily onslaught of fantasy play, fully supported by your brother, you are in the lucky position to let the force for suspending reality run strong and together commit to lengthy ongoing fantasy role play (latest one being an epic vampire-zombie-mutant- house-pet saga which involved the entire plastic animal collection strategically placed around the house, and the floor littered with the decapitated bodies of lego mini figures lying in their zombie attack crazed wake).

I often lament the lack of time I get to spend in the fantasy world these days as an adult, yet there comes a time when I must share the brutally truth of reality with them.They really do need to know some of the facts of life, even if to protect them from the teasing of other children.

That is why, this morning before work, I slaughtered Santa. The opportunity came up. And like all good assassins, I calmly took aim and fired.

The oldest child will always get the longest ride, as we try and protect the younger ones from losing their imag-innocence. But there needs to be some resilience building-shocks to the system, imparted in a safe and secure environment, where they can weep into the pillows for a few moments, as the dreams of flying reindeer, jovial chaps in bright colored britches,and bulging sacks full of every present on the planet dissolve into the murky pooled reality of a lifetime of parental lies.

He took it rather well. He actually admitted he did know the truth, all along, but he just refused to accept it, until Dad or I had confirmed the betrayal. (There’s my boy - denial in the face of overwhelming evidence is my personal M.O).

Its just like any other pretend game, I told him, once the tears had ceased. If you still play the game, Santa will keep bringing you a stocking.

I related the painful time I learned ‘the truth’. I was 5 years old and my older brother and sister sat me down and told me all about the great santa scam. Next they went straight to Mum and said ‘Gina knows all about Father Christmas, Mum’. Mum said ‘Thank God thats over’, and never made another stocking for me or any of my 5 siblings again.

5 years old!  We bonded over my obvious childhood neglect, despite the painful truth of his situation he could appreciate he’d had a good run.

He then suggested he could help me pull the wool over the eyes of the other children - join the giant conspiracy - and be santa's helper this year. We agreed, and he promised not to tell the others until they were at least 10 years old. We carried on into our day, him with the glint in his eye of having a secret to lord over everyone else. Welcome to the adult world, I thought. It’s all about haves and have-nots, those in the know and not ‘privi’ to the juicy bits.

I thought, Im glad thats over.

But, then I realised - It’s not for long though. How many more awful truths must I tell? What next on the hit list?

Exterminate the easter bunny and break the messy news on how babies are really made.

Random Cogitations at Dinner

The dinner conversations are just getting better and better.
Little Brother, a deep cogitator from way back particularly likes this forum to air some of his more, random ideas.  Its fascinating to see what inspires these discussions, everything from Skulduggery Pleasant, their latest reading material, to house insurance and mortgages. And their amazing school. I am constantly impressed by the random information they come home armed with. So much for just going to school to eat your lunch, like in the good old days.

"I can't wait until the world explodes!' he announced one night over carbonara.
'Really?; I asked, "Why is the world going to explode?" (Thinking - Did I miss something big in the news and mentally running through the state of the emergency kit.)
"The earth is actually moving one centimetre closer to the sun every year and one day its just going to get so close that BOOM!"
"Its going to be awesome!" he continued.
"Awesome" Big Brother corroborated. "BOOM!"
I figured we have enough time to restock the baked beans and muesli bars before that day, so I relaxed.
Pause. Then -
"Why aren't men allowed to be nuns?"

Another night he got onto the hot topic of our new mortgage. Its obviously given him cause for thought. He's been coming up with plans to pay it off but first he needs to understand how it works.
"When we've paid off the mortgage will we then be just saving money?"
I explained about just paying the interest at this stage. He knows we have 30 years to pay it off, and we might not have another holiday or any pocket money during that time.
"So we're not even paying the house off, we're just kind of renting it from ourselves?" he continues.
Pause.
"Can I give up blogging for lent?"

One night over corned beef he heard us talking about the insurance. That led to Insurance 101, and discussed home and contents, house and car insurance. The knowledge that if the house burns down we would claim the money back to build a new house was strangely inspiring to their tardis brains.
"Lets burn it down and then claim the money to pay off the mortgage!" was Big Brother's plan.
"I think you'll find thats illegal, the insurance company will find out and then you'll be a criminal"I advised.
Pause - while Little Brother looks for the loop hole.
"Can I get someone else to burn down our house, then they'll go to jail and I'll get all the insurance money?'
"Well, I think you'll find thats criminal activity too and you're going to need a good lawyer"
"Well," he continues, "I actually want to keep fit. I want to keep fit so I can keep skinny, so I can fit through the bars. Then I can solve all the crimes. And do the crimes."
"Whats a lawyer anyway?" he asked
I babbled something along the lines of "A lawyer is a person who argues one side of a case, say there would be a lawyer arguing in court that you didn't commit the crime of burning down the house, and there would be another lawyer arguing for the police that you did burn down the house. Then a judge and jury would decide if you were guilty or not guilty. "
I have a feeling arguing for a living would appeal to him.
Another pause.
"Mum, what body part would you have two of, if you could have two of something? Two heads? Or maybe four arms?"

New Year, New regime

Im not sure why I stopped blogging about these three offspring of ours. Days, weeks, months tick by, and there's lunch to be made, on demand telly to catch up on, and god forbid - work to go to in the morning.
Little Miss has grown up a lot. She's now a uniform wearing child of the formal education system. Five years old and after two weeks at school she's able to confidently proclaim - "God made the earth, Mum, and Bob the builder made the houses."
She is taking the independence-or-die-trying approach to finally ditching her mother at the school gates. Some days she won't let me enter the school front door.
"Shall I pick you up after school today?" I asked, like the jolly good chauffeur I am.
"No, I'm catching the bus home!'
"Would you like me to pick you up, today, though, since its your first day?"
"No! I'M CATCHING THE BUS HOME WITH THE BOYS!"
And so she did. The first few days I was rude enough to ask 'How was your day at school?" as she got off the bus.
"Don't ask me that !,' she wailed back, bursting into tears - "I hate it when you ask me that all the time."
She turned up in our room on Sunday morning at the end of week one, dressed in uniform and hair clips at 6am. 'Is it a school day today?" she asked
"Sorry darling, no school on sundays" I had to break it to her, then retreated quickly under the bedcovers.
Then there's the hairdos. First day she requested 3 plaits and seven hair clips for the starting fulltime education look. By day three I had to threaten she couldn't go to school if she didn't let me brush her hair. I'm not counting on that threat working for long. She pores over each school reader, desperate to read it.
Meanwhile the boys have been subjected to a rash of new regimes designed to be implemented at the dawn of the year, with the aim of making our lives smooth and efficient. They're not going that well. Ive brought in Cooking lessons - each child will learn to cook meals and at least help out once a week. We have baking Mondays - designed to have some nice time with my daughter who loves lick the bowl. Hopefully she might share some of her day with me over the cookie dough.
 We've got emptying the dishwasher duty and no tolerance regime to crimes of apple-core-discardment. I found two ends of a carrot under a cushion today so that regime may have been overthrown already. It all makes it feel like the holidays were a long time ago.
Little Brother made Carbonara tonight. He really enjoyed it, chatting away -"And you always tell us how hard it is to cook! We're not listening to you anymore! " he berated me.
 He informed me over the cheese grater that he really wanted to be a miner and find some gold flakes. Or a pirate (bigger pieces of gold).  And of course if he lived in Medieval times he'd like to be a Ranger. I said I'd like to be a medieval princess.
"Do you think it would be better to have a wooden foot, or a peg leg?" he continued.
"Well,  I think you'd trip over on a boat if you had a foot, a peg leg would be more practical"
"If I cut off my foot, would you get me a peg leg?"
"Sure, ok, maybe a prosthesis shaped like a blade that you could run on"
Grate. Grate.
"I think if I was a miner I'd cut off my leg and then put a pickaxe on my peg leg. That would be awesome, that way I could kick and use my hand pickaxe at the same time! I'm going to mine heaps of gold. And a diamond."
His announcement as he getting off the bus was that he'd like to start writing a blog. We got right onto that after dinner was devoured by the appreciative diners.
"What are you going to call your blog?" I asked
"My Blog!" - he'd obviously been thinking about this for a while.
"What happens if everyone on the planet - all 7 billion of us - all called our blogs my blog, how would we tell them apart? "
"Ok, I'll call it My Blog NZ, like the TV show The Block NZ"
But that name was taken.
So, instead, he called it  The Fire Sheep.

Significant changes

There have been a number of significant break throughs on the parenting front. More due to an aging child population than any specific parental genius, but I'll take my small victories wherever I can.
I no longer have to do up anyone's seatbelt. (I did say small victories - small but significant shifts in the fabric of our lives). For years the back seat of the car has been a minefield of straps and buckles, with up to three different apparatus to lock, position, wrestle, and close. Then you had to negotiate/manhandle the actual child into it. Sometimes the thought of getting everyone in car seats was enough to put me off venturing into the world. For days on end. But, no more. Now I sit in the front and wait, blocking my ears to the arguments.
We also have graduated to a people mover vehicle.  That is nothing at all to do with parenting, but it does allow us to transport others outside of our family of 5, and introduce them to the joys of car conversations, games and arguments. Yesterday when we were bringing Grandad home, Little Miss opened the conversation.
'Grandad' she called out, 'Grandad!'
'Yes dear?'
'Grandad - you're old'.
"Grandad, you are old.'
Grandad, you are SUPER old.'
It was a one way conversation, but then, that is her speciality.
Another change is the loss of knowledge superiority. It's not a total wipe out, but in certain areas of knowledge they have passed me. This means our car games of 20 questions and I-spy have progressed to something of an intellectual challenge. We have categories of colours, real and visible, real but in my mind's eye, and full-on imaginary. Which is ok assuming I have a greater knowledge base than the kids, and we are on a really long car trip.
Big Brother -  "I spy with my little eye something that is green."
We were driving through the King Country at the time so I thought it was a shoo-in. Everything is a kaleidoscope of green, so I went through the list. Not grass, not tree, not leaf, and eventually I gave in. Apparently, Big brother the botanist had spotted a single specimen of muehlenbeckia, 40 kms back.
'Ohh' said Little Brother, knowledgeably, 'Good one'.
'I don't even know what that is!' I cried.
'It helps grow sand dunes'
'You should have gone to our school, Mum.'

Shouty Shouty

Oh how I wish I was one of those Mum's who serenely steers the ship of calmness through the choppy waters of family life. I would like to say I am the master of my inner shouty monster, but I would be lying.
Listening to the kids when they are playing nicely I feel happy to claim some credit via the role modelling I have done. However when it goes to custard, and things get all Shouty-Shouty, I am forced to admit I probably had a primary role in modelling that behaviour also.
Little Miss is a particularly faithful copier of my behaviour and perhaps that is it's taken me so long to notice my yelling.  The boys simply ignore me and I yell louder. Then they ignore me more and I yell louder. (when I put it like that the cycle becomes quite obvious).
But these days when I have to shout to be heard, Little Miss immediately shouts back at me, then turns to the boys and repeats the instruction over and over again.  She increases the effect by getting steadily louder and moving right up infront of them until she is yelling in their face. The boys yell back simply to be heard over the cacophony. It's like living in a cavern system with digital enhancement.
She also copies my tone of voice, or anything the boys say that gets a reaction.
'This dinner looks like snot' Big Brother says
One look will effectively shut him up, but Little Miss, the piranha of attention,  goes into repeat mode.
'Snot, Snot, I don't like snot. This looks like snot. I don't like eating snot. Why do I have to eat more snot than the boys. It's not fair!'
By that time I hit the decibel chart right up top.
 'It's NOT SNOT!'I yell, then add quietly attempting too late to be graceful ' It's frittata.'

Into battle I go

Parenting 101 - Choose your battles, I keep reminding myself. Unfortunately the battle that keeps choosing me is Little Miss vs swimming lessons.
It started with the trickle down effect. Big Brother had a scare when he was little and didn't want to put his head under. He got it within a few lessons. Little Brother watched Big Brother performing and decided that putting his head under was not going to happen. He took half a term for the teacher to crack and now spends more time under the water than above it. Little Miss 4 years old, watched both boys resist, though, and has been following their example for 3 terms now. I cant decide if she's actually worried about water, (hard to believe that when she waves gleefully as soon as she's actually in there) or maybe she's just extremely perverse. I fear it is the latter. There is an innate resistance to being told what to do.
It might be to do with my inconsistent battle plan. At times I have been taking the positive reinforcement tack, 'Well done, darling, you put your little toe in! amazing!'. Other times I've gone hard core 'If you cry I will sit outside'.  I've tried explaining the 10, 000 hours to be an expert theory. I've been good cop 'Just do what you can', and I've been bad cop 'If you dont get in that pool I will pick you  up and put you in.' ( FYI, bad cop only induces masses of parental guilt, I can't recommend it).  I've begged, bribed, removed Peppa Pig privileges, given the boys lashings of chocolates. I've told her she needs to be able to swim if she wants to come with us on our sailing trip around the world. Its put your head under, or boarding school. I'm embarrassed to read back and remember these things, but there it is, proof I'm no expert at parenting.
What's also hard to admit is my motivation for wanting her to bloody-well-get on with it.  Is it that I just want her to hurry up and learn so we can move onto clashing about something else equally unimportant in the scheme of things? Is this the blueprint for our relationship - driving lessons, me giving gruff advice on her future partner and parenting choices? I certainly don't want our relationship to develop into the epic recurring world championships of me vs. her.
Perhaps it is that I am tired of coaxing children into the swimming pool, considering I've been doing it 1,2, sometimes 3 times a week for 5 years.  Spending two hours a week beside a pool is not what you dream of when planning the nursery.
Perhaps it is because I absolutely love swimming, and want her to share the joy/pursue the  Olympic career of my dreams (Tiger Mum alert!) There's not many Gold Medals given out for doggy paddle.
Back to Parenting 101, though, my analysis and conclusion is this - I really need to chill out. It is not my responsibility to push, cajole and harange her, encourage or persuade, inspire and teach her - not while she is in the pool, anyway. Thats what I pay the teacher for. He will get her there, I have full faith.  I need to choose my battles more carefully. Next week I'm taking my reading book and letting her get on with it. Even at 4, she needs her autonomy and space to make her own decisions, and pushing her will only result in her pushing back. Better save my energy for bigger battles.

The Joy of the Upper Hand

Parenting is a tight rope walk, balancing the adoration of unconditional love with the sheer inconvenience of being utterly and totally responsible for another human being, or three. The job description - a blue line - is fiercely inadequate, inbox is fathomless, there are precise requirements for what goes in to what comes out, responsibilities cover from what and how organic/trendy it's clothed in, to how functional it's internal parts are, status of emotional well being, and whether you're banking on a Hutt Valley High, or Harvard.  Even when these children aren't immediately in the vicinity of your being, they constitute a constant worry.  They are a whop-arse can of hassle.
Many, including myself,  would say it's worth it, of course, for the love. The joy, the love, the way they snuggle into your innermost heart and stimulate a flood of love-a-mones from that primeval set of neurons set to recognising and adoring a miniature yet cooler version of yourself.  For the egotistical, there is always the small possibility, the chance, the far flung idea that your reconstituted set of genetics and nurturing attention to organic reusable nappies and omega-3 may just bring forth the next Mandela/Sam Morgan/Lorde.
For the vestigual child in me, though, there are times when it's just so good to get my own back.  Even with my own children. Those little victories that remind me that I still have the upper hand, that the slave is also the master. Some examples?
I guess banana mixed with avocado mush food for a baby was one of my first small twinges of joy. Huh! Spot the veges in that! (That's for keeping me up all night.)
Confiscating their Halloween sweets (too much sugar for those precious teeth) and then scoffing them all in the bath after they've gone to bed at night.
Convincing them that the TV only works on rainy days.
As they get older they learn about electricity grids and suchlike, but that only increases the challenges of maintaining the percieved upper hand. I'm not unkind or autocratic about it. I love and respect their autonomy and ability, right from the start, to be masters of their own destiny, and people in their own right.
However I was rather thrilled the other night with a small victory in this miniature and imagined arena - I'm still patting myself on the back while chuckling at my slyness. For it is the stuff of legends - I am she, the Mum who convinced her happy children that desert consisted of a chocolate treat when it was also, and actually, a worm tablet.