Don’t lie to me

Any parent worth their weight in low sodium salt would probably agree, that children should be brought up knowing that it’s wrong to lie. Especially to their parents. But teaching this particular right from wrong can be tricky, especially when trying to push the message home to your child often entails telling a whole range of elaborate and complicated lies to begin with.

Believe it or not, the reason that we lie to our children in this way even has a name.  It’s called ‘Parenting by lying’.

So why do we even lie to begin with? Mainly to shield our children from the harsh reality of the world, and to protect their innocence for as long as humanly possible. Children already have quite enough on their plate, trying to get a grasp on their own tiny world, without also needing the complete low down on war, death, natural disasters and the wonders of childbirth.

We also lie to encourage their imagination; to teach them how to fabricate new worlds and interesting characters in their heads, so that they in turn will grow up to concoct intricate tales to tell their own kids.

And of course there are also those lies that we tell because we don’t know the answer to a question, or because we have already lied once, and have to carry on just cover our tracks. And those lies, that if the truth be told, just make our day-to-day life that little bit easier.

Oh what a tangled web we do weave.

“I’ll know if you’re lying to me” is a classic parenting approach that I often use myself.

Of course I won’t know, so that’s a lie for starters. All I’ll actually be doing is fine-tuning my Mummy Radar, making an educated guess and relying heavily on the fact that my trusting daughter still believes that I know everything that she does, says, thinks and feels.

Like a lamb to the slaughter, I’ve seen the fleeting look of panic pass through her eyes when employing this rather underhand tactic. I can hear her brain frantically ticking over as she quickly tries to weigh up whether she’ll be in more trouble for having finished off all of the biscuits, or for pretending that she hasn’t even been near the tin.

Luckily for her on that particular occasion, as she stood there with the last biscuit hidden behind her back, good sense prevailed. She confessed, apologised and promptly offered to make me a cup of tea. To go along with the last surviving biscuit.

Good sense wasn’t even in the vicinity however the time that she blamed her baby brother for the cup of juice spilt all over the floor. The fact that the ‘accused’ was strapped into his bouncer on the other side of the room, and come to think of it, unable to do anything more than wobble, didn’t exactly help her case. As I watched her suddenly clock her serious lack of judgement, the part of me that wasn’t telling her off actually wanted to take pity and explain that there’s no point telling a porky in the first place, if your story doesn’t even stack up.

Maybe I felt sorry for her because I’m probably to blame in the first place. After all, I’ve already shaped her whole childhood with white lies, fiction and complete fantasy. It’s what parents do.

It starts straight out of the womb. As babies they howl and cry. So we jig them around, rub their backs and say “It’s OK, it’s OK” over and over again.

“No it’s not OK”, the babies are probably thinking. “My tummy’s sore, my nappy’s full and quite frankly I’m starting to feel sick from all this bloody rocking”.

From that moment on the lies come thick and fast, tripping off our tongues like seasoned politicians.

Firstly there are those lies that fall into the category of far fetched and thinly veiled threats – If you don’t eat your vegetables you won’t grow up to be big and strong. If you eat your carrots you’ll see in the dark.  If you eat your crusts your hair will go curly. If you don’t look after your toys I’ll throw them away. If you hear the ice cream van playing a tune, it’s run out of ice cream. If you say another word you won’t get dinner. If you don’t go to sleep you’ll never wake up tomorrow. If you don’t stop that now I’ll take you straight home. I won’t tell you again.

And my personal favourite – Mummy’s can’t hear when they’re sleeping.

Then there are the 5 main brush off lies that I’m sure most parents tell on average at least 10 times a day.

I’ll think about it – loosely translated to mean ‘It ain’t ever going to happen’
We’ll see – loosely translated to mean  ‘You’ll have forgotten in a few hours’
Maybe – loosely translated to mean  ‘Never, never, never going to happen’
I’m listening loosely translated to mean  ‘I’m not even remotely interested’
I’ll be there in a minute  – loosely translated to mean ‘I’ll be there in half an hour when I’ve finished whatever it is I’m doing’

And then there are the Mother of All Lies. The ones that involve a fairy collecting teeth, a bunny dropping off chocolate eggs and a large fat man squeezing himself down the chimney (regardless of whether you have one or not) and leaving a suspicious looking package at the end of your bed.

That last one is actually the stuff of nightmares, is you leave out the flying reindeer and the ‘Ho Ho Ho’. After all, we drill into our kids the danger of talking to strangers, particularly big, bad men. And then we tell them that if they are good, one will be coming into their bedroom late at night and watching them while they sleep. Probably the worst case of mixed messages if ever I heard one.

But of all the lies, the best one that we parents have up our sleeves must be the one regarding those clever little eyes we have in the back of head. This one works especially well when you have as many mirrors in your house as we do. In some parts of our home I really can see round corners, and that includes the fridge, the food cupboard and the biscuit tin.

A few years ago, quite out of the blue, the very existence of my second set of eyes was even confirmed.

My daughter and I went for our visa medical check up, and the doctor in question was giving my eyes the once over with a torch. “So how are my other set of eyes?” I asked him, with a straight face and a hidden smirk. “The ones in the back of your head?” he asked immediately “Oh those look fine too”.

My daughters face was a picture. A mixture of complete disbelief and total awe. “Would you like me to check your other eyes too? he asked my daughter. “But I don’t have any,” she said.”Oh but you do,” he replied “everyone has them, they just don’t work properly until you have your own children”.

He peered into her eyes. “Yes, yours are growing quite nicely.” he confirmed.

My daughter was practically buzzing with excitement when we left the surgery. “I never really believed you Mummy, but the doctor saw mine growing so it MUST be true.” God bless child friendly doctors, they earn every penny and more.

That was of course only a harmless little white lie, the sort which are sometimes said just to be kind. But where I wonder do you draw the line, and how can you teach kids to know the difference between those lies that are ‘OK’ and those that will be categorised as a ‘lifetime grounded to the bedroom’ type offense?

Like when Mummy asks how she looks in her new dress, obviously it’s best not to tell her that her bottom looks like the back end of a bus. Or that the dinner she spent hours cooking tasted horrible. Or that Daddy is definitely loved more because he shouts less.

Needless to say I’m dreading the day that my children find out Father Christmas is just Daddy, a red suit and 3 cushions. Or that the lost teeth that were supposed to become stars, ended up at the back of my jewelery box. Or worse still, that the Christmas Elf that follows them around and watches their every move from October onwards doesn’t actually exist.

Oh how my life isn’t going to be worth living, not least because my daughter (who always likes to state the obvious) will undoubtedly be very quick to point out that not only has her life been one long lie, but I’m the one that’s been telling them.

I feel my payback may be right around the corner, just about the time when the hormones kick in.

Hot, hairy and bothered

This morning I inflicted the most terrible trauma on my unsuspecting 2 year old. He was coaxed, totally unaware into the shopping mall and then lured through the barbers door, using an apple scroll (lovely cake from Bakers Delight) as bait. Poor little thing, he didn’t stand a chance.

The first wail came out before I could even extract one arm from his harness. By the time I had completely unbuckled him, he was enforcing all laws of gravity to keep his bottom as firmly wedged into his stroller as possible. By the time he was pinned onto my lap, wrapped in a Wiggles cape and in front of the mirror, his lungs were working at their full capacity. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t peaceful. It certainly wasn’t fun, but what’s a mother to do?

With an incredibly thick head of hair, a troublesome double crown and sideburns that can leave him looking rather Hobbit-like, if left for too long, I had no choice but to ambush him and instruct someone to take a pair of scissors to his mop.

Of course the more I pinned him to me, the more he wriggled. The tighter I had to grip, the more he cried. The more tears that flowed, the wetter his face became, and within 5 minutes he had so much hair stuck to his face that his place on the evolutionary pecking order was becoming increasingly questionable. Even the apple scroll, normally perfect for bribery, didn’t do the trick. He clutched a piece in his hand, squished it through his fingers and refused to either eat it or part with it. Just as well really, as it was fast taking on the form of a hair ball, and would have proved a little tricky to swallow.

To say I was slightly warm and sweaty by this stage would be something of an understatement. I was certainly regretting wearing my new pair of cream trousers for the event, be it that my legs would now have looked more at home on a well groomed Shetland pony. Yet despite all of this, whilst I am normally the sort of person prone to panic attacks whenever stress rears it’s head in my vicinity,  for once, I was actually able to maintain my composure. Maybe because I knew that to have a complete meltdown at this point would have finished us all off, and after all, he really was crying quite enough for the 2 of us.

Obviously I felt incredibly mean throughout the ordeal. Hearing your child beg for freedom is never nice, but as with all battle of wills, if I backed down every time and gave in, I’d have to kiss goodbye to him ever listening to me again. That aside, we’d also had to have left with another lop-sided cut, leading to possible teasing in the playground and the subsequent years later spent in therapy as a result.

Thankfully the woman with the scissors was everything you could ever ask for given the situation. She was experienced, calm, patient and most importantly of all, good-humoured. She somehow managed to hold his head still long enough to cut around his face, eyes and ears without removing any of the skin attached. She moved around him, snipping as she went and smiling the whole time. No doubt her teeth were gritted as she smiled, but at least she gave the illusion of being happy. Even the continuous blood curdling screams that were unsurprisingly alarming other customers and potentially losing the place any new passing trade, failed to stop her in her mission.

Now after the last place we had been, this was such a relief that had I not been holding an irate, hairy eel on my lap, I might just have relaxed a little at finding someone so good. The last girl who attempted to cut his hair had been so young and useless, she sent him out with uneven sides, a tuft on top and something that looked suspiciously like a mullet.  “It will look better when it’s wet”, she assured me.  It didn’t. It looked worse, far worse. After I got him home and shrieked for a good 5 minutes about how awful it looked, as I unsuccessfully tried to pin the tufts down with a comb, I was forced to get out my own scissors and corner him while he ate his tea. Needless to say he was less than amused.

Finally this latest cut was complete, and I’m pleased to say that the end result was definitely worth all the fuss. My son was dusted off and settled back into his stroller. He beamed up at me as he victoriously waved the remaindered of the apple scroll in the air, obviously believing that he had won the battle and finally got his own. I was just glad to be out of there and able to hear again. Win-win all round.

A waiting mother sympathised with me on the way out. “My son was just like that” she told me, “its a nightmare I know, but there’s nothing you can do.”

“How long did it last?” I asked, already  suspecting what the answer would be.

“Oh until he was 4″ she replied.

Marvelous. Just what I wanted to hear. Only 2 more years to go, or perhaps I just grow out his locks, rename him Samantha and start saving for the therapist instead.

instead.

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The 7 year old Sloth

According to my daughter’s encyclopedia, the sloth, which moves at the rate of just 15–30 cm every minute, has earned the title of being the slowest of all mammals.

I’m afraid I’d have to disagree with that. There is in fact another mammal with an average speed that covers only half of that distance in at least twice the time – and I actually have one living under my very own roof. What on earth can this sluggish creature be I hear you cry? A 7 year old child of course.

Why children slow down so much by the time they reach this age remains a mystery to many. It’s almost as if they start to slowly wind down as they creep closer to puberty, a biological necessity perhaps, to prepare them for the many years of hibernation that lay ahead under a festering duvet.

By the time they are 7, their ears have all but sealed over and their sense of speed has as good as vanished. Their every action is carried out in slow motion and even the simplest of tasks can be simply too painful to behold. They move at a speed that makes a snail look positively hoon-like and they make watching paint dry seem like an extreme sport.

Of course it wasn’t always this way. As toddlers they took both hands, a set of reins and a series of complicated adult proof baby gates to keep them from running at breakneck speed into, over and under everything in sight. You spent your every waking minute telling them to slow down, get down and lie down.  Then the years passed and they stretched and grew. All of a sudden the only part of them that ever really picks up any momentum is their jaw, as they fight to always try and get the last word in.

Take my daughter for example. When told to go to bed it can take her a good 10 minutes to cross a totally unobstructed room, with that time being broken down roughly as follows:

At least a minute to hear and register what I have said. Another to find her feet under the cushions. A couple more spent stroking the dog on her way off the chair. A pit stop at the window to study and comment on a ball that she has suddenly spotted in the garden. A few more spent tidying up her pencil pot on the table. Another minute to clean up the contents of her pencil sharpener, which were ‘accidentally’ spilled on the floor, and then the last few minutes spent popping her head back around the corner of the door like a meerkat cat, while she desperately thinks of something to say that might delay the inevitable for a little longer.

In fact any activities involving my daughter (who has less urgency about her than a squirrel in winter) seem to take at least 5 times longer than they should. Brushing her teeth for example. 35 minutes it took one day. Why so long to flick a toothbrush over her gum’s, spread toothpaste around the entire basin and drip water all the way back across the floor? Well that would be because she had decided to clean and polish the soap dish and bath with her towel.

Yet to give credit where credit is due, quite bizarrely on other days she takes it upon herself to get up and dressed, feed herself breakfast and bring in the washing off the line (she said she saw a dark cloud moving our way), and all before my alarm clock has even drawn it’s first breath.

If only she could harness the energy she reserves for the playground and use it for everyday chores, maybe then we wouldn’t have to race down the road every morning with toast crumbs flying, or reach the end of another day with a monumental battle of wills and the sound of small feet stomping away from the dinner table in silent protest.

Undoubtedly the worst part about having your child turn into a sloth is that it automatically turns you, the parent into a parrot. You find yourself repeating everything you say at least half a dozen times, nagging becomes an art form and by the time you get to the end of the day even you are sick of hearing yourself saying ‘Come on’, ‘Hurry up‘ and ‘How long can it take to put on a pair of shoes?‘

Every night when I look at her sleeping in her bed, peaceful, angelic and for the first time that day, quiet, it makes me stop and think. I tell myself that the next day I will try to remain patient and relaxed, I will refrain from repeating myself and stop myself from expecting the impossible to happen.

Then the morning comes and 10 minutes after getting her out of bed I find her still sat on her bedroom floor in her pj’s, carefully rearranging her Polly Pocket collection while her cereal sits untouched in the other room, fast losing all of its snap, crackle and pop.  As the school siren goes my calm dissolves, my eyebrows raise and my inner parrot is once again firmly back in control.

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Down with those Dolls

When you have children I don’t think that you ever really believe that you are going to start thinking like a parent, let alone like your own parent. Yet it happens, and I have to say that for me, the move from young and freethinking to old and paranoid is happening an awful lot sooner than I ever thought it would.

One of my biggest worries these days is making sure my daughter remains a child for as long as possible. In this fast changing world children are now bombarded with too much information and encouraged to grow up and face facts long before they are even ready to leave the Lego behind. Cosmetic companies now target the Tween market with make up for minors, little girl’s wardrobes now mirror their Mummies and mobile phones have replaced stickers as the must have in the playground.

Of course change is inevitable and for the most part, change is good. No one can dispute that the internet has opened up a whole new world, a world which children can now explore from the safety of their own home. But with the good change comes the bad, and the 24/7 exposure to all those things that we as children were so protected from. The sex, sleaze and violence on TV and the dodgy websites that are enough to burst any childhood bubble and catapult a young and impressionable mind into the unknown before they are ready.

Now personally I don’t care what TV or society tells us is the norm, or how Brittany or Paris behave. There is no way I want my daughter looking or dressing beyond her 7 years, or behaving as if she’s old enough to drive a car, when she’s still young enough to play with dolls. I won’t let my daughter go out dripping in jewellery, cover her face with makeup or totter around in anything with a heel higher than a trainer. I won’t let her wear skin tight off the shoulder tops or sport a gem stone in her bellybutton.

Does this now make me old fashioned? Do I care? Of course I don’t. I’m her Mother and that’s what Mothers are there to do.

So because I am battling to keep her young and naive I have to say that I have a real issue with those bloody Pussycat Dolls. Or more to the point I have a real problem with my daughter knowing who they are. A group of girls who have taken the radio and MTV by storm, all kitted out in head to toe from the Ann Summers catalogue and performing dance routines straight out of a sleazy backstreet strip club. I ask you, could there be a worse set of role models for a whole generation of little girls who now aspire to be just like them?

Am I the only one who thinks that these girls thrusting their over enhanced cleavage into the camera lens while singing.. ” When I grow up, I wanna be famous, I wanna be a star, I wanna be in movies, Be on TV, People know me, be on magazines “ is the very last thing you want your little girl seeing, let alone trying to copy?

I know that if you admit any of the above these days you are likely to be accused of being unrealistic, of not accepting that this is ‘just how it is these days’. But I don’t care. The world may have changed drastically since I was her age, but that doesn’t mean I am suddenly going to lose all my senses and let her dress like a child sized slapper, dance like a stripper or cruise around shopping centers with giant hoop earrings, a diamonte studded handbag and a mobile phone surgically attached to her ear.

Maybe as she reaches double figures and out grows her ‘My Little Pony’ she won’t thank me for trying to keep the big bad world at bay. No doubt we will come to serious blows about what she can and can’t do and she will declare that she ‘never asked to be born’. Yes, given her already strong character and love of all things ‘High School Musical’ I would say that there is a strong possibility that this will happen.

But I would also put money on it that one day, regardless of how the world may have changed and moved on, when she has her own little girl stood right there infront of her she will do, think and act just the same way that I do today, and she will then thank me for being the uncaring, unfashionable mum that just doesn’t get it.

Battle of the baby sexes

Recently I was asked one of those questions that few people dare ask and even fewer wish to answer. A mother (of boys) asked me if it is true that parents of girls look down their noses at noisy little boys and believe them all to be badly behaved and completely undisciplined.

Why ask me? Having learnt that I had one of each, she obviously felt that I would be able to give an unbiased answer. Whether or not she expected an honest one I don’t know, but seeing as she was quite happy to ask a question that put me well and truly on the spot,  I thought she in turn turn deserved the truth.

And the truth is yes, for the most part they probably do.

This unspoken snobbery amongst parents of girls, whilst rarely admitted out loud has always been there. An assumption that their head to toe clad pink princess simply has to be cleaner, smarter, better behaved and without a shadow of a doubt a far nicer child than that unkempt little testosterone fueled terror on the other side of the playground. The one wearing his breakfast and trying to bury his head in the sand.

Deny it if you want all you mothers of Eve, but this is true. I know because up until the arrival of my own son, I also believed that many boys were the root of all undisciplined evil. I admit I could never understand why their parents didn’t just rein them in, shut them up and get them under some sort of control.

And then I had Sam. He learnt to walk, discovered his independence and only looked back when he was laughing at me. Finally it all became clear why girls and boys are so different, and surprisingly it had nothing to do with one being born with a halo and the other with a forked tail.

Little boys are like the Duracell Bunny, they are known for their unlimited energy and their love of running. Always in the opposite direction to an exhausted parent and often at breakneck speed towards a busy road. They tend to get dirtier faster and are often capable of ruining a complete outfit in 15 seconds flat, with nothing more than a piece of toast and a wet wipe in reaching distance.

They find sticking their hand into the toilet bowl and feeding the loo roll to the dog unbelievably funny. They have a strangely magnetic pull to the contents of every cupboard and drawer, particularly those containing knives, lighters and all deadly and poisonous cleaning fluids. They can take apart and lose the back of any TV remote in less time than it takes to cross the room and can scale any furniture like a seasoned mountaineer. They can increase their body weight to that of a baby elephant when they don’t want to be picked up and contort their limbs into a rigid banana when they don’t want to be pinned into their pram.

Girls on the other hand are often considered to be the quieter of the 2 sexes. Known to sit quietly on your hip and happily play with their toys. Known to help pick out their own clothes and even make an effort to keep them clean and tidy. Known to hold your hand when going out for a walk and if entrusted with a hand held whisk, regard it as a tool for mixing food with Mummy, not as a weapon with which to chase the cat and give it a perm.

Yes indeed, girls are known to be easier to deal with, easier on the ear drums, the energy levels and the nerves. But are they really all things sweetness and light? Does a pound of bacon really fly? Of course they aren’t.

Whether dealing with babies, toddlers or a child old enough to know better, girls and boys can be as bad as each other. Both can screech and scream just for the sake of making noise. Both can single handily depreciate the value of your home in 30 seconds and ruin the upholstery of your car inside of 5 minutes. Both can have such horrific tantrums in the middle of a crowded mall that you could quite easily stuff them head first in the nearest rubbish bin and walk away.

A child regardless of their sex is a complex individual, sometimes believed to be put there purely to test a parent’s sanity and to stretch all boundaries of socially acceptable behaviour. Some are sweet, loving and caring, some are bolshy, stubborn and incredibly sulky. All are a blank canvass, ready to be shaped into the person they will become and to be defined by what they are taught, what they observe and what they experience in the environment in which they grow.

So if all little babies are created and born equal, why are boys so quickly labelled as the nightmare sex and why is society so very quick to to re-enforce these misguided preconceptions?

You only have to look at any range of baby clothes to see that these stereotypes are ingrained into the minds of parents, and no doubt the child as well, from the moment they wear their first outfit.

Buying clothes for little girls is easy. There are always plenty to choose from and they’re always pretty, pink and covered in fairies, flowers and butterflies. Every top, t-shirt or babygro is labelled ‘Princess’, ‘Angel’, ‘Cutie Pie’ or ‘Fairy’.

Now move over to the boys section. Keep going, right to the back of the store, that’s it, those last few rails over there in the corner. The clothes here range from the ever so attractive sludge green to the ever so practical dirty brown. All tops, t-shirt or babygros here are covered in tyre tracks and muddy footprints and are inevitably labelled ‘Rascal’, ‘Trouble’, ‘Little Monkey’ or ‘Monster’.

Now aside from the obvious fact that most little girls I know could easily be described as Rascal, Trouble, Monkey or Monster, does it not seem slightly unfair to encourage and enforce this type of gender pigeon holing at such a young age?

Granted my son is generally always a little bit grubby, usually looking for mischief and always a tad on the destructive side, but it might be nice to occasionally be able to put him in a top that read ‘Well mannered and loves a good book’ or ‘Enjoys vegetables and always kind to animals’.

Babies are babies and children are children and they can all be a royal pain in the backside at some time or other (generally in my experience between 4-6pm). This labelling system seems to me to be an unrealistic and unfair generalisation, After all, very few little girls remain angels by the time their hormones kick in and most little boys have decided to cut worms from their diet and stop rolling in mud by the time they buy their first razor.

If babies are to be branded, then perhaps it’s time that the clothing companies came up with some more more realistic future personality and character traits.

I’ve come up with a few to get the ball rolling…

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