It has not gone unnoticed by Eagle Eyes me, that there are other humans out there who also do this blog thing and keep up with it on a regular basis, they probably have a readership that would make me blush, but the people who read them are probably as vacuous and insincere as the words on the pages. I mean no harm to all other parent bloggers, but I do beg on bended knee, that if you should find it in you, you should tout me about, let's see if we can't drag a few more bastards down with us, hmm?
Anyhoo, rumour has it, that there are other parents out there who have slipped out of the almighty ring of "ahhhmaazing Children" where dusters, rather than gloves, are used every round and instead of fighting, they are just loving and caring and sharing, mmm mmm, Amen to that sister! Just be sure, that I will find you, the rose tinted glasses have been put in the same place as the favourite things that my children cannot keep hold of, so we have to improvise or replenish. Yes, they, glasses, not children, have vanished into oblivion and I, like the boy in Sixth sense sees dead people, I see real things. It is a curse, but it also helps me reconcile the fact that actually, if someone is telling me about their child's perfection, I can see that "charlie always flushes the loo when he's finished!" or whatever, actually means "Charlie flushes the loo when he's finished, because if he doesn't we beat him with a cat o'nine tails until we think he's remembered!" Or "our children are really good sleepers" is often code for, "our children sleep really well because by the time they get to bed at 3am, they've physically and mentally run out of options!" or "our children eat really well" can also mean "we starve our children so that when they sit down their eyes are on the prize!". It's not always the case, but it make me feel better to imagine that it is, so I'm running with it. Some people are probably really good at this parenting thing, but that doesn't help me, so I'm just casting that aside for bitter vitriol, it's so much more therapeutic.
The last couple of weekends or so, I have found myself in the company of lovely people who tell it like it is, who admit that their children, whom they love dearly, are satanic at most stages of the game, but there are those occasions when you feel that the balance has been redressed and you no longer pick holes in your judgement. The little mites that you see before you aren't so bad and you don't worry about your foundations as a human being, or wonder where the hell it went wrong, and if this truly is how it is, why the hell reproduction is still so totally en vogue?
A friend of ours said she'd been on a parent gym course, sounds amazing, I shall, and indeed have been, thinking about it a lot and hopefully, one day, before end my children, I shall send myself on it, but again, the holy grail of book "How to Listen so Your Kids Will Talk and Talk so Your Kids Will Listen" was touted as the thing to follow. A copy is still definitely by my bed, my youngest asked me to read it to her on Sunday morning. I duly did, and about two sentences in I realised that I should really get back on and read it. The parenting struggle is a long one, and in the end, hopefully your children'll leave home and become sentient beings, high fives, pat on the back, job done!
This weekend, we were invited out to supper for a friend's birthday party, he probably regrets it now, but we had a great time. My husband and I took our panting spaniel A game and were positioned in between people neither of us knew. I'm never great at these things, but now that we're in the country I have to pant a little harder and try hard to make friends and influence people, or at the very least, as is often the case, make people tolerate me. The people either side of me were also good parental citizens, and we put the worlds to right. Best comment of the year so far, was from one of the guys who was telling me about the lunch that he'd had with his child. Long and short of it was, that he'd had one of those times when the child had erupted into something that neither parent could wholly recognise as human, and the father had prayed that he'd warn a T-shirt saying that he actually has two children, just the other one was at home ill, and that they weren't parents who couldn't cope with only one child, they were parents who regularly couldn't cope with two children. A classic that made me laugh and realise that we are all, truly, in the same boat.
I don't want to say it, but I sort of have to at this juncture, I love children, but I couldn't eat a whole one! You have to, don't you?
Anyhoo, rumour has it, that there are other parents out there who have slipped out of the almighty ring of "ahhhmaazing Children" where dusters, rather than gloves, are used every round and instead of fighting, they are just loving and caring and sharing, mmm mmm, Amen to that sister! Just be sure, that I will find you, the rose tinted glasses have been put in the same place as the favourite things that my children cannot keep hold of, so we have to improvise or replenish. Yes, they, glasses, not children, have vanished into oblivion and I, like the boy in Sixth sense sees dead people, I see real things. It is a curse, but it also helps me reconcile the fact that actually, if someone is telling me about their child's perfection, I can see that "charlie always flushes the loo when he's finished!" or whatever, actually means "Charlie flushes the loo when he's finished, because if he doesn't we beat him with a cat o'nine tails until we think he's remembered!" Or "our children are really good sleepers" is often code for, "our children sleep really well because by the time they get to bed at 3am, they've physically and mentally run out of options!" or "our children eat really well" can also mean "we starve our children so that when they sit down their eyes are on the prize!". It's not always the case, but it make me feel better to imagine that it is, so I'm running with it. Some people are probably really good at this parenting thing, but that doesn't help me, so I'm just casting that aside for bitter vitriol, it's so much more therapeutic.
The last couple of weekends or so, I have found myself in the company of lovely people who tell it like it is, who admit that their children, whom they love dearly, are satanic at most stages of the game, but there are those occasions when you feel that the balance has been redressed and you no longer pick holes in your judgement. The little mites that you see before you aren't so bad and you don't worry about your foundations as a human being, or wonder where the hell it went wrong, and if this truly is how it is, why the hell reproduction is still so totally en vogue?
A friend of ours said she'd been on a parent gym course, sounds amazing, I shall, and indeed have been, thinking about it a lot and hopefully, one day, before end my children, I shall send myself on it, but again, the holy grail of book "How to Listen so Your Kids Will Talk and Talk so Your Kids Will Listen" was touted as the thing to follow. A copy is still definitely by my bed, my youngest asked me to read it to her on Sunday morning. I duly did, and about two sentences in I realised that I should really get back on and read it. The parenting struggle is a long one, and in the end, hopefully your children'll leave home and become sentient beings, high fives, pat on the back, job done!
This weekend, we were invited out to supper for a friend's birthday party, he probably regrets it now, but we had a great time. My husband and I took our panting spaniel A game and were positioned in between people neither of us knew. I'm never great at these things, but now that we're in the country I have to pant a little harder and try hard to make friends and influence people, or at the very least, as is often the case, make people tolerate me. The people either side of me were also good parental citizens, and we put the worlds to right. Best comment of the year so far, was from one of the guys who was telling me about the lunch that he'd had with his child. Long and short of it was, that he'd had one of those times when the child had erupted into something that neither parent could wholly recognise as human, and the father had prayed that he'd warn a T-shirt saying that he actually has two children, just the other one was at home ill, and that they weren't parents who couldn't cope with only one child, they were parents who regularly couldn't cope with two children. A classic that made me laugh and realise that we are all, truly, in the same boat.
I don't want to say it, but I sort of have to at this juncture, I love children, but I couldn't eat a whole one! You have to, don't you?
