How do I deal with other peoples dreadful children?

It is important to remember, when reading this, that what I am saying in this blurb about other people's children, comes very much from the parameters of this quote from Ronnie's mother in the film Role Models.

"I am a lioness.  A black sheba.  I am a lioness, and this is my cub.  If you mess with my cub, I will claw your ass up until you shit sideways.”

I am less of a lioness and more of a sloth/grizzly bear at rest hybrid. I am also not black, so saying that in my white upper/middle class accent would make me sound less sincere and frightening more wigger with issues. But the sentiment is very much there. As I think is the case with most parents, our children are our pride and joy and any slight visited on them is slam dunked straight into the "oh shit" archives that I think we all harbour (not just me?) and hope we can keep at bay with protocol and that which society dictates, to a lesser or greater extent. For example, you aren't going to punch someone in the face for telling you that your child isn't as amazing as you undoubtedly (at certain times) think they are. Children that get on your nerves aren't going to be bound and gagged as soon as their parents backs are turned for long enough, no matter how you much you feel like this is the only course. Perhaps you are, but it won't be long before things spiral and you find yourself in a whole lot of inconvenience with people like the law.

This particular rant begins with my eldest who has come home from nursery on several occasions speaking about one of her "best good" friends in a light and breezy way, telling me through fake almost laughter, that "sometimes X plays tricks on me and tells me that I am her friend and that I am not her friend!" I from the front of the car have to loosen the collar of the article of clothing that is now strangling me and breathe deeply to stop my blood from cooking me (see Anger Management). The first time I heard this I simply delved into standard parent manual response and said that "that wasn't very nice and we should be friends with everyone and dee dah dee dah dee dah" text book. They're young and this really means very little, ha ha. The second and third time however, and god forbid there should be a forth, I no longer probe about the little friend in question, I saw a little flash of red and said, against much, much better judgement, that she should
"tell X that she isn't her friend anymore and that her behavior is mean and not very nice and really you should spend a lot more time nurturing your friendship with Y" to which the response was
"but A (the teacher) says that we should all be friends and play nicely together?" to which I responded "and A is totally right, you should be friends with everyone and play nicely, but if X says that again, you have to tell A and me and we can see if we can make sure that you are all playing together nicely!" This would be the dreaded fourth time...

But it's too late for this sloth/grizzly bear at rest hybrid, she wants to know how such a seemingly angelic child can be so search and destroy at such a young age? This is not a "trick" this manipulative evil that is directed at my cub, manipulative evil that I am not happy with at all, and to my mind, manipulative evil that can only be rivaled by Mine Fuhrer and the Third Reich!

I have met the mother of X and I have had X round at our house. Both X and her mother are wouldn't hurt a fly, sit in the corner, say very little but wow the company with humility and good manners, if not a little wet, type beings. But rather wet than tear your house down rudeness. They are pleasant and personable and seemingly good people. I am no human lie detector, but when it comes to my cub, there's no rationale, not dissimilar to Robert de Niro in Meet the Parents. I want to have this out, whilst they are strapped to a lie detector and a chair in a bunker under our house should they ever come round. I'll offer them drinks, and then as I proffer the biscuits I'll lure them down the stairs to my prepped room... Plan needs work.

Through my head, when I think about our next meeting, go images of me short arm jabbing bodies to the belly with a knee raise to the face, aggressive questioning through gritted teeth. But I am not Lara Croft and this is not Grand Theft Auto. This is law abiding Wiltshire, nursery school rantings from my eldest and a lioness who is way too idealistic about how things should go. This truly is not the end of the world and I know that I am verging on psycho. But psycho is more fun than text book.

X, although not as lovely as I had fist imagined, is really probably quite sweet and harmless and her mother may or may not be the she devil that I have emblazoned on the back of my eyeballs. In my mind now, she's a dreadful child, but maybe my eldest does see it as "a trick," and maybe X sees it as "a trick" too. So, unless I become a human lie detector and a Black Sheba/Lara Croft, I have to realise that I can't fight all their battles or choose their friends. In the same way that my father couldn't ACTUALLY shoot the first boy he caught in my room, despite waving a shotgun in his face! Is there any other way to deal with other peoples dreadful children, and really, just how dreadful are other peoples children?

Excellent Parents / Existent Parents.

Unfortunately for us, recently, our children have chosen the path to ill health and sickness over the last couple of weeks, with the much coveted and very underrated chicken pox, high temperatures and vomiting. Not all at once though, spread evenly over the weeks. Whilst every parent has to go through these things at some point, it still doesn't make it easier, enviable or delighting. Except chicken pox, which everyone wants their children to have but schools still tell you to keep them away, even though they have obviously caught the pox from the very vessels from which they are banned. Children and childcare is so delightfully and gloriously complex you just simply couldn't make it up. As always, I digress.

Over the few weeks that I have been away from blogging, I have traveled far and wide and stayed with friends and family and, by sheer coincidence, there has been a pattern in that which was in front of me.

I would label myself as an existent parent, by virtue of the fact that I have children, thus making me a parent and I am alive, thus making me existent. It's not hard. To explain... Days morph ceaselessly into weeks and weeks into years and so on, and all I really have to show for this passing of time is two children, albeit ill, who are alive. My house, rented, is not likely to be up for anything near Good Housekeeping standard awards (does such a thing even exist?). The only consistent thing about it is the washing (scattered everywhere) and the cooking, largely uneaten, located between Aga, plate, table and bin. We do disorganised chaos in spades. People come round and I am frantically trying to put things in cupboards that I know no one is going to open and then die from suffocation under the avalanche of stuff that falls out on them. I do not (contrary to my last blog) want to be imprisoned for manslaughter by cupboard related means, I don't have the time for one thing. Beds are made, albeit badly, and bathrooms are clean. It's usually pandemonium and stress levels mount to catastrophic levels.

The thing is, I like Clean and I like Tidy, I do, I just haven't met them yet, they stop by very rarely and after they've been, Unclean and Untidy whisk through the house like a tornado leaving me whimpering and bitter. I have great intentions. House and Garden Magazine nipping by to have a cup of something stylish out of something that matches and doesn't have a chip in it or worse, something that the dishwasher failed to mention that it hadn't cleaned off! Nigella and Delia whizzing by to taste the latest baked good that I have whipped up whilst redesigning the ground floor of my cesspit/house. Tara Palmer-Tomkinson and Gok flying through to check out the new craze of Yummy Mummy Couture I've thrown together during and for the school run. These are my aspirations, and yet I manage virtually no baking, food that only tastes good because by the time the marauding hordes sit down to eat it they can barely see for drunkenness and the clothes I stand up in I have usually found under the dog and can barely tell where he finishes and they begin.

Despite all of this, my children are often better dressed than me. Their hair is rarely to never brushed, teeth often smell of toothpaste, but sometimes I think that is because they return to it again and again as an attainable source of nutrition, once they have turned their nose up at my gastronomic offerings. Luckily, they have absolutely no frame of reference or I am pretty sure they'd be on to Child line at their earliest convenience booking themselves into borstal/foster homes. This to me, is Existent Parenting as it stands.

Excellent parents I have met on my travels. We seem to stay with them wherever we go. Their homes are temples, as are their bodies, their kitchens are a calm, tranquil place of good smells, tastes and virtue and their children are seen, heard and, dare I say it, ENJOYED! Scones have been made effortlessly in front of me, despite the technical glitch with the brand new mixer given as a Birthday / Valentines Gift by Excellent Father.  Feasts for thousands, as far as I can tell, where vegans, vegetarians and gluttons have all been catered for. Planned games and childcare flow seamlessly through our time spent with them enabling calm, order and Existent Parents to, well, exist?

Excellent Mothers are well dressed, looking good is obtained with minimal strife and all tasks leave me reeling with a great and burdening sense of retardation. How can you hold a sensible and interesting conversation with me and these others whilst not frappeing your finger, sauteing your nerves and ironing your children? Why is your washing machine not walking out the door telling you to F' off over it's shoulder? How come all the rooms of your house are identifiable as something other than a boot room or play room? How come the thing under our feet, that in this context I can actually call a floor, is not sticky and crunchy and or squelchy and recognisable as inside only by virtue of the fact that you had to come inside to stand on it?

Excellent Father's roll about the place on castors it would seem. Your glass, stomach, purse and brain are never void. Conversation is free flowing and humorous for the larger majority of the time, food and drink are administered regularly and without interruption, all the Existent Parent has to worry about is not spilling all of this down their front, which, let me tell you, is extremely hard. In a situation where Excellent Mother and Excellent Father are still together, the Excellent Father bolsters the Excellent Mother 100% creating utterly admirable parenting to the factor of gojillion. There is nothing one can do about this, it is fact.

I kow tow to all parents everywhere, be they Existent or Excellent. The fact is, we're doing it, we're doing it in a way that expectant parents and non parents cannot fathom. This is a club that, truly, given the chance again, we'd all vote for a few more years without. But, as luck would have it, we wouldn't want it any other way, would we?

Anger Management

Inside I'm drowning, on the outside I'm touching insanity. It's truly not a good look, or one that I am immensely proud of but, unfortunately, over the four years that I have been blessed with my little gems my, already, low tolerance has all but gone.

"put that down please, or you'll break it and then we'll all be very sad", "don't play that close to the fire because you'll burn yourself" "please don't use all the soap in the soap dispenser to wash the sink or there won't be any left to wash our hands with". "please could you put your coat on, it's cold outside and I don't want you to get pneumonia" "don't bite, push, kick, scratch, pill each others hair." "please eat your food or you'll be very hungry later and there are NO snacks!"  and so on and so on. It's endless, I have become worse than the mothers I used to hear screaming at their children, mainly in the supermarkets, telling them that the end of the world was neigh if they put another foot wrong.

As I write this, I know that another foot is going to go wrong and the friendly warning is going to turn in to nuclear bombing. Friendly warnings seem to serve no purpose, other than letting my children know that if they carry on there is at least one more level to get to before it's ear bleeding warfare of insane mother. At this point, they might decide that listening is perhaps the way to go, but only if the goal, they are trying to get to, is less appealing than the manic, screeching fishwife that is their mother. Unfortunately, it rarely is. So beyond screeching fishwife is usually where we end up. Anger takes over and patience goes on holiday to a far flung destination, where the weather's really nice and the children are immaculately behaved.


I am angry, very angry. I can feel it rising up from the soles of my feet. I look and sound like Alan Rickman as The Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.  I know it's not right or good, but when you're doing something, usually to benefit them, and they are whingeing or perilously throwing themselves around, or killing each other, or stealing from themselves, or drawing, painting or printing on walls/furniture and or upholstery for the millionth time in 5 minutes, where do you go? How do you communicate your wants and needs to the people that one has created? How do you manage two little people that are genetically modified to be better than you, to be smarter, faster and all round more canny than you? 

The other day (after a particularly fraught car journey ensemble), my eldest told me that I would go to prison if I left her and her sister on the side of the road to fend for themselves. Yes, this may be true, Social Services might well be called and I might be deported to the nearest correctional facility, detained at Her Majesty's pleasure, but at that very moment in time, it ACTUALLY sounded appealing. 10 X 4, no children, no washing, no ironing, no cooking, no fighting, no nonsense for me to deal with and take responsibility for, HM Prison here I come! Not to do Prison down, I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but to get away from screaming at my children and berating them for things that, with perspective, when it comes, aren't too bad, I'd go anywhere.

The trouble is, that young children, unless well behaved, take over ones life. You cannot leave them unattended for a second to get on with anything or they'll burn the house down, paint it with hand prints, cut all the dogs hair off, eat everything you have in your treat cupboard and then, at the end of it, you won't be able to get an answer as to why, because they aren't rational, they're not even responsible yet. Anger creeps in and ooh, hello Alan!

It's a siege and a quest just to make sure that your pride and joys are well adjusted, well rounded, appealing, intelligent, nice individuals. I want so much for them and us. I want them to be better than me, but the example that I give them is me. How therefore can I expect them to stand a chance and not be angry little psychos with more neuroses than the average mental asylum? It's a hell of a worry. But, as I have said, luckily nature is on hand, to make them better than me anyway, that's science, apparently.

So, may I suggest, and by this I am not preaching, I am really telling myself. One must sit back, relax and take time to let nature take it's course. Things happen because they need to? Ironing can wait, food can wait, cleaning, washing, walking the dog, paying the bills (within reason) can wait. Nothing can be achieved immediately, and if it is making one stressed then one will be impatient/angry and the outcome will be negative. If one has made it this far, and they are still alive, then one can make it through the next bit at a cruise? Let's try it, just for an hour, or a few minutes, it can't get any worse, can it?

Moving to the Country

So, it's been a veritable passing of life. Time has flown by so quickly and I haven't put finger to keyboard to write for so long, truth is, I have been living the dream.

Other half and I saw that life was ticking along nicely in the heady smoke of London and so thought we would do well to throw a whole tool box, not just a spanner, right into the works, and head out of London to the country where everything is different and where children, specifically ours, could be free to roam and ransack that which they would, while we stand back and sip something country in the meadow leading up to our cottage. We said it was "for the children" and, with hindsight, I now know that what that really meant was "that's the only really viable excuse that anyone is going to believe, especially us?"

I am London born and bred, and apart from everything that is wrong with me, there is very little wrong with me, so why not stay in London and bring my children up there? Apart from 8 years at boarding school in Dorset and every other weekend with my  mother, the country was somewhere that you heard people talk about. But no, that is what we all needed in our lives, a hardy helping of quaint old Dorset, where cows read books and farmers skip around the fields in their lovely shiny traaa'ers.

The move went very smoothly, we found our Cottage in the lovely village of Hinton St Mary, just outside Sturminster Newton, the metropolis of everything. The girls had a bedroom at the other end of the house to ours, the garden was adorned almost straight away with our newly purchased football pitched sized trampoline, puppy was purchased (to keep "older dog happy") and wellies were fitted to each and everyone's feet almost permanently. The first two weeks were amazing, people coming down from London to check that we'd not gone mad and were in fact embracing all that the country had to offer. We'd get leathered and regale them of antics with dogs and the local pub and villagers and space and "you've got to try this, this is what life is about!" They'd leave on the Sunday night and take a little piece of our soul with them, a piece of our soul that could barely be found at the bottom of the 3rd bottle of wine let alone the 5th.

Time passed in this way and sometimes we'd see no one for days, literally NO ONE. Man cannot live on bread alone, this is true, he can't. Man (from London) cannot live, with 2 children and a dog, and a puppy, on people weekending. Social networks were null, some people hadn't heard of the Internet, let alone Facebook. I think the clincher to my stay in paradise was being woken up at 6am by a wild, inbred, stuttering farmer shouting at me to move a car, that wasn't mine, so that he could move his space ship past the house that was, by  now fully scaffolded, so that there was nowhere to park in the whole of Dorset, let alone in the parking space outside my house. The children were miserable at their new nursery, where children were happy to chew grass for a whole morning, god knows what they did in the afternoon. Everything was a thousand miles away and not one of us was truly happy.

Not quite defeated, we decided that less urban was what we needed. The children needed more amenities. They needed children, they needed clubs and classes, they needed to be able to go to the shop at any time and get a pint of milk any day of the week. They needed TAKE AWAY... So we packed up and moved to Wiltshire, to this place called Salisbury, where the streets are paved with gold and people do things. Normal things.

We still have the large trampoline in the garden, but like most trampolines, it's gathering rust, because our children are at a nursery where they feed animals and go swimming and learn french. Mummy and Daddy can go and get a coffee that sounds like a physics experiment but it's standard. There are people down the road who know of this London place, but, like we are now, are happy that they left it,they are welcoming and we are friends. We see people everyday and the girls have friends again. We are 90mins from London and that's far enough. No one wants to go back there, but it's nice to know that it's there, always there should we need it.

So, should you move? Yes, you absolutely should, but to a place that you know and where people are happy to let you be one of them. Children? Do you think they care? Do they know that there is more out there? I don't know, but I do know that they are happy, and isn't that what all this is about?

children or Torture?

And so... Again I have neglected my blog. Not intentionally, not purposfully, not anyting otherly than I have managed my time badly. As well as my children's time. With nothing but a biro and any bit of paper that looked blank lurking amongst the detritus of my handbag to record snipets on. Since my birthday I no longer have that excuse as the husband to be generously gave me a net book as a present. So now, I can complain right then and there on the spot, not just write stuff down, rip it up and put it in the bin, the place where in all honesty, they probably deserve to be.

So, my latest musings are thus. Children and torture, very, very, VERY much the same. If you think about torture, the act of inflicting severe physical or mental pain on a person, and compare it to bringing children up, you will notice that at almost every point of these two exercises, there are comparisons to be drawn. For instance, Japanese water torture, this is similar to the repetition of the word "why"that one might hear in a day, or "Mummy" or "daddy" or "I want" or screaming and crying etc. In fact, I would wager, the degree and length of children's excessive, relentless repetition of mundane irritating noise, is far worse than the soothing, cooling almost therapeutic, by comparison, drip, drip, drip of water. Being beaten to within an inch of your life is possibly a holiday compared to the CONSTANT, everyday for the next eon, clambering and scrabbling that one endures throughout the day before your children are in bed. At least when you are beaten, you know that there are 2 ways out, death or freedom. With children there is no hope or respite, just when you think that you have a moment or you've finally got them to realise that you are not a climbing frame, they are back on you like a shark on a bleeding seal. Trying to keep your cool and maintain a good and level head so that you don't mess your children up, I'm sure is very similar to keeping a clear and level head when being questioned (as a spy) having been captured by the "other" side! Your life, rather like a captive, is no longer your own, sacrifice, saving, generosity, anything that you care to throw at the situation, literally means nothing, they're still going to do what they want and how they want to do it, in fairness, it is totally out of your hands. You just have to wait until they have grown up and pray that they don't hate you and that you've done enough to make sure that they move on to bigger and better things.

Have you ever wondered why you, as a parent, are so tired all the time? The answer is most probably this. When you leave anything container like, i.e house, car, play centre nursery, school etc, you are immediately in flight or fight mode. Every single sense about your being is on red alert to maximum capacity. Who's going to snatch them? Which one of them will get run over? How do I stop this tantrum from irritating everyone in the world? Why is pink not acceptable now when six seconds ago you couldn't get enough of it? This is a state that you hardly ever break free from, hence the ridiculous tiredness, and this alone is enough to drive you mad. This is like the sleep deprivation torture that is a form of torture. This we experience quite gladly as parents with a new born only when in a "torturous" capacity, you are allowed to go mad/expected to go mad, as a parent you are scowled and frowned upon as "the one who can't handle it all".  The difference here is, you don't really realise that this is what's happening to you, you rationalise it and it becomes normal. You press the urges to spit blood and tear your hair out, because, what would people think?

Disciplining children is like being kept in a cell. You know there is nothing you can do to break free from it, all you can do is the time and then hope for the best at the end of it.You, rather like a prisoner in a cell, have little to no control over the eventual outcome. Will you be set free, will your children be something other than ghastly parasites, or will something happen that is out of your control, meaning that you'll be sentenced to life, will your children never leave home and simply be hideous blood sucking leaches? That is ones sentence. So, in true "Life of Brian" style, when someone says to you "childcare?" I would simply answer "oh no, Crucifixion please!"

Today, I could go on with this negative diatribe. I don't need or want children today, I want my freedom. I no longer want to be driven mad and taken to the very edge of my physical and mental capability. I want a holiday with booze and no guilt, with sun and lie ins and no incessant drivel from people who have no idea what they are saying, let alone the fact that the audience is only half listening. Give me alone, lonely, loneliness. Give me deathly quiet and horrible eary tranquility. Give me a desert island with no one else on it, and I swear, I will take that, run a mile and not once complain that this was torture. After all, surely one mans torture is another mans paradise?

Marriage, Illness, Moving, etc

Good heavens it has been some time. Some time that I haven't even noticed the passing of, it's just gone in a cloud of illness, organising and furore.

As I mentioned last millennium, I am getting married, albeit next year, but, as those of you who have made your steps down the aisle, THERE IS SO MUCH TO DO. Everything that you think is simple and straightforward immediately becomes more complicated with the secret subplot that you had no idea existed. For example, venue, you have one in mind, you ring, but then you find out that if you have one person over their stipulated amount, you have to move the venue to their far more expensive location 6mm left of the one that you had your heart set upon. Children, we want them at our wedding, but we want them gone by 6:30/7, so that the adults can have that time without the threat of being sick or falling over, or both, under the skeptical eyes of their offspring. Logistically this is a sub plot that, after 3 bottles of wine, we decided would be better parked in the "to do" column. Dresses, this I found easy in many regards, but having listened to the advice of those more knowledgeable than I, visiting one shop and deciding on the first dress, just meant that all the other shops wouldn't be able to beguile and befuddle me, so it was best to see a few. Thankfully though, the first dress in the first shop won out over all and Amanda Wakeley or We Saw You Coming as I like to call it, can keep her size 2 dresses with size 80 price tags.

Both my children, I have been told, will be undergoing general anaesthetic. The youngest on the 7th April and eldest at whichever point the NHS  actually get the referral letter that is currently being passed from pillar to post. I don't agree with operations in smalls, particularly not my smalls (I mean children here, not underwear, just incase there was confusion). I said this to the specialist in charge when he gave me and the Registrar the six seconds of his very precious time, and he said that the removing of the lump in my daughter's nose was such a  minor operation that I need not let it concern me for another second and that "if it were his child" he'd have the operation (not him, he confirmed after questioning, but his child) and that "it's better to get it over with now as we'd look very silly down the line if it was something nasty and we had done nothing about it!" To which I nodded, although afterwards I thought (once the petrified panic had left me), if you're worried about looking stupid, might I suggest another line in footwear, as opposed to operating on my child? Just a thought. My eldest daughter is waiting for her slot for grommits, of which I had many sets when I was younger, but I am a little more keen on that as I understand it and have been through it and it might stop her "whadyousay-ing" me every other sentence. Selfish I know, but it's either that or death!

We're also looking at moving, taking the plunge and leaving the smoke behind for the vast sprawling metropolis of Dorset. We have fallen in love with it, there is a school there that we have found that is basically a stable where the girls can go and be free and the worst thing that might happen to them is a falling out with a tack box or an angry sheep. A place where the main road is in a foreign place that the locals talk about in a similar way to the characters in The Lord of the Rings talk about Mordor. I am pretty sure that once we get down there, the children will take care of themselves and be like Wendy Darling and the dog will become self sufficient and take himself for walks and put the keys in a place that I can find them once he returns. The fact that we have to treck over hill and glen to get a pint of milk that we'll inevitably run out of, we always do, just doesn't really count. That and the fact that it'll be so cold that we'll be numb because all the houses come with natural air conditioning and run on oil that we won't be able to afford. We won't be able to go out ever really because everything shuts at 9 and we'll be ostracised by the ridiculously friendly yocals because "we're not from London you know!" It's ideal and I can't wait.

The children are going through another "phase", this is the "whingeing, badly behaved, irreverant, impertinent, non-listening phase" that all the books tell you about. The one that seems to be the longest, the one that I have no idea how to tackle so change my approach mid-sentence and confuse the children as well as myself so that no-one knows where they are. They say that you should be as irregular and irrational as possible, that's what makes stable, mentally healthy and delightful children, I know because I don't think I could cope with anything else. But it's alright, because this is a phase, so no matter what I do, they'll get through it, I just need to get to the next phase, surely?

The Admirable Struggle of Children!

These last few weeks have prevented me from being a blogger of any nature, even a very bad one, in fact, I haven't been one at all.

My eldest has been diagnosed with glue ear, which therefore explains her almost total loss of hearing and my need to shout everything at her like a banshee. People look at me even more weirdly when they hear me repeat myself for the fifth time and then lose it and shout like I am telling my poor child off. It's like Japanese water torture, I say something, which is often met with a "why" and then I try to answer the why and every time I speak she says "whadyousaaaay". The same child has also been out of action with a sick bug which she kindly passed on to me!

The youngest seems to remain fairly constant throughout, tank like in constitution.

The dog has pulled a ligament in his shoulder requiring 5 days rest, which sounds lovely, but really just means there's yet another small thing hanging round my feet to trip me over, usually in the kitchen where the only landing zone is either a boiling pan or a sharp object. It makes me happy to be blessed with such good fortune.

However, whilst all of this patheticness has been going on, I still can't help but notice those parents who are struggling admirably with their latest addition or indeed their first taste of hellish babydom. For example, the other day I saw a woman collecting her first child from nursery with her very new number two. He was in the cocoon on the bottom of the dreaded Phil and Ted's, perhaps that's why the ladies day seemed to be going so wrong. Anyhoo, the little bundle started screaming blue murder, real, real distress, as only new and nearly new borns can manage. His face was bright red and he was FURIOUS. Everyone was willing him to be silent as well as trying to placate him before Mummy got back. Sure enough, Mummy got back with big sister and the little boy was still creating. I'd imagined that the mother would take him straight off the deputy head who was trying to rock and coo him out of it, but NO, she did nothing of the sort, she merely looked at the screaming bundle sighed and rolled her eyes. Everyone, surely, everyone knows that feeling? That feeling when enough has already happened and yet it's still going on interminably. When there is nothing more left in you to give, when you would give anything to be whisked away to some lovely time past before children existed, when silence seemed monotonous, not enviable, when neat and tidy was an option not a virtual impossibility and when time was something that ticked on, not a luxurious commodity.

The thing is, how can you help? How can you reach out to someone and let them know that it is alright, all this will probably pass and there is a light at the end of the tunnel, without sounding like a meddlesome know it all? I look back on those times and remember how I felt and how I was, and wish that someone had done that to me, but then, perhaps I would have thought that they were being interfering or telling me that I was ACTUALLY as useless as I felt? I wish, that people were more honest about children, I hope to be if and when it comes up with my girls, and I try to be when people ask me. You have to fill out form after form after form, sit through interviews and red tape rigmarole a plenty to adopt, yet ANYONE can have a baby, why is that? Surely babies should have some mental health warning attached? Awareness of the veritas that is children should be made more clear so that we aren't carpet bombed when our first baby arrives.

I wish it was OK to let people know that children as they are is so not what you were signing up for. But, however, just so you know, I believe that it is OK to let people know when you are struggling and any parent worth their weight in nappies will surely ally with you and let you know that they too have had similar situations or are experiencing similar things as you talk. If you're having a hard time of it now, my heart goes out to you. But it's normal and totally OK for you to feel like you can't, you can, really, it just takes time?