future perfect

It is one of those irritating things that people do with babies - to predict their occupation.

These career forecasts are usually based on the flimsiest of evidence – he can hold a crayon; an artist! He likes aeroplanes; a pilot!

But I confess, I am the worst for this. I do it all the time and in that moment, I seriously consider whether this is the right direction for Snooks. At 16 months, I think he should be keeping his options open.

Perhaps it is all part of being a parent – the desire to find the perfect path and steer our young ones along it. But it’s a fool’s errand. Not to mention, deeply unfair on the child.

I try to keep this in mind as the image of Snooks on stage at the Albert Hall, bowing to an ecstatic audience, violin and bow in hand, swims before my eyes.

I mentioned this vision once to a friend who actually plays the violin and her response was “God don’t do that to him – make him into the nerd who carries a violin to school every day.”

Then I worried about the dangers of celebrity – the treatment by the press, the detachment from the real world, the awful come down when the star fades - and decided it would be better to be unsung, quietly excelling at something, out of the public eye.

After watching a programme about some guys who followed some fish around the Pacific Ocean for three months waiting for the right moment to film them, I started leaning towards marine biologist – so long as he came home once in a while to see his mama.

Passing strangers also feel free to tell Snooks’ fortune, a number of whom have taken one look at him and announced he is bound for the silver screen. Glossy golden locks and a well-timed smile seem to qualify him for the role.

Another favourite is professional footballer. This probably tops the poll of vox pop forecasts. One woman even went so far as to remark, “Well that’s your pension sorted,” as she watched Snooks dribble her son’s ball across the park.

Snooks’ Godmother, a teacher of many years standing, often bemoans the fact that the many wannabe Beckhams who pass through her hands year after year, could have made very good foremen, had their expectations been a little more realistically managed.

Lucky for Snooks then, that he has parents barely able to name two members of the England team.

And also lucky for him that if you can inherit a sporty gene, it seems you can also carry a desire to know how everything works in your blood – in other words, be a born engineer.

His father, The Engineer, and I discussed whether he could have inherited such a leaning after watching Snooks examine the wheel-base of every buggy he came across, long before he could walk.

Or could we have inadvertently encouraged his technophilia? He did, after all, watch Megastructures once or twice in the first few weeks of his life, when we had all given up on the idea of sleep during the hours of darkness.

More recently he has developed a fascination for motorbikes, something I can definitely say I have not encouraged, having witnessed my mother’s face when my older brother was out late at night on his.

Our journeys to Snooks’ weekly engagements now involve zigzagging across the road to admire parked vehicles of interest on either side. And no, he does not look at the shiny paintwork or the nice leather seat (which are the bits that interest me). I watch his gaze fall lovingly over the cylinders and gearbox, drinking it all in.

Last week, when we finally made it to the local leisure centre’s Toddler Gym, a fabulous space for wheeling hoops and climbing on foam shapes under the supervision of a lovely lady called Alison, I spent half of the morning retrieving Snooks from behind the bouncy castle where he was examining the machinery used to inflate it.

It got worse at the end of the session when Alison gathered us all round for a sing song - all bar Snooks who now wanted to stand on the deflated castle and be told exactly where it had gone.

“He’s going to be an engineer," Alison muttered as we left.

I don’t mind what he does so long as he is happy.

And I finally realise that my parents really did mean that when they said it, all those years ago.

tv or not tv?

It is not exactly a matter of life and death, I know, but the question of what to do about the telly seems to be gaining significance in my world.

You see, I was brought up on a diet of strict BBC, permitted only to fill the gap between my return from school and my mother’s return from work, though this would technically not count as ‘permitted’ as there was simply noone there to object.

Less controversially, telly was allowed after tea (which is dinner for those readers in the south of England) provided any homework had already been done. Never, ever EVER was the television on during a meal.

My mother’s inverted watershed meant no daytime television was allowed at all, which neatly ruled out all the stuff broadcast early on a Saturday morning to give parents a lie in while the kids are in the care of the square baby-sitter.

I can’t complain about that really. I spent most of those mornings on some frozen forgotten sports field anyway, so I would not have been around to tune in, even if the television had not been deemed the cause of the country’s gradual slide into sloppy table manners and creeping mispronunciation of the word ‘controversy.’

It simply meant I had to busk my way through playground chat about Tiswas and Swap Shop both of which I have yet to see, and try to keep calm when, the morning after a sleepover at a friend’s house, we ate breakfast on our knees in front of something called Shang-A-Lang.

Before Snooks was born, I read a newspaper article about a new children’s programme, which was exceptional in its ability to soothe very young children, rather than excite or try to educate them.

The article quoted lots of intelligent, respected voices in praise of the programme for its colour, music, humour and gentleness. It was suitable, they said, even for little babies.

It got me thinking about whether the gogglebox might not deserve its attention-sucking, conversation-killing reputation, but could be quite a useful tool in bringing up a child.

I gave In the Night Garden a trial run before allowing Snooks to see it, recording it and holding a clandestine viewing one night when the Engineer was out. I noticed that the slow pace, the repetition and the retelling of the story at the end meant it was very like reading a story from a book, only with moving pictures. And a proper orchestra playing the music, already. And Derek Jacobi doing the voices. Come on, this is classy.

So, I introduced Snooks to Iggle Piggle when he was around three months old, letting him absorb the colour and music and switching off when he started to turn away.

The programme goes out at 6pm, meant to be the Bedtime Hour but in our house is the Getting the Dinner Ready hour, which provides a perfect wind down at the end of the day for both of us.

These days Snooks sits on the rocking chair I once occupied (wearing my Magic Roundabout t-shirt) for such activities and reels backwards and forwards, yelping and pointing as the action unfolds.

I cook the dinner and follow the story sufficiently to know when Snooks is going to need me to join him in a celebratory whoop that Iggle Piggle has finally got his ball back.

And the Engineer usually returns from work about half way through and accompanies Snooks for the rest of the programme, so that we are all up to speed on the plotlines.

What can be the harm in that?

Well I suppose it is a bit like that other box; knowing it contains something as lovely as In The Night Garden, Snooks now wants to know what else is in there. Mostly, when he gestures to the blank screen, I reach for one of his books on the shelf above it, pretending to misunderstand. But it won’t work for much longer.

Perhaps Pandora’s mum should have just hidden the remote.

nature nurture

Snooks arrived at one of his regular social slots this week proudly brandishing his latest love – a boy buggy.

Yes I have crossed the toy gender line in spite of the quiet reservation of the Engineer, who blanched when I triumphantly waved the object at him in the Early Learning Centre last week. A sudden run on toy pushchairs in the area had meant that my previous efforts to track one down had failed.

“Do boys have pushchairs?” he whispered, perhaps afraid that the Right-On Mums Brigade were hiding inside the Wendy House and might spring out at any moment.

I had to suppress a smile. This was a serious business. I love how protective he is of Snooks’ masculinity, even at 16 months old. To me it is a given. Snooks could wear pink pompoms and carry a Barbie Doll and he would still be the fiercely raucous little boy that he is.

But it seems that it’s different for Dads.

“Oh yes, very much so. That is why they make them in blue,” I answered, trying to make this sound less silly than it actually is.

I get it, though, and I have bowed to the Engineer’s judgement on previous occasions where he felt our son’s dignity was at stake and where I just saw a little boy being cute.

Aware as I am of the impact of my own upbringing,(see Oh Boy!) I also get that my barometer might not work so well in this climate.

However I am confident that the boy buggy is a Good Thing having watched Snooks hoon about with one in the church halls where they are provided by the many playgroups he attends.

I was also influenced by Steve Biddulph’s observation that boys often miss out on the chance to learn to be caring to others, while girls are automatically handed this role with their first dolly. It may well be that nature provides girls with the instinct to nurture, but maybe we fail to encourage it in our boys.

So, I explain all this to the Engineer, sotto voce for fear of being dragged into the Wendy House by the Right-On Mum’s Brigade myself, and we buy the thing.

Nodding to his father’s fears, I stop short of mentioning the need for the required dolly on whom Snooks could dote, mentally assigning Clairebear, who is currently residing unemployed on our bedding chest, to the job.

At home, Snooks watched attentively as I put his old sunhat on the bear's head explaining how we needed to protect her from the hot sun before he take her for a walk outside. At first, he took a step away to observe from a distance, little hands clasped together, before grabbing the buggy handles and taking off down the hallway. I catch up with him just in time to see him drive the wheels over the bear’s head and race outside.

Other mums have reported mixed results from similar attempts to follow Steve’s advice. After seeing Snooks proudly parading his buggy this week, one friend hurried off to buy a dolly for her son of a similar age. She later told me how, on the way home, she inadvertently dropped it under a truck and then, having retraced her steps and rescued it from the roadside, she proceeded to poke her finger into its eye socket to retrieve a dislocated eyeball, while her curious little boy looked on.

I doubt Steve would be impressed with either of us (though I am not sure he is a big fan of women at all, to be honest) but then I don’t think Snooks will learn everything he needs to know about love from a buggy, any more than I learn all I need to know about motherhood from a book.

My decisions about how to raise Snooks arise out of what I read, what I hear from talking to other parents and what I know from mine and the Engineer’s own experience.

And from this, I know that his ability to love another person depends on his attachment to me now. And for that attachment to be secure he needs to trust me to meet his needs. No toys required.

mememememe

A slim magazine published by a major nappy manufacturer plopped through our letterbox this week, addressed to me.

‘Dear Mum’, it began, ‘You are probably getting used to being called mummy now.’

Wrong. Snooks resolutely refuses to name me. I am simply there, at the end of his outstretched arms. He does say quite a few other words though – ball (or balle - see say quoi), boat, bear, cheese, helicopter (actually perkeperkopter – very onomatopoeic) and car.

However, having binned the first 14 months’ of unsolicited mail from this company, including, I gather, quite a few handy coupons which I know it is the destiny of all mothers to collect, this time I read on

Perhaps tiredness had weakened my resolve. A 5.30am to 8.30pm working day can do that to ya. And it is not that I don’t think the nappy makers might have something useful to say, I just hate being forced to read it.

So anyway I started to flick through the pages, noting the subheads – Terrible Tantrums, Do Dads Have Different Rules? – and was hooked.

After tearing out the coupons, I settled down in front of the Wimbledon women’s doubles final, holding Snooks with one hand as he stood atop the coffee table about to step off into thin air and clasping the mag in the other.

(Anyone who doubts women’s ability to multi-task should watch a mother at home with children. Now that’s a transferable skill worth noting.)

It tells me that at 16 months old our Snooks is learning a sense of self, of his own distinct identity. For a long time, Snooks has enjoyed long sessions in front of our full-length bedroom mirror, smiling, crying, walking away and turning round to see himself and cuddling Clairebear. But it would appear only now is he able to understand that the image is himself.

Along with this realisation, I read, comes self-will and the need to express it. Wanting things his way is part of asserting his newfound identity. The fury at being denied therefore (i.e. a tantrum) is understandable. It all makes sense and comes as a relief.

Watching Snooks run from one end of the room to the other to bang both fists on the toy box lid because I would not let him play with the scissors was becoming a rather alarming daily event.

Frustration at not being understood also accounts for the outbursts, the booklet says. Once he can communicate better, this will ease.

Snooks and I already manage some kind of communication though it often arises from a lot of pointing (him) and holding up objects saying ‘this’ (me) until peace is restored. But I do cherish the thought that soon he will be able to talk to me and say what he needs. I am curious to know what is going on inside that lively little brain of his.

Even when we do fight (of course I bring my personality to the party too), we usually manage to reconcile pretty quickly.

I read, with some degree of smugness, that I have already instinctively instituted the recommended hug after a barney, which soothes me just as much as it does the boy. Long before Snooks was born, I vowed to myself that this would be a family which would know how to apologise to each other; there would be no fighting to the death in this house.

Also I was told by one of the many wise women of my acquaintance, when I tearfully confided to her that I had shouted at Snooks, to remember that this was a relationship, like any other. It ebbs and flows. And it grows.

Although signs of Snooks’ very individual personality have long been evident, it is only in recent months that I have begun to fully grasp that he is an entirely separate person from me.

I know this sounds odd but it has been hard to comprehend that he may be quite different to me: he may like beetroot and soft-centred chocolates; he may be more confident than I am; he may be more intelligent, or who knows, he may even be good at art.

Obviously I know objectively that he is his own man and let us not forget the fact that he is at least half Engineer.

But the truth is that this sense, this feeling of separation of self may be a little slower coming for me.

I wonder if the nappy makers have got anything useful to say about that.

say quoi?

I had the pleasure of the company of two delightful boys this week, grandsons of a friend of mine, who were on a month’s tour of Europe, visiting relatives in the UK and Ireland before returning to their home in Delhi.

The boys, eight and ten, were charming, beautiful and fluent in French and Hindi. They spoke in their mother tongue, English, with a faint Irish accent.

I met them while Snooks and I were hanging around in the foyer of a church hall where we had retreated as Snooks’ attempts to take part in the discussion inside were not being appreciated.

The boys were waiting for grandma and were instructed by her (an Irish matriarch of the old school) to entertain Snooks. “Tell him a story,” she ordered, before disappearing back into the meeting.

I looked at them in dismay. I didn’t think even I was capable of telling him a story, despite my inside knowledge of his cast of favourite characters (Daddy, Iggle Piggle, Clairebear and Barney the Dog), let alone these sleepy looking youngsters. I expected they would ignore this instruction and go back to the bored lolling they were doing when we arrived, regardless of grandmother’s wishes.

But to their great credit, within minutes, the boys came up with a game, which combined football with a bit of tickling, pulling faces and chasing. Spanning the age difference with gorgeous grace, these lovely lads engaged Snooks in play, which they let him lead but they nevertheless seemed to be enjoying.

It was a relief from the daily clattering Snooks gets from older toddlers at playgroups where anger and frustration are more in evidence than cooperation and tolerance, virtues which maybe these two year olds have not yet had time to learn.

It was also a far cry from the picture of aggression and testosterone-fuelled rebellion painted by Steve Biddulph (see oh boy!) as the natural development of young boys who have not been correctly nurtured.

As I pondered whether moving to Delhi was the key to raising happy boys (actually I asked my brother once how he had produced three such lovely children and he said he told them he loved them, every day. Delhi wasn’t mentioned) the younger of the two came over to talk to me.

"He speaks French," he announced in that marvellous matter-of-fact way children have of informing you of major events.

"Really," I answered, trying not to sound incredulous but with enough doubt in my voice to let this young fry know I was no fool.

A pair of watery green impassive eyes fixed me gently. He was obviously going to have to explain it to this mono-lingual unbeliever. He reminded me of Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Little Prince, perplexed by adults who can’t tell a drawing of a boa constrictor which has swallowed an elephant, from a drawing of a hat.

“He says balle and quoi. That means ball and what," he said, slowly and clearly.

It was true. He does say those things. Green-eyes had asked me earlier, before the games began, if Snooks could talk, assessing how best to approach grandma’s task, and I had said no, he was too young. I had clearly got it wrong.

“Well actually his cousins speak French," I said, throwing in a misleading fact, which only confirmed for him my lack of attention to my son’s linguistic development.

In fact distance in age and geography mean that unless Snooks is communicating with them telepathically, in French, he could not have picked up his cousins’ Gallic tongue.

Anyway the thing was, I wanted green eyes to be right, or at least to think he was right and so the case was closed and he ran off to tickle Snooks while wrestling the ball from him.

I was sorry when it was time to go and I had to break up the game and persuade Snooks back into the buggy for the long walk home.

“We’ll go home via the park so you can get out and run around on the grass for a bit,” I told him as I strapped him in with the aid of a sugar-free elephant-shaped banana-flavoured biscuit.

“D’accord,” he replied cheerfully.

Green eyes shrugged and waved bye bye.

domestic bliss

My son is on his way to becoming every girl’s (or boy’s) dream.

As I have mentioned once or twice before he is quite extraordinarily handsome (he just walked in here in his stripy Barnacle Bill t-shirt), has an easy laugh and a good grasp of the basics of kissing.

Most teenage girls settle for far less.

But there’s more. He can add to this fine personal profile a penchant for housework and in particular a keen understanding of the workings of the washing machine and tumble dryer.

Now at first I did not encourage this. I thought it was a fad and just waited for it to pass. But then it dawned on me as I battled to keep him out of the way while I whisked baskets and baskets of washing out of one appliance and into the other, that there could be another way. I should heed that famous pearl once delivered by former Prime Minister John Major, “Better to have them inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in.” (I'm guessing he was referring to those pesky party faithfuls who never got over his succession to That Woman - but you get my drift.)

So I changed tack and started to teach little Snooks how to feed dirty washing into the washer drum, how to wait for the conditioner to go into the drawer before shutting it, how to shut the drum door and finally how to press the ‘On’ button, just once.

I see you more experienced parents nodding. Ah yes. She will regret that. Once he knows how to do ‘On’ he will soon move on to ‘Off’ and will employ his new talent to quietly sabotage future washes, secretly halting the programme to leave all our essentials unwashed and forgotten until moments before we need them. Oh yes, I have foreseen it all.

But so far, such rapprochement has brought only domestic harmony. I let him press the button; he does not put the clean washing down the toilet. I let him put it into the dryer; he does not drag the freshly laundered bedding around the garden attached to the back of his Combi.

And it does not stop there.

Just yesterday I found myself partaking in some voluntary Hoovering, partly to pick up the bits of organic-carrot-cake-made-with-oats-and-no-sugar-but-something-very-orange-which-stains-like-nothing-on-earth bar, which Snooks had spread from one room to the next, but mainly to entertain him.

You see, he is now the proud owner of his very own mini Electrolux upright, which is lovingly stored next to his cot each night where he can see it first thing the next morning ready for a new day of busy, busy, busy (if only it actually worked!) cleaning.

However, cute as it was to watch, I had to admit that he could hardly be mirroring me, as the times he has seen me use a vacuum cleaner can be counted on your one free rubber-gloved hand. The Engineer asked me once, when Snooks was about three months old, if he was afraid of the vacuum cleaner. I stumbled over the answer a bit, considered lying, and eventually answered truthfully that I had no idea.

This does not mean we have three months worth of dust on our carpets, I should add. It just means that I run away to the park during the weekly visit by the cleaner, too embarrassed to be here while she cleans around me.

So at the risk of filling Snooks’ head with any silly ideas about women’s role in life (a friend recently said how she regretted asking her three-year-old daughter what she wanted to do when she grew up, to be told “Nothing mummy, like you.”) I rummaged around in the hall cupboard and emerged with the real deal, vrooming up and down alongside him, and actually making some impact on the cake debris.

There may be a danger that Snooks could turn what many consider to be demeaning, domestic drudgery endured by women trapped in their homes with lively toddlers, into fun.

But don’t tell anyone.

everything I told you yesterday was completely wrong

These were the words once used by a hapless press officer, back when I was a jobbing journo, after I had written several pages of news based on the information she had given me about one of the biggest stories to break in my career.

It was a moment to remember, and was bad, so bad that I burst out laughing.

In the event, the news editor and I re-wrote everything on deadline, using the new, correct information. It was a close call.

Anyway, the point is, the phrase keeps coming into my mind and has actually been quite helpful – a kind of mantra - each day I spend with the 15 month old Snooks whose knack for reinventing himself challenges the chameleon crown of even the great Madonna herself.

Just as I think I have got it – he likes bread but no butter, he can walk up stairs but not down, he has one long nap instead of two short ones – it changes.

It is exhausting and bewildering and at times embarrassing.

So it was that during our holiday these last two weeks, when I was frequently asked by the Engineer, “Does he like this?" or "Does he do that?” I could only mutter the unhelpful response, “Well he might, but then again he might not.”

I was aware that it might have appeared to someone less understanding than the Engineer, that despite spending every waking hour with him, I barely know our son at all.

But it only took a couple of days swinging around the anchor of Snooks’ moving naptime, before the Engineer got it and knew there would be no helpful answers forthcoming any time soon.

It would go something like this.

“So we should set off for the beach?” the Engineer would ask each morning.

“Yes”

“Even though he looks like he might fall asleep?”

“Yes”

“Because he might not, and then we are just sitting here waiting for something which might not happen.’

“Exactly.”

“With a tired but restless toddler cooped up in an apartment so lacking in baby-proofing we might as well just call an ambulance and have them park outside for the next fortnight?”

OK so he didn’t actually say that last bit but that was what went through my head each time we had the conversation.

Pretty soon the Engineer had rigged up a beach camp, which enabled the whole range of possible outcomes:

a) Snooks falls asleep as soon as we get there so needs a shady bed on the sand

b) Snooks is impossibly wired and so needs to run up and down the beach for hours in the scorching sun

c) Snooks has pooed unexpectedly so needs a change of clothes, a wash, a feed and a nap

d) I need to sleep while being able to see Snooks with that weird I-am-asleep-but-still-know-where-you-are mother thing.

In the evening, dining at our usual restaurant with the sea roaring below, we faced the usual parental quandary – “What will be good and nourishing for him to eat/ what will he actually eat?” settling most of the time for spaghetti Bolognese and ice cream.

In fact Snooks’ passion for grapes and cheese (which he shares with his father – can you inherit food preferences?) means where ever we are, he usually has the main food groups covered.

And then nightfall, instead of rest, brought its own heated deliberations: is he too hot wearing the mosquito repelling night shirt I insist on, can he sleep in the contraption provided by the owner which has a wooden base so hard, even the most devout monk would refuse it and can someone reach in and steal him through those shutters even though we are here in the room?

I recalled, as I lay awake listening for any evidence of the above, that the family holidays of my childhood were clearly not a relaxing experience for my mother, and I silently sympathised with her for the torture which must have been four small children in the rickety and sometimes downright dangerous old places we stayed in.

Despite all the unanswerable questions, we still managed to have a marvellous time and Snooks returned to England a slightly stronger, somewhat blonder boy who runs headlong into crashing waves.

The shifting sands of Snook-time eventually forced us all to do exactly what you should do on holiday, to let go.