booked off

I have just left Snooks, standing at the window of his school room, a forlorn Dalek, mouthing “I will miss you mummy,” as I backed away towards the gate.

By the time I reached home I was tearful and nauseous. Is it supposed to be this hard?

The day began with a reluctant playdate – reluctant on my part because playdates have become fraught encounters with other boys where they pummel, bite and punch Snooks as he pushes, torments and teases them. Either way, it is exhausting. Snooks had been off school for two days which meant hanging out with me, shopping, a bit of football in the garden, a few rows. He loves it more than anything – more than school, more than friends, more than ice cream, more than everything else. So a playdate did not compare. We went anyway and half the time they played and half the time I refereed.

Then came school and World Book Day which I had hoped would be a bright spot but instead brought about the nauseous tearful drive home which almost finished me off.
Snooks did not want to go. He was “too sick”. He lay on the floor. He did not want to wear his Dalek costume. He did not want me to come and then leave. He never wanted to go to school again. He never wanted to leave me again.

The school he attends had said that the children could dress as a character from a book and bring mums in for half an hour at the start to read with them. It sounded good in theory. But like Snooks I could see the pitfalls. What if the costume was rubbish? And how could he let me go once I was in the building?

I persuaded him with the help of a chocolate coin and the plan that we would carry the costume in a bag until we got there and saw what was what.
So far so good. Once inside the gates having spotted Snow White, Dorothy and Buzz Lightyear (???) he agreed to put on the main bit which has fabulous silver circles and two antennae for firing Dalek-style lasers which are velcroed to the front. The hat was out of the question, understandably. By the way in case you are wondering, a character in Dogger dresses as a Dalek. Snooks had done a double whammy on the dress up idea. He wanted to dress up as a character who dresses up.

Once inside the classroom I got a glimpse of my daily dread – Snooks quiet and circumspect, unsure how to join in with his friends and frozen in terror when the big loud boy made fun of his antennae. Snooks ripped them off and shoved them into my bag when no one was looking.

“Just ignore him,” I whispered as we sat down to read. “What is he dressed as anyway? I can’t even tell,” I said trying waspish camp as a defence, which half worked.

As I read to him along with the other mothers and their children, he curled his little frame into me and rested his head on my arm. I looked around. The other children looked so much older, so much easier with this set up. They wandered around talking to each other, they sat in groups, they half listened as their mothers read and then skipped off to play.

Other mums started to get their coats and the children milled around the toys. The teacher indicated silently to me that it was time to go. Summoning up the best breezy cheer I can do I started to move.

“Bye mum,” Snooks announced, getting up and walking slowly away without looking back. I thought I had it cracked. Perhaps he was happy here after all. Once I go he will join in with the fracas, I told myself.

And then I saw him standing at that window.

size matters

Does it really? It didn’t used to think so but now I am not so sure.

You see our Snooks is shorter, slightly, than most boys his age. Not really noticeably but just a bit. I had never thought it relevant. When people compared heights of their toddlers, I really could not see why, other than for the sake of comparison. It seemed no more relevant than comparing their hair colour or fingernail shape. However perhaps that was a bit short (pardon the pun) sighted of me.

My family were all pretty average heightwise and the Engineer is about average for a man and slightly taller than me. That’s how it all looked from my vantage point. But then I am, or was, a girl. Size for girls is all about girth. Even back then in the 70s before the size zero model had been heard of, we were squeezing ourselves into jeans, using a coat hanger to get some purchase on the zip, lying on the floor of the changing rooms of Chelsea Girl. I can clearly remember holding in my stomach in a skinny rib lace up jumper as I walked to the front of the class to show my medal of the Virgin Mary to my classmates. That was Infant Two or in today’s money Year Three. We were six.

So I guess it is not surprising that not so far behind, at almost four, Snooks has become painfully aware of body difference and is, in this instance, not top of the class.

Like most things with this motherhood game, it has caught me on the hop. I had mentally parked Bullying, Body Image and Girls somewhere around Puberty under the heading “For the Engineer to Handle”.

But suddenly this week the baton was thrust into my unprepared hands as I half carried an enraged Snooks home from school. Am I the only person whose three-year-old refuses to walk? People laugh in the street and say helpful things like “He must be heavy,” as if I am wrecking my lower vertebrae out of choice rather than necessity. In the end I ran the last twenty yards to keep ahead of him as he howled in fury just behind me. You should see the looks that caused.

On arriving home we sat on the third stair and talked. Snooks has, in his very unique way, run with the whole naughty step shtick and made it his own, allocating purposes and virtues to each of the steps. I have to work hard to keep up. Number three is for chatting. Number four is for jumping off (for now). Number five is for putting shoes on… and so on.

“I can see you are very angry,” I started with. See How to Talk So Kids Will Listen…etc

Silence.

“I know you are angry with me because I would not carry you home. Are you angry with anyone else?”

Now I know this is a leading question but I had seen an incident earlier in the day where Snooks had lain prostrate underneath his much larger friend and been unable to get out from under him. I had seen the look of desperation on Snooks’ face. He was not hurt or frightened as he rarely complains about bumps and bangs even when they are intended and this was clearly meant to be a game. He didn’t complain about it or ask for help, he just looked furious. I persuaded his friend to get off him and they carried on playing. But I had wondered what Snooks had made of this momentary powerlessness.

“I am angry with everyone,” he finally answered. My poor little bear.

Most of his friends at school are big boisterous boys, which is great because what Snooks lacks in stature, he certainly makes up for in attitude. So having someone stand up to him is fine.

But learning this harsh reality that no matter how smart or how cute or funny you are, if someone bigger than you sits on you there is bugger all you can do about it had really knocked the wind out of his sails.

I was at a bit of a loss. I have no experience of this. All I could remember was the compassion with which my brother once commented about our father, a Celtic-built strong but short, bookish man who had spent 13 years of his childhood in dorms with other boys: “Imagine what it must have been like for him.”

Now I was beginning to understand. I cast about for tall and short wisdom. First I offered that size isn’t everything. Look how fast you can run, I ventured. In the jungle, if you were being chased by a lion, being big would be no help at all because the lion would want to eat you and you would not be able to get away. A fast runner like you could get away and hide under a bush.

Snooks looked sceptical. “If he does it again I am going to throw him up into the sky and dump him on the scrap heap,” he retorted.

Right. If he did it again, I suggested, you should simply say, “Stop doing that. I don’t like it.” And if he didn’t stop, call the authorities.

“I did call. You didn’t hear me.” Ouch.

“I am not going to say anything to anyone. I am just going to push him into the road in front of a car so then he will be dead.”

Right.

Eventually the storm just passed. I toyed with the idea of David and Goliath but thought the risk of Snooks secreting a sling shot about his person and causing havoc at school was too great. Instead I brought in a secular equivalent, a magical sword which gave him a superpower which no one else knew about so long as he was on the side of Good. I also purchased a book called Enormouse which ends with the great line “So remember the teeny tiny things are what make the BIG things happen” and finally drafted in Daddy, who passed on the message that sometimes people have power over you and there is nothing you can do about it and it stinks. (He is the realist of the partnership).

The next day we had a play date with Goliath. They are once again the best of friends.

pint-sized sage

As I chased Snookie down the road on his way to school just now, I shouted after him “Come back you pint-sized pirate!”

I stole the nomenclature from Captain Hook – or the Disney version at least – but it fits our Snooks well. He scooted away in his skull and cross bones bobble hat as fast he could, ensuring we reached the gate just in time. Sometimes he rumbles these subterfuges and drops anchor half way there insisting that he is ‘too tired to go to school’. I have been known to carry him, and the scooter the rest of the way. But he loved my frustrated rascal, as I’m sure did all the construction workers and council road-cleansers we encountered along the way.

It’s a far cry from yesterday, which was my birthday and so technically should have been full of cake and candles and jollity.

Instead both Snooks and I slumped into a wretched mood shortly after the 7am present opening and remained thus until a good hour after the Engineer had returned home from work. We were finally restored by steak frites and some excellent music at our favourite birthday haunt where Snooks ate lasagne, chips and bread and then lay down to sleep across three dining chairs.

The wretchedness arose from a cocktail of high expectations and adrenalin overdrive which Snooks and I both enjoy whenever a ‘good time’ is in the offing. And this explosive combination generally amounts to the following; he thinks a celebration means no one has to obey instructions; I think a celebration means he will miraculously start to obey instructions. He is disappointed; I am disappointed. We both hate being disappointed.

I know how it sounds. He is three years old. And I am … one year older than I was yesterday. Who is supposed to be the grown up here? Well quite. And get this.

After I had stretched and stretched to try to bring birthday fun to the daily face washed, teeth brushed, dressed, combed, supermarket shopped, lunch eaten, face washed, re-dressed, hair-brushed, dragged to school battle, I finally snapped. I shouted in fury into his terrified and confused face because I cannot have a pee in peace. Having dropped him at school, I wanted to run back and bring him home and make it better. Instead I wandered around feeling wretched, on my birthday. No amount of cards or cake or candles or calls from friends seemed to make it better.

Then Snooks returned from school and seemed his usual self, until he called up the stairs to me that he wanted to tell me something.

I stood at the top as he sat at the bottom and looked up at me and said: “Mummy when you shouted at me, you hurt my feelings.”

I have no idea where he found these words. I know it cannot have come from me because no one in our family has that kind of emotional maturity. Did they teach him this at school? Is he channelling Oprah? Has he secretly been going to therapy? Already?

Astonished, relieved and repentant, I came down the stairs, sat in front of him and apologised for my behaviour.

They say with age comes wisdom.

Perhaps next birthday I’ll get it the right way round.

the word is love

Someone accused me of being ‘boasty’ the other day because I was writing publicly about my family. And you know what I say? I say, "You bet."

I don’t like to criticise my own parents much because on the whole they did their best. But if there is one thing I think they could have done better, it was to be a bit more boasty.

I hate false modesty about children. Good Lord parents, big them up a bit. No one else will.

So here I go again.

I know I go on about Snooks’ language a lot – his early speech, his experimentation with French and his lovely rhyme and imagery which inspired a friend to write a poem for us, using his first words.

But I had further validation the other day from another friend who remarked, after spending the afternoon with Snooks, on his use of simile and metaphor.

It was, she said, a recognised sign in educational circles, of a gifted and talented child.

I had not noticed until she mentioned it. I am aware of Snooks’ love of rhyme, which we have attributed largely to Dr Seuss – who gave us the fabulous Foo Foo The Snoo nickname (excellent for diffusing tension at sock putting on moments) and many discussions about the workings of a Crunk Car. We have also enjoyed Aliens Love Underpants and Stick Man, though not The Gruffalo. This has been roundly rejected in all forms – film, poem, The Gruffalo’s Child – the lot. Snooks also delighted in having both parents read to him last thing on Christmas Eve A Visit From St Nicholas, which is probably the only time it will ever happen. Next year he may be over all that.

He makes up his own rhymes - “Yoghurt’s yummy in my tummy, but I love toast the most” – and likes mixing up letters in favourite stories, so the train drivers Ducky and Jaff take the Little Ted Rain under the Butt Fridge. This has got us through many a bedtime drama.

And now, since my friend mentioned the metaphor thing, I have been picking those up and demonstrating all the worst characteristics of the boasty-only-child-myopically-obssessed mother, by texting them to her.

However in an attempt to show some kind of restraint and to save Snooks some blushes in the future I shall delight you with just the one which I must record here as it was said, while brushing his teeth, about the girl at his school who captured his heart the day he started there, though I am not sure they have never spoken. During all the tribulations of getting Snooks through the nursery door, the one word which would brighten his face and transport him from his suffering to a higher, happier place, was this girl’s name.

So occasionally we mention her as we are getting ready for school, just to keep the momentum going and to remind him who waits behind that dreaded school gate, and might even, if he asked her nicely, want to play with him.

"Sasha is as pretty as a daisy,” he announced the other day, through the toothpaste, talking mostly, I think, to himself.

She is too. One day he might even tell her.

no girls allowed

When the Engineer and I decided to get pregnant we discussed our attitudes to parenting.

We both had a lot to say. There were some things we wished had gone a bit differently in our own lives and perhaps we could learn something from our histories.

Attachment parenting appealed. We liked the basic concept – that when a child’s needs are met, they feel secure. This security helps them to form good relationships with others. If they are rejected, they do not feel worthless because they have been treated as if they matter by the people who matter most. It does not mean giving the child all that they want. It does not mean cosseting the child. Good secure attachment enables the child to become independent. That is the idea.

It occurred to me today that we have done quite a good job on Snooks. This should be good news, but it did not feel very good.

I knew the story; you fall in love with your children and then they break your heart. And that is how it is supposed to be. But I had not realised quite how bad it would feel.

There were times recently when we both questioned our methods with Snooks. Delightful and spirited as he is, his fierce opposition to going to school and his occasional fury whenever I left the house without him appeared to spell separation anxiety gone mad. He is almost four and yet his tearful protests at the school gate ( I have walked away hearing him shout “Mummy don’t leave me” more times than I care to remember) led me to fear we had got it wrong, that he was panicked by my leaving and so did not have the confidence attached children should have. He did not know that I would come back, that he would not be abandoned and that he was loved. How could this be?

However something seems to be shifting a bit, both at school and at home. Whether it is an emotional development which has simply come a bit later than in others or whether he was… erm… putting it on a bit in the first place, I am not sure but I seem to be suddenly redundant.

First of all I found that the school gate drama could be fixed fairly easily with a good bribe - a chocolate gold coin usually – suggesting he might not be all that traumatised after all.

Then as I played with him today, feeling more like his teenage mate hanging out in his bedroom than his nurturing mum, I remembered that while going into school might have been a problem, he has never shown any reluctance to be left at any of his friends’ houses. Not a peep. So hang on, where was the separation anxiety then? He isn’t anxious about being separated from me, he just doesn’t like school! What on earth was I thinking? Of course he is securely attached. He doesn’t even wave goodbye!

Also recently he has been spending more time with the Engineer, at first because I had other commitments, but then by choice. One cold evening this week as the Engineer headed out to the workshop to fix stuff while I stayed in the cosy warm house, Snooks announced he was ‘going to help Daddy’. He donned his crocs, pulled on a hat and marched out into the darkness down the garden path, without looking back. Later at dinner he informed me that they had been working hard out there. “It was just us boys,” he said, tucking into his vittles. I felt like Ma Walton.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s a Good Thing, I know. I should be grateful. There have been times in recent months where I have felt on such a short leash – unable to make a phone call, go to the loo, leave the room without the Engineer having to hold him back, screaming - that cleaning the house on a Saturday morning while father and son play in the park has become a weekly ‘me time’ treat.

But it is not easy to no longer be needed. It means I am back to being me again. Now, where was I?

fat is the question

How am I supposed to know these things?

That is the question I keep asking myself when I am expected to come up with well-rounded balanced non-judgemental honest but not scary answers about life, people and God, without having time to run to a parenting book or the internet for the received wisdom.

For example this morning’s questions have included “What is the sound barrier? “Is God a boy or a girl?” and “Where do squirrels sleep?” (Answers in my comments box please)

Fat is not an issue I ever anticipated discussing with my three-year-old son, assuming that boys were all about what they can see and do rather than what they are.

In fact one of the reasons I was banking on Snooks being a boy (though weirdly I used to dream he was a girl in utero) was that I felt ill-equipped to deal with the fiercely messy issue of girls and body image. Little did I know that it starts at three and a bit.

I accidentally set the ball rolling a few nights ago when the Engineer and I were enjoying a gloat at some video footage of ourselves on a family holiday in Scotland in 2010 when we were collectively seven stone heavier than we are now.

“Oh my word look how I fat I am,” I said, hardly recognising myself as the lumbering matron holding tiny Snooks’ hand on the station platform. I could see my awkward discomfort as I walked, knowing I was being filmed. I remember trying to stand straight.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not a fat-Nazi who put on a few pounds and having shed it, lives on a diet of mashed wheat and cabbage water. I have always been, and still am - and I love this fantastic euphemism – well covered.

But the Engineer and I, stunned by the emotional assault of early parenthood, ate our way through the first two years of Snook’s life, without stopping for breath.

Consequently we were a bit fat a couple of years ago. It’s no biggie. I don’t see any reason to beat about the bush. It’s not a crime or a signal of mental or moral collapse. Just hard work to lose.

So although I would rather not have launched the subject of body comparisons with Snookie just yet, I have always tried to be honest and realistic with him. And the truth is, if you eat too much, you get fat.

This has not, I should stress, ever been a problem for Snooks. In fact, as you may have gathered, eating for him is one almighty chore, endured only to keep the oldies happy. If food could be pumped in like fuel at a pit stop without interrupting the race, he would be happy. (Don’t worry, we have worked that analogy to death. Thank goodness we don’t have more children or the whole race-track/dining room thing would be a lot more complicated.) So I don’t want to give him any reason to reject food more than he already does. I was surprised at how quickly he picked up on the f-word and wanted to use it and discuss it, everywhere.

It first took me by surprise when he came into our bedroom as I was getting dressed a few days later.

“You look a bit fat mum,” he said, matter of factly.

I could not help the shock my face betrayed followed by an embarrassed laugh. What can you say?

“… when you’re in Scotland, I mean,” he continued, clearly reading my reaction, or perhaps just clarifying.

He had learned what the f-word did to people.

We sat down on the bed and talked.

"First of all", I said, "children are never fat." Right, I know this speaks a bit against the desperate drive to educate children about healthy food choices in the face of the giant obesity time bomb in this country. You see. I told you. How am I supposed to know what to say? But I just don’t think children, as in primary school age children, should be watching their weight.

Then I said that saying someone is fat might hurt their feelings, even if it is true. This was to an attempt to head off all the mortification I could see ahead if Snooks thought it was ok to go around pointing out fat people. At the moment he has a thing for dragging me across the street to point out people who “look like Daddy”, which is anyone, male or female, with grey hair.

"However", I added, "it is ok to tell me that I look fat, if you think I do." (There’s your balance, right there.) Some people might be upset by being called fat, but me, hey, I am cool with it. Look here’s my big tummy. Isn’t it nice and squishy?

Just don’t anyone else try it.

truth will out

Snooks was in a bit of trouble yesterday. When I arrived to pick him up from school, I overheard the teacher telling another boy that pushing was not allowed and he should say sorry.

“But Snooks O’Hara started it,” he yelped. Oh dear.

When I stepped up for my turn the teacher smiled and winced as she handed Snooks over to me, clearly struggling with where to start.

She started with telling me that Snooks had hurt his bottom. He had hurt his bottom falling backwards. He had fallen backwards having been pushed by the boy I had just overheard. They had given him an ice pack for his bottom as he was upset (I was surprised by this bit of news – the rest I could have predicted – as Snooks rarely cries about physical injuries so either it had really hurt or he rumbled how to get sympathy when in a tight spot). The story they had been told, she emphasised, was that Snooks had started it.

Snooks, who had run to me happy and excited seconds earlier, transformed visibly into his sullen, young offender other self.

Dragging me away from the milling mums to behind the bins, he turned tearful.

“Just tell me what happened. I promise not to be cross,” I said.

“Never,” he replied, his mot du jour.

Things were going so well. It was day two of back to school and both days he had bounded in, keen to see the other children, excited at last to have someone under 40 to play with.

What could I do? I could not let it go. He would not speak in his own defence so I had no option but to accept the official line, although the backwards delivery of the facts by the teacher had definitely cast reasonable doubt in my mind on the testimony.

I stroked his bottom gently and acted stern. Pushing is not allowed, whoever starts it, I said. And by the way, if someone else ever does push you, you don’t push back. You go and tell the teacher.

In the past, misbehaviour at school reported by the teacher has earned a punishment – removal of a favourite toy for a set time. Snooks, I am sure, had not forgotten this, though mercifully it was quite a long time ago. But now I was not so sure. A number of people have told me to keep school and home misdemeanours separate. Dragging school convictions all the way home for sentencing seems a little long-winded for a three year old who barely remembers he has been to school by the time we get home. Plus, there was that reasonable doubt.

So instead I laid it on a bit thick about how to stay out of trouble by steering clear of anyone being naughty, and not retaliating.

“Also,” I added today, as Snooks stood next to me on his kitchen step, chopping mushrooms for tonight’s Hidden Vegetable Bolognese Sauce (will he put two and two together?), “it is very important to tell the truth. If someone is naughty to you, you should tell the teacher and they will deal with that person.”

“So it’s like the police chasing baddies?” he said, fresh from his Christmas viewing of Cars 2, which has opened up his world to the existence of “baddies” and “goodies” and life’s struggles between them.

“Mmm, a bit,” I said, half listening while letting him grate a carrot and my finger into the bubbling sauce.

“And do the goodies always win?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, more focussed now, spotting an important parenting moment hove into view as I sucked a finger and stirred. ‘Yes they do. The truth will always out, Snooks. Even if it takes a little while.”

“And so what if the policeman is not very good and does not catch any of the baddies?” he asked.

There have been times over the last three years when I have been convinced Snooks is invested with some kind of superpower which makes him both three and going on 53 at the same time. He has, a few times now, seemed to know or understand things that he could not possibly have been told by anyone. Usually I forget about them before I have time to write them down but this one had managed to lodge in my mind all morning. And so here it is.

His question comes the day after two men were sentenced for the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, a black teenager stabbed to death in 1993 by a gang as he waited at a bus stop in south east London.

The facts are well known now across the world. The parents of the murdered boy had to fight a long hard battle for justice for their son because the police failed to investigate the crime properly at the time, and vital evidence was lost. The murderers got away with it. The Metropolitan Police were accused of institutional racism, which had allowed the crime to go unsolved. As a news reporter on the local newspaper, which covered the area at the time, I can wholly vouch for that accusation. I and a friend, who worked on the paper at the time, sent each other the same message yesterday as the two life sentences were handed out. “At last.”

“Most policemen do their best, and most people are good and eventually the goodies always win,” I told him.

“And when someone has been naughty, they can decide to stop doing that and be good, can’t they?” he asked.

Ok scrap the concert pianist, professional footballer, astrophysicist, poet laureate plans. He’s off to law school, if we can just keep him out of trouble long enough to get him there.