tinker tailor soldier florist

We attended our first parents evening the other day.

I know. So what. But this is a biggie for me. I have waited 30 years for this, to be the one asking the questions rather than the subject of them.

But, like all the ones my own parents trooped reluctantly along to, strangely attired in their Sunday clothes (they never went out, other than to Mass) and oddly together, it was a crashing anti-climax.

First of all, Snooks came with us. This was on the cunning advice – to all parents - of the teachers. Apart from hampering any meaningful discussion about progress it also put a stop to any debate about the child’s behaviour as it was there for all to see. All we had to do was stand and watch Snooks hammering on the door pleading to be let out. Nice one.

Anyway amid the racket it emerged that he is good at numbers, he plays with lots of different children (girls not so much), he loves being outside and he is the only child in the class who can recognise and name a hyacinth.

Is that it? I felt like shouting. We went through all this – the Engineer home early from work, me in a skirt, Snooks in his personal hell (trapped inside the prison he endures daily with all the adults he knows talking about him) – for this!

It took me right back to those evenings when my parents would return looking glazed and were unable to recall anything the teachers had said. I sometimes wondered if they had spoken about me at all or just took the opportunity to talk shop about the respective schools where they all taught and the pupils in them.

“Did she mention my biology project?”

“No but if Our Lady’s is using Mother of God’s football pitch for rounders practice this summer, we are going to have to up our game."

I suppose I should be pleased. Others mothers were holding whispered conversations with a different teacher which looked far more fruitful but may have been less reassuring.

And I suppose at least it means I know my own son as I could have told her all that six months ago.

And I am happy about the hyacinth. He does love his flowers and always stops to smell them. He can identify geraniums, roses, poppies, pansies, primula, daffodils (he likes how they “horn out”), daisies, dandelions, tulips and of course narcissus.

Today we saw robins, canaries and finches at the farm and a pied wagtail in the garden.

He can distinguish and name pigeons, magpies, sparrows, hawks, herons, geese, moorhens and of course ducks.

We regularly check up on our friends in the garden; a giant slug who lived under the geranium pots until he “slugged off” (to use Snooks’ words) for the winter, a frog who visits from next door’s ponds and hides under the lavender, the Crocs-eating fox who gets in under the fence and mooches around when we are not looking and two cats who lounge around on the shed roof as if it were their own private St. Barts.

We talked yesterday about what he would like to be when he grows up. Firstly he wanted to work with Daddy - that was a given. They would engineer together, side by side. Then I threw in some obvious alternative suggestions - doctor, pilot, teacher? (That got laughed out of court as being “for girls.”) Then he considered living at the international space station, which was good, so long as we went there with him. And finally he settled on tree surgeon or forester. He liked the idea of living among the trees and having one of those big electric saws.

Yes I can see that for my little nature boy. It might be a bit solitary but it’s a lot easier to visit than space.

life, rabbits, racing and art

I walked in to find Snooks singing to himself the other day.

“It’s a song about Solid Wreck,” he told me. “He is a racing car driver and it is about racing cars at the Grand Prix. Solid Wreck cheats and causes a big crash.”

Where do I start? First of all can I just say bravo to my son. A ballad already. And one with a tragic ending. I didn’t hear the tune but I am thinking country - a kind of Dolly Partonesque He Got What He Deserved But We Really Loved Him vibe. I could even see the feature film – Solid Wreck, The Handsome Kid of Great Promise: Where Did It All Go Wrong?

Solid Wreck is Snooks’ naughty alter ego. When asked once why he had done something – I can’t remember now, but I think it was pretty bad - he answered that Solid Wreck was to blame. Since then SW has not been to visit much and when he does, Snooks himself shoos him away. If it works …

Solid also has a cousin, Storm Wreck. I am not sure how he fits into the picture but in my version of this story he is the good influence who tries to keep Solid on the straight and narrow. Clearly it had not gone well at the Grand Prix.

Apart from being relieved that maybe this was the end of Solid - and very fitting one too – I was also delighted to hear Snooks putting his personal trials into music. Now there is a tradition I would like him to follow. I was glad to hear my message that doing wrong gets punished (even if undiscovered for some time) had been turned into art.

As I mentioned last week Snooks has told me that he paints to feel calm. His prolific creations are handed to me as I collect him each day from school. We average one a day which means five a week. We have three walls dedicated to his work and the rest goes in a box under the bed.

Our current exhibits include a collection of four related pieces, a study in black. These came from his early days of school. Each painting is increasingly blotted out with thick black paint until the fourth, which if you stare at it for a while, actually looks like a hole in the wall which leads into nothingness. I honestly think Rothko would be glad to call it his own. People often do an “Oh” when they see the Black Period collection.

More recent pieces have a definite nautical feel about them. Snooks especially loves painting with water colours which he does at home and a delightful little green vessel with red sails bobbing on an orange sea is stuck to the kitchen boiler. Above the fireplace hung from a string with two clothes pegs is a lovely image of red orange and blue. Snooks says it is a fish.

A couple of my favourites which he did one afternoon in the garden had to be taken down after I stupidly used a snail shaped sponge to print shapes on another piece of paper and hung it up to dry beside his.

“Yours is better,” he muttered miserably. It wasn’t of course. Mine had no creativity, no brush strokes, no originality. But there was no way I could tell him that. I learned a lesson. I have carefully avoided playing the piano when he is happily making up his two fingered tunes (he plays chords, by instinct) or pointing out that you need tap shoes to tap dance when he is doing his own version of Good Morning and Make ‘Em Laugh. And I never suggest to him what I see in his pictures even if it does look like a boat to me. But I walked right into that one.

The demise of Solid Wreck came around the time of Snooks’ fourth birthday and I detect a shift in the air perhaps towards more considerate, responsible driving.

Snooks also informed me, shortly after the song, that he wants a pet rabbit called Sebastian Vettel. We’ll just have to make sure the hutch has got a really good set of brakes.

talking to tinkerbell

Last night I found myself writing this post in my head. The occasion of Snooks’ fourth birthday this week prompted a mini mental stock-take of his funnies and foibles, and I knew that I must record it, for posterity, as this blog is intended.

If you have been keeping up, you will know last week was a bit rough. It was Snooks’ birthday on Monday but the celebration was in danger of being marred by a sudden shifting social ground which left us a bit wobbly.

It turned out that we were all sick. By the eve of the big day, Snooks had crashed out in the back of a black cab on his way home to bed with no dinner. By the following night he was running a 40 degree fever and sleeping in my bed while I lay watching him, trying not to cough. By the following night we were at A&E, sent by the emergency doctor who could not understand why he was conscious when his temperature had dropped to 35 degrees.

However you know what they say about god and mysterious ways – or in this case Tinkerbell. Let me explain.

It all began in the post office as I was waiting in the queue which snakes past the toys and sharp scissors and other stuff I would rather Snooks did not mess with, when he came up brandishing a birthday card bearing a glittering number four and a picture of a decidedly voluptuous fairy wearing a short green dress made of leaves and an unmistakably come-hither stare.

“Look, it’s Tinkerbell!” Snooks declared, with his full bright-spirited ten decibel enthusiasm.

Last I knew Tinkerbell was a rather hard to judge character whom we all loved, but kept at a distance. That was before Disney got hold of her.

This Tinkerbell was coming home with us, ostensibly to give to his girlfriend for her fourth birthday, though we all knew that was never going to happen.

By the middle of the week the card was dog-eared from being carried around and a new one had to be bought for the friend. By the time of Snooks’ birthday we were on our third card, with a matching cake and balloon.

I am not sure what drew my little boy to this particular fairy but I am going with it very happily. He seems to have a private dialogue with her which he has no need to share. And if it works, then who am I to question.

Thus I found myself kneeling on the kitchen floor one day this week holding the arm of a tired and unwell raging Snooks, casting about for something to calm him.

“When you are angry,” I said, “instead of lashing out, try going somewhere quiet and counting to ten or … erm… talking to Tinkerbell.

“What do you do Daddy when you are angry?” I called over my shoulder where the Engineer sat reading as I held the thrashing child by the cuffs.

“I talk to Tinkerbell,” he offered without a breath.

Later that night I used the birthday card to fan Snooks' burning hot face until his temperature dropped. Ok, you could put it down to the Calpol.
But me, I believe in fairies.

And here’s the birthday record:

• He’s 97 cm tall
• His favourite planet is Jupiter which we saw through the telescope in the garden
• He says “bonjour” to the pretty French girl in his class each day and (smart kid) also to the pretty French girl’s mother
• He loves Singing in the Rain and does a mean Gene Kelly routine with his Very Hungry Caterpillar umbrella
• He loves painting and told me that this is what makes him feel calm
• He spots circling birds in the sky and knows a bird of prey by sight
• His say Guten Tag now and again which always catches me by surprise
• His favourite song of the moment is “First of the Gang to Die” by Morrissey
• He wants a pet rabbit
• He explained how there were penguins in Antarctica but no polar bears as they lived in … Abtarctica
• He checks the daffodils in the garden each day to mark their progress into bloom
• He sees faces in the leaves of the trees
• Turning four meant no longer needing the step to reach the sink, using the next age range up toothpaste, getting a bigger scooter with an eagle for a bell, and agreeing to wear plasters.

when push comes to shove

Oh dear. The dust appears to be finally settling after a series of birthdays and punch ups which has left our social landscape somewhat changed.

Snooks has been both the pusher and the punchee and on both counts a period of time apart seems to be the best policy.

Mothers fall into different camps. On the punching incident I was told to let the boys work it through and work out the friendship together. But it is hard having witnessed your three year old on the ground taking punches to the head to want to send him back into that particular ring. What’s more, Snooks himself seems to finally have seen that perhaps this friend is not for him. He has opted to play with girls instead a couple of times, much to my relief.

On the pushing he has been discussed in quiet corners and so we have withdrawn from that arena too. The pushing must be addressed. But we can do it without the backstabbing.

Even the most level-headed mothers who have handled pressure and pain in other areas of their life with calm objectiveness, struggle to keep cool when their children are hurt. I have not known stress like this for a long time – seeing Snooks physically abused on the one hand and rejected for his own failings on the other. A kind of malaise set in some time in the week preceding Snooks’ 4th birthday which had me almost defeated. I seemed to have lost my motherhood compass and simply did not know what to do any more. What I had been doing had clearly not worked.

I talked to Snooks himself, until he offered the explanation that there must be “something wrong inside” which caused him to push his own friend. Then I stopped talking to him about it and talked to some grown-ups who had some distance and suitable qualifications.

They say boys all go through this. Some mothers say let it be. Some say crack down on it. I can’t let it be.

I told Snooks it was not something inside him. It was something he did and he could stop doing. I understand that he does not know how and I need to help him get there.

We three spent his birthday aquatically serene - seeing octopus, sharks and penguins before sailing down the Thames. He’s a Pisces after all. Perhaps these are his people.

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.