Archive for the ‘Parenting’ Category

Last week I took my 13yo son to see our GP and get his prescriptions updated for our trip to the USA, just to make sure we had enough Epipens, Piriton, steroids, inhalers… all the kit and kaboodle a child with serious allergies has to drag around with them.

I was a bit worried at that stage that I hadn’t managed to find a bottle of liquid Piriton any smaller than 140ml because the limit for liquids is 90ml for travelling to the USA.  Just a bit worried since we are flying BA and they carry Epipens onboard and all flight attendants are trained in their administration. Only a tiny bit worried since we will have a full set of all his medicine in our checked luggage for when we’re over there. But for total peace of mind I like to take one of everything he could possibly need in my hand luggage too.

So I asked the GP if she would write a covering letter to smooth the path of all these pointy sharp bits, liquids, gases and pills onto the plane…. like they have done every year we’ve travelled by air. “Sure”, she said, “no problem pick it up next week”.

Today is next week and when MrW went to pick it up the receptionist said he had to pay £12 before she would release it.

WTF?

Since all our cash is now in crisp dollars he asked if they took Visa. And they don’t. So now what?

I phoned them to explain that this wasn’t a passport form, it wasn’t something I could get the local postmaster or a school teacher to do. Only my son’s GP can confirm that he needs these drugs and he’s a minor for crying out loud – since when did doctors charge minors for anything? Since it’s not covered by the NHS according to the receptionist.

Obviously I’m not taking massive risks here, Andrew will only eat snacks on the plane that I have bought in advance. In all probability he won’t need his drugs. We are flying BA because they are trained and because their transatlantic flights are nut free.

Our £100k+ a year GPs can take their letter and shove it where the sun don’t shine. I am damned if I am going to pay them to provide a 1 page print of a proforma letter they have graciously stuck their signature on. They should be utterly ashamed of themselves charging a child for a piece of paper that could assure his safety when travelling.

Yesterday I found a 70ml bottle of Piriteze. The Epipens are 0.3ml and the pills will hopefully not be too soggy so I’m sure we’ll be fine. It’s too late for me to contact his consultant now anyway so we’ll just have to cross our fingers and take enough crisps and Maltesers to keep him going for nine hours.

I can get QUINCY’S autograph for 99 PENCE!

And my GPs want £12?!?!  FFS!

For £12 I can get JESUS’S signature.

I phoned the Anaphylaxis Campaign to check if this was normal. They advised that whilst doctors CAN charge for these letters since they are not covered by the NHS, many don’t. And I’d like to think in the case of children many more don’t. It seems my GP surgery is just especially stinking. I look forward to telling them exactly what I think of them when we get back.

There are good reasons why I write. I struggle with assertion, I’m really pretty abysmal. I usually come over quite aggressive (would you believe it?!?!?!) especially when I’m getting upset or passionate about a subject.

So I write.

I consider my words (most of the time). I vent, then edit, edit, edit my words into something bordering on the inoffensive (mostly).

Then I say my piece.

Do you know what I find really rude? When I write and the person I am entering into  a dialogue with chooses to return that contact by phoning me.

I don’t do phones.

When I’m on the phone I don’t stand up for myself, I go along with whatever, I’m a pathetic whimpering mush.

So I write.

When I have to deal with, especially raise concerns with, figures in authority, I write to them.

Is it too much to expect them to write back? I’m not after a stamp and a signature. I email so surely they can email back?

But no, it must be part of the training that they don’t put anything in writing. They phone you. No paper trail… pathetic mush parents going along with whatever.

It’s rude.

I find it rude and intimidating.

So my phone is OFF.

I’m hiding. And I want chocolate.

So… it seems that the best way to send me to blog tumbleweed town is to go and nominate me for a national award.

I’ve often wept at the contrariness of my boys, it has always been convenient to say they take after their Dads but I think, after 20 seconds of further consideration, I am the common denominator in that particular genetic soup.

If anyone else thinks it’s a good idea it’s a safe bet I won’t.

Me: “I really need to lose weight, you know, I’m so unhealthy”

Anybody: “Good idea!”

Me: “Ha! You think? You saying I’m fat? Watch me eat your weight in cheese and then tell me what you think… I’ll do what I want…now piss off while I order a curry, no TWO curries”

What is the matter with me?

All it took was some kind people to tick a box and say (figuratively of course) “The photos on your blog are not too shabby MrsW” and my camera has barely been out of its bag since. Nevermind actually posting anything here.

When I found out I was a MAD finalist everyone around me was urging me to go to the ceremony in September, but it bears mentioning that I am surrounded by people far less likely to brick it that sort of going it solo social environment. Me? I’m shit at this sort of thing, so I put every obstacle I could think of in my way. It’s a school day, two school days, everyone works, I’m the only one here to do pick-ups, it’s so far away, even cheap flights are expensive, just buy me a Photobox canvas and a bottle of wine and leave me the fuck alone!

I don’t like walking into a shop on my own, so what the hell was I thinking two days ago when I bought a flight from Edinburgh to Gatwick for 13th September?

I feel sick already.

Yesterday I took Paul to Broughty Ferry, it’s about 30 miles away and we don’t know anyone there. I sat for two hours and watched my self-assured, confident, enthusiastic and friendly four year old introduce himself to every child there, play with them all, join in, lead and follow in equal measure, give and take and connect.

And I was heart-breakingly jealous. Not for myself, I was thinking of another child. A child who’s more like me than me. A child who’s always found all that a bit more difficult to figure out.

The hardest lesson being a parent has taught me is that you can’t make your children happy, confident individuals. You try, you try everything you can think of that might work, you love them, bear their pain, shield them and shore them up, plead, beg, force, scream in frustration, praise, reward, love and then love some more but never quite shake that feeling that you’re missing the one thing, the right thing, the thing that will make them happy ever after people. If you could just do that one parent thing right before it’s too late…

Why do I find the fear and sadness in the good stuff?

Just contrary I guess.

This morning I booked my side sea-view king size bedded room at Bognor Regis, Butlins, I’ll probably make my room number know as soon as possible so if I don’t appear some bolshier blogger will hopefully come drag me kicking and screaming out of my safety zone. Otherwise I might have to resort to Tequlia and that aint pretty!

For something completely different, here’s a photo of me in The Buff.

Here’s why – you can visit  here to sponsor or donate. Or buy a buff or a t-shirt. Or enter the raffle. Or all three.

Two weeks ago I was a hair’s breadth away from home educating. I was that close.

Then I said no to a request from Paul for a Wagon Wheel breakfast he yelled that he hated me, thumped out and slammed his bedroom door (yes – four years old and slamming doors before his teenage siblings). I came to my senses.

The whole artificiality of school screams at me “Don’t do it!!”. If you were to observe our society from afar, rounding up its young and locking them inside high security buildings, filling their heads with information, lining them up, marching them in, marching them out, dressing them the same, testing them the same, controlling their access to anything outside school for most of their waking hours, well you’d be forgiven for confusing our offspring with our convicts.

Strangley the first thing most people point out that Paul would miss if here were to be home educated is the “social side”. What social side? There’s nothing natural about being forced to only interact with people born in the same 12 month period as yourself. Even now, at 43 and having left school 25 years ago, I STILL do a wee sum in my head when I meet new people and place myself and them according to our ages. Not hierarchically, there’s no implied power structure to it, I just do it because school categorised us thus from age 4 and it’s difficult to stop.

Just when I was almost settled on the notion and about to start looking for local home-ed groups, we had our placing request granted. We just made the cut-off date in applying. I’d seen some icky stuff at the local school earlier this year, nothing particularly terrible, nothing awful, nothing anyone but me would have complained about. But enough to make me realise that despite years of training and experience, there are just some people you wouldn’t leave your children with.

So he’s going to school in August (eeek!). Given that he won’t even listen to me when I try to stop him walking into immovable metal objects, I’ve decided for his sanity and mine someone else can teach him harder stuff than walking and talking.

I have now landed myself with 7 years of getting him to the other side of Perth over 3.5 miles away.

Did I once say I wouldn’t find something to moan about?

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1. I’m a <whatever>, on maternity leave at the moment

The bags and sags probably revealed that already, but, you know, there’s a career or at the very least a job title in there somewhere.

2. I’m taking a career break to raise my child(ren)

At this point it’s a positive decision involving active choice, you still nod at the career you think at this stage you are taking a temporary break from. Warm, fluffy, deluded Mummy.

3. I’m a Stay At Home Mum

Now you’ve been there a while you’re getting to know the terminology, redefining your role. You identify with the thousands of other’s in the Sisterhood of the SAHM and challenge anyone to undervalue your contribution to society.

4. Oh you know, I clean I cook!

There’s an unspoken boundary between SAHM and housewife and you hit it round about the time they are approaching school age. Negotiating the transition from jealous “ooh I wish I didn’t have to work” to silent “wtf isn’t she working yet?” is pointless, just let it happen cos you know what’s next?

5. Me? Nothing

Pub lunch anyone?

I’m between 4 and 5.

Ever since the little dictator learned to talk – and he was late – there seems to have been a shift in the balance of power in our house. Whereas before my older children would ask me if they could watch TV/play the Playstation/eat me out of house and home immediately they walked in the door after school… now, when I challenge them as they shove Oreos in their face whilst defacing Sackboys the usual reply is “Paul said I could”.

Eh?

I’m well aware that the subtleties of power are almost impossible to understand in a melded family with step-parents, half-siblings, exes and such, but I find things usually work quite adequately when we all just agree that we do as I say and I am always right.

Simple.

Lately is has become increasingly obvious that my Let.It.Go attitude has grown horns and turned on me. In my version of Let.It.Go we don’t correct Paul when he shows us a battered Hot Wheels car and proudly proclaims it’s a “Battle Car Super GX”… we definitely don’t say to him “DUH! there’s no such thing as a Super GX’. We Let.It.Go. The testosterone fuelled creatures my daughter and I share a home with are not so good at Let.It.Go… they all have to be RIGHT. I my Let.It.Go world I call this Being.A.Pedantic.Shithead.

The inevitable result of trying to combine Let.It.Go with Being.A.Pedantic.Shithead is that letting Paul be “right” about things that really don’t matter all that much, such as the accuracy of a “Battle Car Super GX” has somehow ended up with him being accorded the honour of being right about… well just about anything anyone wants him to be right about. So when I find Paul eating a packet of chocolate buttons 20 minute before dinner it’s because “he wanted them”, when I find the Playstation going full blast in the middle of Gotta Dance it’s because “Paul said I could”. Truly, if I had a Thornton’s champagne truffle for everytime I’ve been told “Paul said it was OK” you could stick a fat hat on my fat head and call me Jabba.

I’m surely not the only person who is capable of holding two opposing truths to be simultaneously true? Surely others are able to see the difference between correcting a child who uses the wrong word and correcting a child who uses their imagination to create weird, novel and yeah, “incorrect” statements?

And as for that Peppa Pig?

The animators of Peppa Pig have agreed, after receiving complaints from parents, to not only make sure future episodes show Peppa wearing a seatbelt, but to return and redraw all the existing episodes to include seatbelts. A seatbelt wearing pig in a dress. This is, according to the BBC, after a parent complained that her daughter refused to wear a seatbelt because Peppa didn’t.

Now I know the pack hierarchy is a bit screwy in my house at the moment but who put Peppa Pig in charge of anything? Does anyone actually know a parent like this? I moan about skateboarding with screwdrivers and extortion on the Disney channel, but I’m not altogether serious. I’m quite capable, when Mickey is training a sea lion, of explaining to Paul that “a circus isn’t a circus without a sea lion doing tricks” is utter bollox and sea lions are much happier free and frolicking in the ocean.

There must have been multiple complaints if the poor sods are having to go back and redraw Peppa and George strapped into the back seat for all two series. Those pigs drive everywhere. And what’s more they have no anchor points to speak of. Which begs the question, why can’t these moaning mums just point out to their children that Peppa isn’t real, she’s a pig, in a dress, she talks, her parents fall over a lot (OK maybe not quite so far from acceptable truth) and since you are real you wear a seatbelt.  Peppa Pig is not the boss of anyone.

That would be Paul

Apparently.

Meh.

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Fourteen years ago with a shiny new firstborn babe in arms I was told by a mother of many that in a perfect world we’d bring all our children up the way we bring up our fifth. I think her children were pretty spaced out, chronologically speaking. She had time to witness the consequences of decisions, choices, methods and either repeat or formulate new options. Cos it’s scientific this child rearing innit?

My first two were so close together they were, and to some extent still are, a homogenous unit upon which I practice being a Mum. Even Paul calls them “kids” as in “kids! tea’s ready!” or “can I wake up the kids?”. Like he’s something other, not one of the “kids”.

I foolishly thought that the experience of getting the first two through nearly 10 years more or less intact would give me excellent grounding for No3. I thought I’d have answers. I actually thought for one minute I’d know what to do. Well there are many many things that have bitten that confidence on its ever expanding arse. Many. Breastfeeding, co-sleeping, potty training and plain old eating have all been minefields I thought I knew the way through only to find I’d misplaced my route map somewhere in the 1990s. Four years on I am still looking for it, when really I ought to be taking notes for the teen manual, you know, the one I will lose in another 10 years time.

Recently I’ve been pondering, through the lens of my considerable experience, the “S” word…. Santa.

Yeah him.

I didn’t give a second thought to perpetuating the cultural Christmas icon that is Santa with my older children. Not a thought. In fact, when I heard of parents who didn’t deflect all kudos for giving onto the imaginary guy who breaks into our homes on Christmas Eve I was quite concerned that their five and six year olds would be wild and loose in public education spreading their Santa heresy and spoiling Christmas for all the good boys and girls who believe in him. Or more accurately, believe their parents. Despite the obvious terror he engendered in me from a young age, I carried it on.

Whether it’s my own doubts making me more receptive or not I am sensing a small but perceptible shift away from Santa. I have heard several parents tell of alternative Christmas traditions, ones they either grew up with or developed themselves, that I find myself drawn to. In one home, Santa fills the stockings whilst family give the big gift(s), with the advantage that huge, expensive, out of their budget gizmos are not automatically met with “I’ll ask Santa”. Santa never disappoints in that home. More and more people are just not figuring Santa into Christmas at all. Whereas before I found this a bit sad, lacking in magic and just plain old bah humbuggy, now I’m not so sure. I’m not so sure because of my daughter.

Actually it was my fault. It usually is. She was 9 at the time and we’d been watching a docu-drama about dragons. It was really well done in that BBC way of doing things really well. Actors played the part of archeologists and scientists who’d discovered the fossilized remains of dragons and it was all supported with stunning CGI and enough pseudo-science to fool a 9 year old. The lines between reality and fantasy were a bit blurred for Kathryn. She knew there weren’t and had never been real dragons in our skies, but she asked me where the myth of dragons came from. I can’t remember my whole reply, just the bit that broke her… the bit where I said dragons were “just the same as leprechauns and fairies”. She broke inside first, I saw it happen, and as long as I live I never wish to see again the devastating pain of betrayal that a child can’t hide… “you mean the Tooth Fairy?”.

Aah FUCK.

There really isn’t anyway of digging yourself out of that one, so I killed the Tooth Fairy.

And she recovered.

Or so I thought.

Two days later, two days in which she’d obviously been thinking about it a lot, she asked the question I’d spent two days waiting for and hoping didn’t really need to be asked.

“If the Tooth Fairy isn’t real… oh please don’t, please DON’T tell me Santa isn’t real, no, don’t, oh NO!”

I can’t even begin to convey how distraught she was. Over Santa. The same guy who scared the shit out of me and my sister…

I think Perth only had the one street Santa… that’s the same guy isn’t it? These photos are at least three years apart.

Anyway, I looked her in the eye and asked her if she wanted me to lie. She cried for a whole day. A.Whole.Day. Can you even begin to imagine how awful that feels? All my platitudes about the “spirit” of giving and the “magic” of fantasy were well met…. eventually. And being on board for her new baby brother, who hadn’t arrived yet, made her feel special and grown up and in on the “secret”. But nothing, none of it, was worth watching her break. Nothing was worth the anguish and despair with which she asked me if I’d been lying to her. With hindsight it was probably a combination of betrayal and embarrassment. By carrying on with The Santa Lie for so long I think she’d probably been defending my story to more street-wise kids at school. Yeah, if possible hindsight made me feel even worse.

I have very few rules I abide by as a parent, I don’t lie to my children and I always apologise when I am wrong. If I had too many rules I’d just end up breaking them. Except I did break one. And here I am thinking about breaking it again.

Andrew grew out of Santa with a wry grin on his face at my attempts to keep it going.  I don’t know what to tell Paul about Santa. He’s obviously heard of him and gets the gist of being seen, being good and getting gifts, the usual claptrap. Dare I be the parent who spreads Santa heresy? Do I tell The Santa Lie again?

I don’t know what to do!