Empty Nest

This week Miss C started school.  She began the journey all shiny and new, open to endless possibilities with a wide smile and little blue bows in her hair. I knew (or at least hoped) she would be okay. She’s always been a stoic little thing. But being that she was somewhat anxious in the lead-up and with all of the hype surrounding the first day of school, I wasn’t sure if this time she might crack. But she didn’t. And the relief on her face at the end of her first day was a relief to me.

What I didn’t expect was my reaction. I thought perhaps I’d cry. But I didn’t. I felt a surge of emotion when I said goodbye but swallowed it back down. What I have been feeling all week is agitated, irritable and anxious in the hours when she is not at home. I normally work three days a week but have spent this week at home because I wanted her to feel settled and unhurried.

I have sort of stalked around the house like a lioness, feeling edgy and overprotective. This is different to pre-school and daycare. More days, more hours, more influences, more independence. And I’m not averse to independence per se. It’s just that she is shiny and new with her pink Disney Princess lunchbox and her pigtails.

At the moment she is amenable, very Snow White-esque. But one day, in the not too distant future, she’ll be skanking around here like Lindsay or Paris, wanting to wear inappropriate clothing and prefacing every sentence with “like”. One day her little heart is going to be crushed because her best friend hates her or because she loves someone unrequitedly.  And I won’t be able to control it and suddenly she will be tarnished.

I understand these experiences must happen eventually (everything except for the use of the word “like” out of context) for her to learn coping mechanisms. I understand that I must continue to relinquish some control for her to grow and realise her potential.

But I wish she could just stay shiny.

So apparently I dropped all the balls…

It probably wasn’t the best time for me to start reading a book entitled, “How Not to F*** Them up” (by British psychologist, Oliver James) in my very fragile pre-menstrual state, but as I walked around the library with Miss C & The Ranga in tow - it literally leapt off the shelf and into my hand.

I thought perhaps it might have mystical properties – that by simply touching it, it would give me the power to create well adjusted children or at least help me to fix some of my monumental stuff-ups, but as I opened the cover I realised it was directed at those with children under three – those who still had time to correct their mistakes before everything went to hell in a handbasket and said child/ren reached the magic age of three and spontaneously combusted.

Despite the fact my children are five and three-and-a-half, I devoured the first 45 pages of the book with an insatiable appetite – hoping like hell that I got something right, but quickly came to the realisation that I need to seriously reconsider my nomination for Mother of the Year.

According to the book, mothers can generally be split into three categories – Organisers (routine based mothers, full-time paid workers, baby works around them) Huggers (earth mothers, co-sleepers, stay-at-home mothers, works around baby) & Fleximums (a combination of Organisers and Huggers, part-time paid workers).

Apparently there are positive and negative attributes to all groups and some mothers will not necessarily fit the exact mould of a particular category. However, what James makes quite clear so far in the book is that genetics play little (if any) role in the personality traits of a child and that nurture is everything.

He points out that the under-threes require a responsive, attentive adult to help them develop into a secure person. On a positive note he explains that it doesn’t have to be the mother, it could be a father/partner, a grandparent, a relative or an attentive nanny or carer, and that if a mother is depressed or unresponsive, or if she is unhappy staying at home full-time, that a suitable caring alternative is preferable for the child. However, he then goes on to deliver the old day care centre chestnut citing studies which show increases in cortisol levels and behavioural problems in regards to under-threes in centre based care.

So basically for the general population whose alternative care option is a day care centre you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

I am the first to admit that I found mothering under-threes to be occasionally rewarding, but mostly relentless. I had two children 18.5 months apart and after the birth of The Ranga, stayed at home full-time for the next two years. I am almost positive I was suffering from depression a lot of the time. I tried my best to entertain and engage with my children, but know for a fact that personally I would have felt better if I’d been working part-time at that stage.  

I painted a façade of happy families and sought therapy along the way, but I was so afraid of the propaganda and ‘studies’ that told me that day care was an ‘evil’ place where children suffered at the mercy of their ‘selfish’ mothers, that my children may have inadvertently suffered as a result.

Certainly there were times of enormous fulfilment in my early mothering career, but mostly it was hard yakka. Those who take to early mothering with aplomb will be aghast at my confession, I’m sure.

I may not have been the archetypal earth mother, but for what it’s worth I tried very, very hard.

When I finally allowed myself to send The Ranga to day care for two days per week at 2 years, 8 months, it was like a friggin’ epiphany. The staff was warm and caring. The environment was stimulating. Hell, he could do Mister Maker craft until the cows came home and I could go to work without burdening anyone, and safe in the knowledge that he was well taken care of.

For my situation, part-time freedom meant better mental health, which in turn made me a better mother.

So yes – perhaps I fucked up (although no one has spontaneously combusted lately) - not because I sent my son to a day care centre but because I didn’t do it earlier.

‘Tis the season for… chaos

When I was a kid every day on the road to Christmas Day felt like an eternity. It was always stinking hot and my little sister (Sister Sledge) and I used to amuse ourselves with activities such as riding our bikes past the neighbours' house on the corner (the only one with the pool in the street) and shouting to each other, “OH, IT’S SOOOOOOO HOT!” in the hope that our passive aggressiveness would yield us a swim in the pool. It usually did! 

And on one particularly long and languid pre-Christmas December Day in the 80s, Sister Sledge and I took the bikes for a spin down to the corner shop to buy craft materials – to cut into miniscule pieces – to create a Mr. Squiggle board game.  Yep, the days were very, very long!

What I don’t remember is when the days switched from being long, hot and languid to frantic, air-conditioned and chaotic? When did I stop lying on my stomach, creating a board game, in the middle of the lounge room for an entire day, and start trying to cram multiple events on every given day in the lead up to Christmas?

I only have one husband and two children and yet I feel like I am project managing a large corporation. Between my work and Pineman’s work and day care and pre-school and school orientations and birthday parties and Christmas parties and more Christmas parties and Christmas shopping, I am starting to feel like I’m on a conveyor belt which is creeping toward some dark and ominous pit and inside the pit are metres and metres of tinsel and an inflatable Santa.

 I am quite debilitated by the chaos this year. And my coping mechanism seems to be: inane shopping expeditions and popping ibuprofen (in no particular order).

I used to be quite a productive Christmas shopper, but this year, in the small amount of time I have had to shop, I have been faffing about, coming home with random items and forgetting things like the milk.

The other day it took me at least 45 minutes to walk from the bike section of Toys R Us to the end of ONE car aisle. It was not a great distance, but this is what I achieved in the process: I bumped into someone I knew and had a chat. Waited whilst The Ranga drove a large plastic car around. Idly threatened said child out of large plastic car. Waited whilst The Ranga AND Miss C drove large plastic cars around. Idly threatened said children out of large plastic cars. Was accosted by woman wanting to know all about electronic guinea pigs. Delivered winning sales pitch to not one but THREE women regarding electronic guinea pigs and up-sold matching accessories. Witnessed a little boy piss himself all over his bewildered father and the floor. Offered all spare wipes, pull-ups and shorts to bewildered father who had a little boy, a baby, a pram and NO nappy bag! Dictated the makes and models of the entire range of Matchbox cars to the eager Ranga, then promptly forgot why I was there and walked out with nothing!    

 I have also found myself getting all antsy when I can’t find particular items, begging shop assistants to just check one more time please, trying to materialise a Jessie and Bullseye (from Toy Story 3) double pack when I know full well that Jessie on her own would be quite adequate. And having loud conversations on my mobile in aisles that sound like this, “DO YOU THINK THE RANGA WOULD LIKE A STAR WARS DOUBLE PACK WITH R2D2 and C3PO WITH A BATTLE DROID HEAD? NO, IT HAS AN INTERCHANGEABLE C3PO HEAD. NO, IT’S NOT FROM THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY, BUT DO YOU THINK HE WOULD LIKE IT??”

If I have achieved nothing else this Christmas, I’m pretty sure I gave the poindexter father in the aisle next to me an erection.

But it’s not really the kids’ presents that pose the greatest problems, it’s all the tricky gifts like those for pre-school teachers and day care teachers and ballet teachers and even when they have been carefully selected, Miss C wants to value add with some homemade craft. I commend her for her thoughtfulness, I really do (season of giving and all). But her idea this year is to make individual paper doily people for her pre-school teachers, which involves glue and pom poms and large paddle pop sticks and cutting and pipe cleaners and oh my GOD, between that and the writing of Christmas cards when she cannot yet write, is causing me to reach for the ibuprofen quicker than Frosty the friggin’ Snowman can meet his demise in the Australian sun.  

We are eight days into December and we haven’t even put up the tree!! This never would’ve happened when I was a kid. The tree went up on the first day of December, and Mum would’ve patiently encouraged the Mr Squiggle board game craft. Hell, she would’ve even cracked open the glue! I don’t remember my parents being this harried around Christmas (although my mother did line up at a shop at midnight on Christmas Eve 1984 to secure a Cabbage Patch Kid for me – I’m sure that was relaxing). Maybe they were and I just didn’t notice? Maybe my kids won’t notice?