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.

Mister Maker has a lot to answer for!

I understand the value of kids and The Creative Arts. I really do. I studied music, art, and drama at school and have been known to break out in spontaneous song and dance numbers when the mood strikes me.

My husband (otherwise known as Pineman due to a questionable haircut that left him resembling the fronds on a pineapple) is not particularly dramatic but is incredibly musical and artistic, so I realise we must accept some responsibility for our kids’ artistic temperaments.

However, I think someone else needs to take some responsibility for our children’s manic craft episodes, and that is a British television show host who sports a zany vest, has crazy eyes, and fashions crafty things out of inanimate objects from his ‘doodle drawers’.  He paints, he sticks, he glues, he cuts, and somewhere in the middle of the program he wakes up some shapes that jump down from a shelf and sing, “I am a shape…la la la la”. 

He is Mister Maker, and he is an enabler!

At one stage my kids were so enamoured with Mister Maker that we had to record the show daily. They even assigned a shape to everyone in the family, and if I happened to be in the room at the wrong time, I had to be a square.

But it’s the way their little eyes light up when they see a ‘fake spilt milkshake’ being created using pink paint mixed with glue or a ‘donkey puppet’ made by sticking two boxes together and then plastered with paint, pom poms and googly eyes, that incites me to throw all easily accessible art products on a Very High Shelf.

Apologies in advance to my high school art teacher, but the three core reasons for my disdain for children’s Visual Arts are as follows:

Visual Arts are messy.

During The Ranga’s recent pre-school orientation session, he gravitated towards the painting table, and with a furrowed brow, started furiously striking the paper with the intensity of Vincent Van Gough. He layered and layered and layered and added A LOT of water from the rinsing cup and produced the masterpiece, ‘Anakin’s Footprints’, which looked suspiciously like his previous series, ‘Stars and Rope’.

Later when trying to wrangle two wet paintings, a backpack, a pair of shoes and the rescuing of The Ranga from a giant bindi patch, I copped the full force of a dripping ‘Anakin’s Footprints’ in the face; which brings me to my next point…

Visual Arts are hard to transport.

As much as I adore pre-schools and day care centres for allowing my children to creatively express themselves without my presence, they really need to consider leasing trailers.

Miss C recently brought home FOUR egg cartons containing the inside padding from a bra (apparently beds for her dolls), two paintings, two drawings and two cardboard boxes covered in paint and glitter stuck together with an empty paper towel roll and some painted yoghurt containers (apparently a boat).

And once when it was pouring rain, I had to haul a saturated Ranga, a pair of sodden thongs, a handbag, a backpack, seventeen drawings, and a pair of cardboard and cotton wool bunny ears. Plus, Miss C had to trail behind toting an umbrella, a wet painting, and a toy chicken in a basket made out of an egg carton and a pipe cleaner.

Trailer anyone?

And sometimes the art just keeps on travelling with us…like Miss C’s paper doily people who have to be strapped into the car and attend her ballet lessons.

But possibly art’s most heinous crime is its prevalence!

Visual Arts are like The Plague.

My kids never stop creating and it’s like some insidious disease that has infiltrated the house.

Despite my best intentions to follow the advice of every parent and magazine and book with their ‘great ideas’ about displaying/storing/using children’s artworks - turn it into wrapping paper, take photos of the art and make a photo book, create a crafty display wall (which would involve me creating craft to store the craft!), frame it - to the parent of the prolific artist, it is all bullshit!

I have saved some, framed three pieces for Miss C to hang in her room, stuck them to the fridge, made numerous, subtle trips to the recycling bin, and yet we are still destined to be like one of those families who have to be rescued by a bulldozer and a team of cleaners and a television crew because we have horded so much crap.

The moral to the story…

I can tolerate The Ranga’s made-up songs about Star Wars characters to the tune of Train’s Save Me San Francisco for ten straight minutes, followed by a cry of, “Mum, I can feel another song coming on”.

I can even tolerate Miss C dressing up in a petticoat I wore as a flower girl in a debutante ball when I was nine, coupled with an old bikini top, and dragging herself along the ground pretending to be Ariel from The Little Mermaid.

But the next time I hear the theme song to Mister Maker, please allow me to rock in the corner and silently weep.