Parenting

We’ve hit a family milestone.

On a Saturday not long ago, we had no plans, and no place to go, as is mostly the case during our pandemic life.

My petite Lark was bored and complaining that she had nothing to do, although she owns all the toys and art supplies in the universe.

I suggested that we all grab a book and have a “family reading session” in the living room for half an hour. Admittedly, I expected her to scoff at this suggestion as she had the other 1,000 ideas I’d offered up, but she agreed.

My house is so, so quiet.

For the first time in an age, I’m alone in a house filled with silence. Well, almost alone. My husband is “at work” upstairs. Employing quotes implies that he isn’t actually working. He is.

I cannot hear My Little Pony playing on the TV downstairs. I cannot hear my son humming repetitively under his breath while he concentrates on something. I cannot hear the sound of my daughter’s foghorn flute voice asking me for a cup of water/a snack/a show/another snack/help/a sweater/clean socks/a cookie/screentime/playtime.

There are a lot of posts and memes going around right now about how much we Gen Xers are showing quarantine/social distancing who’s boss. At the risk of sounding like a crotchety member of the older generation, it’s true. In our day we had to play with pet rocks for chrissakes!

Sometimes it feels like the kids of today have it all.

And by all, I mean things like devices that cost hundreds of dollars and provide endless hours of fun and excitement. When I was a kid, it was mind-boggling to have, like, Atari. (We never had Atari.) Even a game as low-budget as a Wonderful Waterful was pretty entertaining. (And honestly, I don’t know if we actually had one of those either.)

A few years back, I promised my son that we would get a cat, because, “everyone else” had a pet, except for us.

And then, no further action was taken. Together, the Bean and I often looked at cat profiles on rescue sites, and wondered if Fluffysocks or Martin were the cats for us. Despite saying that we would get a cat, I couldn’t take action on it, because, frankly, I just couldn’t imagine another thing that needed ME to keep it fed and alive.

I had a concussion once, as a small child.

At that time, we lived on a dead-end street, in a small town in New York. The kids of Concord Avenue all played together, that last generation of 70s and 80s kids who got to do stuff without constant adult supervision.

We meandered through secret backyard paths and built forts amongst rhododendron bushes. We knew the names of the neighbourhood dogs: Sugarfoot, Snowball. We went to the playground at the end of our street, alone, the littler ones supervised by the not-much-older ones.

Part III

See also

• Part I
• Part II

A few months ago, there was a night, like most nights, when I lay in bed with my four-year-old, Lark, snuggling her as she prepared to drift off to sleep. All parents know these moments, that fill you with such a fierce, protective, animal joy. Whispering, sharing dreamtime thoughts. As I tried to get her to settle down, I was fending off licks because she was also pretending to be a kitten.

I am stuck in that parenting doldrum where I spend way too much of my time negotiating. And coaxing. And convincing. And bribing. The four year old, obviously. The 10 year old is currently in the golden tween age of parental cooperation.

This, to my mind, is one of the biggest drawbacks of parenting, trying to “make” a kid do something that they don’t want to do. And in the process, realizing, with that sinking sense of futility, that it’s f$&ing impossible to force a small human to do things that they don’t want to do. You can’t “make” them eat healthy food. Nor can you “make” them go to bed, or get in their car seat, or keep walking, or put on their socks, or stop talking when you require quiet right now.

I’m having one of those weeks.

One of those is obviously code for somewhat crappy.

Monday morning, as I was getting the bikes out of the shed to take the kid to school, Bean suddenly piped up behind me, “I hate to tell you this, Mum, but there’s something really furry up there on that shelf.” A quick glance revealed a raccoon, curled up in a ball, sleeping. If you are not from Canada, you may not understand why this was an annoying discovery. Raccoons are cute, nocturnal, territorial, destructive and hard to get rid of. With a sigh, I ignored the fuzz-ball and left for school.

A few weeks back, I was hiding in my bedroom, trying to find ways to free up storage on my phone, which had reached capacity and was in a feeble state. I heard Bean looking for me around the house, while I continued tapping away at my device, in stealth mode.

“Mum! Muuuuum. Where are you?” He bounced into my room and saw me holding my phone. “Hey!” he said accusingly. “Isn’t this supposed to be screen-free Sunday?”

It’s 5:00 in the morning and I’ve been up for over an hour already. My experiment of early rising that I spoke about in my previous post is well underway. Except, it hasn’t been a conscious decision to be up and at ’em at this ungodly hour. I’m dealing with a massive case of toddler jet-lag over here. My 26-month-old woke me consistently and hourly from 11:00 pm to 4:00 am, at which point I gave up on sleep and succumbed to the inevitable.