What do children teach you? Patience.

 Raising kids is part joy and part guerrilla warfare - Ed Asner

A quick disclaimer.  I have no idea what it's like raising children.  We don't have any.  There's quite enough drama in our house without adding any new people to the mix.  The following is my observation only.


I was absolutely amazed, the other day, to hear a mother I know tell her child that if he didn't behave himself she would "cut the arse off him with wallops."

I couldn't believe it.  I looked at the child, expecting him to faint with shock.  Instead, he stood behind his mother, raised his eyebrows as high as they’d go and mouthed "Grrrrumpy" at his brother, so clearly that we could nearly have danced to it.

No part of him even suspected that he was getting a wallop.  In fact his behaviour was completely unaffected by the threat.
So she told him to stand in the bold corner.  And he used the time to teach himself to do handstands.  Apparently, it is vital that he learn to balance on his hands only, and not use his head.

I always thought you could almost guess what age a person is by the way their mother threatened them as a child.
For instance, if you were regularly told you were going to be "reddened" then you're probably a child of the 70's or the 80's. 

In case any readers were born in a gentler time, that meant that your mother was suggesting that she would hit you on the bottom until it turned bright red.

This was in the days when it was considered perfectly normal in Ireland to hit a child with a wooden spoon, a source of terror to Irish children for decades.

I'm told that the 90's was the decade when children's social lives ran completely out of control.

So grounding was a regular threat in those days. And the naughty step made its unwelcome appearance.  

Apparently 90's babies were threatened with the wooden spoon only in the most serious of situations, in an almost nostalgic attempt by their mothers to gain some control.

 The babies of the new millennium, it seems, are threatened with withdrawal of favourite toys.  The favourite toy, almost invariably, is a computer game, tablet, or iPad.  Almost all children are told these days that if they don't behave they'll lose their screen privileges. 
And naughty steps and bold corners and thinking chairs are still in regular use.

In a matter of a few decades we've gone from children running away at the mention of the wooden spoon, to laughing at the idea of being hit.
Which is obviously fantastic. 

I cannot stress this enough.  I have absolutely no time for people hitting children.  Easy for me to say, I suppose, not being a parent myself.  But that's my opinion.
I'm delighted that it's so abnormal to hit children that the very thought of it is laughed off by them.

Once I realised this child knew he wouldn’t be walloped, I burst out laughing at the old fashioned craziness of it. 

Also, I find "wallops" a very funny word.  Now that I've grown up and won't be getting any wallops that is.

It's years since I heard a parent so blatantly threaten to hit their child.  If I ever thought about it, I would have assumed that these threats went out with the actual hitting.

Which made me wonder how today’s parents get their children to behave themselves. 
Most people openly admit to threatening to take iPads away and so on.

A quick check with some of the mothers I know revealed that even though they never hit their kids, they’re not above threatening it when things get very bad.

It gives the children something to roll their eyes about.

But what about the parents who get to the point where they've taken away the favourite toy, which doesn’t help, and they're starting to lose their mind, but don't want to threaten to hit their kids, what do they do?
I asked one mother, this week, whether she threatens to hit her children.  And I got a confusing response.

 "No, I threaten to put them in the maggot bin."

 There was a brief silence.

 "What maggot bin?"

 One lovely summer's day, her children were playing nicely in the garden.

They have one of those environmental compost bins.  Not the wheelie bin that's taken away with the other rubbish, the round ones that you actually make compost in.

The sun was shining, and when there's heat, of course, there's flies.

And when there's flies and heat and warm damp vegetation composting in a bin, there may eventually be maggots.

Disgusting creatures.

Anyway, on this glorious summer's afternoon, the maggots in the compost bin thought feck it, they'd come out and sun themselves for a while.  They duly began creeping out from under the bin.

The children were horrified.  They started screaming like lunatics, causing their loving parents to come galloping to their rescue.
The maggots were quickly dealt with, and life went on.

Except the children would never even approach the compost bin again.  They're terrified of it.

And then one day these same children started being really, really bold. 

Turning off the television didn't work, and taking away their toys didn't work. 

Their mother was starting to lose her will to live, when she remembered their fear. and announced that if the children weren't good, she'd put them in the maggot bin.
She was really, really desperate.

But it worked so well that she now uses it as necessary, when they're being completely out of order.
One of her children recently showed signs of losing the fear of the bin.  And so my friend brought this brave soul out to the garden, stood in front of the compost bin, her hand on the child's shoulder, and talked about it all.

"There it is.  They're still in there.  The maggots.  And they're STARVING."
The threat still works.

Another mother also made an interesting confession.
She has three children, and one in particular is as wild as a goat.  A child with a heart of gold, funny and affectionate, just not able to stay steady and behave himself. 

You know the type of carry on.  He throws tantrums, and has also been seen to land a sibling a vicious belt when he thinks he can get away with it.

This child has never felt the sting of a slap, happily. 

But his poor parents are running out of ways to get him to behave himself. 

He does not appear to give a flying feck whether every toy he owns is taken away or not.  He can always amuse himself wrecking the place.

They were getting to the end of their rope.
So a few days ago, in the middle of this boy's throwing a really stunning tantrum, his mother decided she may as well get a bit dramatic herself.

She threw herself from the room in noisy (though fake) tears.

She ran upstairs and threw herself on her bed and continued the sobbing.
The boldie is, as I said, a golden hearted child, and if she could get him to witness this, she knew he'd start to realise that he was upsetting her with his behaviour.

Eventually, the perpetrator of the boldness crept, on his belly, into the room.  She had her hands over her eyes to hide the fact there was no tears, so she pretended not to see him.

He bundled himself under the bed, and just lay there.

Eventually, she'd been fake crying on the bed and he'd been listening from under the bed for so long that it was getting ridiculous.  So she decided to move things on.

A few fake sniffs, and real sighs.  And she said loudly,

"It's just so terrible."

She paused, to give him a chance to crawl from under the bed and promise never to be bold again.  But he didn't react.  She thought he might be falling asleep so she jumped off the bed, while she still had his attention.

With the sort of drama normally reserved for daytime soap operas, she sighed.

"I just can't take it.  I'll have to give him away.  It's so sad.  I love him so much, and I know he loves me, he just can't seem to be good."

And she left the room.

The child came downstairs, played in a civilised fashion, was nice to his siblings, then hugged his mother, told her he loved her, and for the first time ever, went to bed without a word of complaint.

And they had a lovely chat.  The boy knows he's going nowhere, but that his boldness upsets his Mammy so much that she over reacts. 
I'm sure he's not going to turn into an angel, but at least he's learning that she isn't just shouting at him for fun when he's bold, it genuinely upsets her.

All I'm saying is this.  Every parent I know feels guilty every time they even think about threatening to hit a child.  Everyone thinks nobody else does this, that they're the only one who can't control their children.

I really think they’re mistaken.

And they can always take heart from the fact that we live in a happy world where children know they're loved and cherished, and not a burden to those in charge, and that they don't appear to take any of these threats seriously at all. 

Young and In Love?

I had to go to the phone shop today.  I'm not fond of the phone shop, but then I suppose nobody is.  My mobile phone contract had expired and I was afraid that I'd be cut off without warning.

 

I was also afraid, as I stood in the inevitable queue, that they would give me a new phone and then charge me for it. I wanted a free phone.  It's a week to payday, and I'm having my usual trouble. There is no money for petrol or food, never mind fancy phones.

The girl who served me very quickly confirmed that the contract could be renewed on the spot, with a free phone.  I checked that it would be an iPhone. 

There's people who live far from my house who are extremely close to my heart, and I need to have a good long look at them on FaceTime at least once a week.  Some of these beloved people are small children and I have to keep physically seeing them to ensure they're still the same, and haven't turned into hairy six footers with deep voices and questionable girlfriends while I'm not looking. 
That's what usually happens when I take my eyes off children for any length of time.

So there we were.  She got me to sign a new contract, and gave me a phone.  Then she asked me if I knew my Apple password.  I would have sworn on His Nibs' life that I knew it.  She asked me if I wanted her to set everything up for me.
I don't imagine it's that difficult to set up an iPhone, especially when you're only updating from one model to another.  But it turned out her feet were killing her, and she wanted a chance to sit down at one of the little tables for a while.

She seemed like a nice girl. full of chat.  I love teenagers, so I was delighted to go along with it.

It goes without saying that I was wrong about knowing my password, so everything took much longer than it should have.  Again, this suited me, because I was about to learn fascinating things. 

She randomly asked me why I didn't want a Samsung phone.  Nobody had offered me a Samsung phone, but I didn't mention that. I told her why I need the iPhone, for FaceTime.

She informed me that she doesn't like Samsungs anyway, that she won one worth €700, and gave it away, to her friend Sam.

(Sam is not his real name, obviously.  She was just taking a little break, not offering me the chance to send her business into cyber space.  Also, I can't get over the fact that what looks to me like a perfectly normal phone costs €700, but that is not the point of this story).

Very generous.  Maybe I'd tell this tale to a few of my own friends, in case I was missing a trick.

Then she remembered to ask me if I wanted insurance, leading to a quick chat about iPhone  screens etc.  I brought up the sad tale of the tablet recently broken in flitters by the Boldest Dogs in Ireland.  "Aw, she said "how many dogs have you?"  Barely giving me a chance to answer, she said she had half a dog. 

You'd have to ask, wouldn't you? My imagination was running riot. 
"What do you mean, half a dog?"

"I own it with my friend Sam."

The dog lives with Sam, but they both own it, and she sees it every day.

A close friend indeed, I thought. 

She blathered on, as teenagers do, and told me that she was in Offaly for the weekend, with Sam.  They are now fighting, so unless they make friends, they might have to have a custody battle over the dog.

"Was it a big fight?"  I'm definitely getting nosier as I get older.

"It was stupid. He was driving to Offaly, and I was driving him mad, singing and giving him the wrong directions by mistake.  And he had no patience.  He told me that when we got to the hotel I should a nap, because I was so hyper.  And I told him to feck off, he's not the boss of me"

I assured her that all aspects of her story were familiar to me.  I'm constantly in the same kind of trouble with His Nibs when we're in the car.  The only difference is that I fall asleep the instant anyone suggests I take a nap, so things don't get so serious.

As she went on with her story, I lost my focus, thinking of the small details.  She gave Sam a valuable phone, they share a dog, they went to a hotel together.

"And then" she went on "when we got to the hotel, there was a double bed and a single bed in the room".

Oh.  Maybe they were just friends.

"So I said we should shove the two beds together, you know, for the laugh.  And so we'd have a massive bed."

No they weren't. 

"And so we did.  But then he slept on the very far edge of the single bed, sulking.  I may as well have been in the bed on me own."

I was bewildered.

I had already been informed that she's 18, he's 19, as part of the "You're not the boss of me" section of the story.

I also knew that they both lived with their parents, hence the timeshare dog.

What in the name of Christ has come over Ireland's 19 year old men, if they get to spend the night in a hotel with their girlfriend and avoid all touching because of a row in the car?

I thought that it wouldn't matter to two teenagers if they had beaten each other senseless in the car, that all rows would be forgotten at the door to the hotel room.

I couldn't wait for her to stop talking so that I could start questioning her, busybody that I am.

"Sam's not technically your friend, is he?  He's obviously your boyfriend."

"He's my friend."

"Your friend with benefits?"

"Jesus.  How old are you? (I had the grace to squirm) No, he's my friend."

"Your friend who you share hotel rooms and dogs with."

"That's right.  My friend."

This was fecking ridiculous.  If it was one of my nieces I could have roared at her
"Are you going off with him or aren't you?"
But this was supposed to be a simple business transaction, and the girl was a stranger.

I was trying to slow the phone's downloading with the power of my mind.  I had to know what was going on before I left the shop.

"And does Sam have other friends like you?"

"No.  He's my friend that's not allowed be friends with other girls.  In fact he's not allowed really know other girls.  Or breathe the same air as them."

"Right.  Why can't you just say that you're his girlfriend, and he's your boyfriend?"

So she explained it to me.  Apparently, if they gave themselves such titles, things would change.  They'd be invited to nights out as a couple, and there would be some sort of expectation, and people would be going on about the future, and moving in together and "When you get married" and so forth.  She is not prepared to be involved in such nonsense, so they're just friends.

"But sure what difference does it make?  Isn't it just words really?"

"No."

This caper has been going on for a year.  She told me they had a friend-iversary in March.  A friend-iversary.  For God's sake.

When my lovely nieces, both in their twenties now, were teenagers, I discovered from them that the dating world had become a difficult and complicated place.  You could be seeing someone, meeting someone, or dating someone, all before you were going out with them. 
I still don't know what the difference was. 

And all these terms now obsolete?  Because it seems we've gone one step further.  You don't see or date or meet or even go out with anyone.  You're friends with them.

His Nibs and I will have to stay together forever.  There is nothing on earth that could drag me into this world of mystery and trouble.

Can you imagine going off with some lovely lad on a Friday night (those were the days!) and having some nutty teenager jumping out of a hedge and shouting at you to take your paws off "her friend"? 

Can I just say, in the 90's, which is when I met His Nibs, things were a lot simpler.  You were either going out with someone or you weren't.  I don't remember any different levels of being someone's girlfriend.
His Nibs had loads of friends who were female.  To the best of my knowledge he wasn't going out with any of them.  In fact he still has loads of female friends.  I'd better find out what his definition of a friend is these days.

Anyway, while the phone was completing its business, I checked a couple of final things. 

I asked her if Sam thinks she's his friend or his girlfriend.  I thought it might just be her.

"His friend.  We have a deal."

And if he introduced her to someone as his girlfriend, what would she say?  She says she'd say "No I'm not, I'm his friend."

I pointed out that that would make Sam sound overly possessive of his friends, or possibly insane.  That's the price of breaking the deal, apparently.  It seems to be quite a formal arrangement.

So were they the other kind of friends before they became their current form of friends?  I thought maybe they'd ignored each other for years, then fallen on each other like savages, the way teenagers do.

No.  It seems he was a holy show when they were young (when the feck was that?  She's 18 now!), but then she met him in a pub just over a year ago, and he'd gotten good looking.  And he'd got his teeth sorted out (I didn't ask, for a change).  So she decided to be "friends" with him.

I was fascinated by the whole business.  I've never had a better time in a phone shop.