please note: there are many typos in this copy because I'm being very modern and writing this on my phone. But it makes for pretty poor grammar and sorry if it offends the more discerning readers.
I'd like to think I'm not an overly protective mother. I mean there are boundaries it's wise to keep within for the whole family's sanity and safety: like making sure sharp knives are out of reach of small hands or making sure hot pan handles are turned in from the kitchen or testing the bath water before small toes dip in for the nightly ritual. I suppose I'm a bit cautious when it comes to crossing roads: don't cross the road without me EVER even if it's a deserted country lane in Wales with no access to motorised Vehicles...
Child safety is pretty important and knowing my children are safe in their activities and environment and with their friends is pretty much the safest way for me to not turn into a messy insane mother. And it's relatively simple at this point in our life of being a family to uphold the standards of safety. Although small people are a bit idiotic and a bit prone to falling over and a bit prone to maybe walloping each other with hula-hoops or trying to accidentally on purpose push each other down the stairs, or whoops- did I really just knock the paint over and ruin your billionth picture of a flower, hey don't thump me I HATE you, etc - all this sort of activity requires is domestic vigilance and a certain level of maternal (or paternal) authority to ensure health and safety boundaries are not over stepped.
What is so hard to control though and here comes the crux of my story, is when the lives of ones children lie in the hands of others. Such as teachers. Or dinner ladies. Or after school club managers. Or childminders. Or grannies and aunts and uncles who generously have the 'winks for a weekend whilst slightly over worked or over stressed parents take off for 24 hours.
All the above are in theory reliable stand-INS for the absent real-deal and on the whole he safety of the child is not compromised in any way at all.
But, just sometimes a lapse in judgement can leave a parent cold withanxiety and fear for the safety of their child, as what hapened to me and Liz yesterday.
For various reasons I have recently had to take on a childminder (I've started a new course; Liz hasn't quite started school yet; there is an overlap of me needing time to study and therefore having to off load Liz onto others in order for me toget to grips with coursework etc). So. I found a childminder through an advert. She seemed perfectly fine. Chatty. Friendly with the girls. We had met up three times. She's had Liz on her own once.
Yesterday she was due tohave Liz for 3hours so I could study, and she turned up to my house 15 minutes early. Ina black mercedez Benz. With blacked outwindows. With a man I'd never seen efore driving. With a lady I'd never seen before in the backseat. Liz looked at the childminder getting out of this huge ominous vehicle with these strange alien faces peering out of the dark windows and headed straight to my legs with a vice-like grip.
Childminder said 'yeah hi we're going to get a lift back to mine in this car' I was like 'yeah hi who the he'll are those people I've never seen before and do you really think I'm letting my child get into that car with you? I don't know that man I don't know that woman and that car has blacked out windows and my daughter funnily enough is looming pretty anxious at the thought of it too.
Childminder agreed it may not have been the best plan but Liz could sit next to her in the car they'd be fine.
Childminder didn't seem to understand the concept of providing a secure environment for my child. Where is the safety in bringing 2 total strangers into the equation of this relationship?
I was overwhelmed with a strong physical reaction- shaking and felt sick - what if I had let Liz get into that mercedez. What could have happened? More likely that absolutely nothing would have happened and they'd have got to the childminders house and built a jigsaw. But something in me just balked at the whole setup and the lack of sensitivity demonstrated by the childminder. I reminded her of how it may feel to be 4 years old and to be asked to get into a car with one person she barely knows and two people she's never seen in her life. How would you feel? Safe? Secure? Happy? If you answer yes to all three then maybe you are made of stronger metal than I.
Just thinking about the potential risk I could have put Liz in yesterday had I nonchalently let her go with the childminder makes my heart actually beat faster.
Health and safety. Just can't be taken lightly.
I slept on yesterdays event and spoke to Husband and various super-intelligent friends and the conclusion is obvious. I have a phonecall to make.
Saturday, 18 September 2010
Sunday, 29 August 2010
stomach bug
Me Mol and Liz were on a jaunty country walk with my mum and her dog, about this time last week. Walking gayly through the village allotments admiring the beans and bulging beetroot and marigolds and rhubarb and feeling a bit envious that my garden in London is incapable of even bearing me a geranium let alone a Jerusalem Artichoke... when suddenly Mol started to choke and cough and wretch.
The noise of someone wretching is enough to make anyone wretch too. Even if you don't know the reason behind the wretching, its that hhhhhhhhhhhhhuh noise - so strong you can feel your stomach muscles clamping and your Bran Flakes on the verge of being regurgitated.
So Me Liz Mum and the Dog tried our best to ignore this dreadful noise pollution by walking on, talking loudly above the sound of air being gasped for and stomach-contents-imminent-evacuation. Although at the back of my mind, because I am after-all a responsible mother, I was thinking, hmmm, this doesn't sound too promising, I wonder why my daughter is gasping so loudly and revoltingly, I wonder if in fact she needs my help?
Eventually, after about an hour of this awful noise, Mol hadn't actually been sick but was still walking along sounding like a parrot with a pair of bellows stuck down its throat, I figured I ought to pull my finger out (of my ear) and try to solve the problem of the choking rather than ignore it.
So with nostrils shut like a camel, lest Mol vomit and the puke-fumes spark off a chain reaction in me, I made awkward loving movements to my eldest precious daughter to find out what the problem was.
At the same time, for some reason unknown to us, other than total fluky coincidence, Liz started to hum a familiar tune that we have on one of our really old nursery rhyme tapes in the car saved for traffic emergencies (these also have the effect of making people want to vomit).
"...I don't know why she swallowed..." hummed Liz;
"...yak yak yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak... I swallowed a fly..." yakked Mol.
Ah!
There was a young lady who swallowed a fly.
We all started to laugh and Mol was most upset by our unsympathetic reaction, so I gave her a hearty pat on the back and started singing with Liz - "...she swallowed a cow to catch the dog to catch the cat to catch the bird to catch the spider that wriggled and jiggled inside her..."
I was sympathetic enough to not sing the last verse where the (stupid) old lady swallows a horse, and now she's dead, of course! Because I thought that would push the boundaries of sympathy towards that of mocking, and that's really not nice.
Mol yakked like the old winded parrot all the way home, and I gave her a jelly baby to wash away the remnants of fly - which had probably just had lunch on a cow pat before it unfortunately flew down Mols windpipe.
The noise of someone wretching is enough to make anyone wretch too. Even if you don't know the reason behind the wretching, its that hhhhhhhhhhhhhuh noise - so strong you can feel your stomach muscles clamping and your Bran Flakes on the verge of being regurgitated.
So Me Liz Mum and the Dog tried our best to ignore this dreadful noise pollution by walking on, talking loudly above the sound of air being gasped for and stomach-contents-imminent-evacuation. Although at the back of my mind, because I am after-all a responsible mother, I was thinking, hmmm, this doesn't sound too promising, I wonder why my daughter is gasping so loudly and revoltingly, I wonder if in fact she needs my help?
Eventually, after about an hour of this awful noise, Mol hadn't actually been sick but was still walking along sounding like a parrot with a pair of bellows stuck down its throat, I figured I ought to pull my finger out (of my ear) and try to solve the problem of the choking rather than ignore it.
So with nostrils shut like a camel, lest Mol vomit and the puke-fumes spark off a chain reaction in me, I made awkward loving movements to my eldest precious daughter to find out what the problem was.
At the same time, for some reason unknown to us, other than total fluky coincidence, Liz started to hum a familiar tune that we have on one of our really old nursery rhyme tapes in the car saved for traffic emergencies (these also have the effect of making people want to vomit).
"...I don't know why she swallowed..." hummed Liz;
"...yak yak yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak... I swallowed a fly..." yakked Mol.
Ah!
There was a young lady who swallowed a fly.
We all started to laugh and Mol was most upset by our unsympathetic reaction, so I gave her a hearty pat on the back and started singing with Liz - "...she swallowed a cow to catch the dog to catch the cat to catch the bird to catch the spider that wriggled and jiggled inside her..."
I was sympathetic enough to not sing the last verse where the (stupid) old lady swallows a horse, and now she's dead, of course! Because I thought that would push the boundaries of sympathy towards that of mocking, and that's really not nice.
Mol yakked like the old winded parrot all the way home, and I gave her a jelly baby to wash away the remnants of fly - which had probably just had lunch on a cow pat before it unfortunately flew down Mols windpipe.
Saturday, 21 August 2010
the age of innocence
I was just doing a rather long run in the rain over dale and down dips in t'country, and for some reason started pondering the loss of innocence of my small girls.
Yesterday I met up with an old friend who has girls aged 9 and 11 - I hadn't seen them for a long time and so I'd forgotten what older girls are like. In fact, I have no idea really anyway - because I don't know any one much older than Mol. These girls are tall and gorgeous, and behave much older (obviously) than my little gals, with uptodate technology and knowledge of popular-music and they communicate in a way I'm not familiar, and y'know, are just more grown-up.
I was quite in awe of these girls (and vainly wondered what they thought of me) and then I turned to see my little Mol, who - still in a bubble of frank-innocence, Father Christmas features big and so to does the strange fairy who collects teeth at midnight and the concept of magic is way-believable - didn't basically quite know where to look as these exotic girls gyrated (in a slightly off-hand-way) around the kitchen to tz-tz-tz-pop muzac with an air of experienced-coolness.
I wasn't sure what awed me the most.
Was it their confidence with technology that I barely understand? - non-chalently thumbing through their tunes on the ipod? Was it the skinny jeans and jeggings? Their language? Body language? That they were taller than me (not difficult I admit)?
Or was it the fact that one day, very soon, my little Mol (and following shortly on, little Liz) would be thumbing her way over her own i-whatever, bopping in time to pop tunes which I've just about heard of and feel much disdain for?
And I wondered, as I skidded over some cow-pats which decorated the bumpy Hampshire tarmac, how long exactly is it that we have, as a family, before that gorgeous innocence - the belief that magical creatures DO exist, and that Dad really CAN do magic with cards, and that £40,000 is probably not much more than £40 or £4...?
Whilst we have been staying in Hampshire this week with my parents, my two girls have been hanging out with their cousins - a boy aged 6 and another 4 year old...
And what merry times they have had. Running around the garden playing "Cheetah's" and "Lions" and "Babysitters" (Ok, so I'm 21, you're 18, Liz is 2 and Cherry is the baby... and I go out and leave you and Cherry starts to cry because her nappy is pooey, ugh! poo! ... - I mean, these games can go on for DAYS...). And then after a healthy supper of pasta and pesto and chocolate icecream and pringles they all jump into the bath together - having first run around the upstairs unclothing themselves willy nilly room by room...
No one notices that the clothes have come off. No one comments on the bottom (unless conversation turns to farting or poos but that's not in a self conscious way - maybe Liz has done a massive fart so lots of hilarity and fake farting follows...) or the lady bits or the boy bits. They just jump in the bath and carry on with whatever game they had been playing, but naked and surrounded by water.
And as I panted my way up a very steep hill through the pretty hamlet of Ramsdean, I wondered, will Mol WANT to have a bath with her boy cousin next year? She'll be 8.5, he'll be just over 7 - will they be too old to share a bath? I'm pretty sure I didn't have baths with my brothers after they were exiled to prep-school aged 7 & 8... (me being 5 at the time...)
And then I remembered, as I rounded the corner of the steep hill, to see that I hadn't yet reached the top and had at least another 300m to go, puff puff, that when we, as a young family - me (aged 8), my two brothers (10/11-ish) went to the South of France - mum had sort of strongly encouraged me to not buy a bikini top and just wear the bottoms -and I remember feeling mortified by this and totally self conscious and wanting to hide and not go to the pool in case all the boys saw my (nothing to reveal) flat as a pancake boobs. But I did feel embarrassed, and I remember that feeling so well. Please. Don't. See. Me. (I did swim but spent a lot of time in the water as opposed to standing on the edge doing dives...)
So, as I limped my way into the last mile of my run (legs a bit leaden I must admit) I came to the conclusion that we may not have very long before our childrens' bubble of innocence is popped and Mol decides that baths with cousins aren't such a fantastically fun idea and that she'd rather spend her time gyrating around the kitchen with an electronic gadget listening to some teen-hunk-crooner.
And playing "cheetah's" is a bit last year?
So now I feel a bit sad and wonder if we moved out of London now, to a remote coastal hut in Wales, we could extend the period of innocence till they're both about 15?
Or would that be a bit weird?
Yesterday I met up with an old friend who has girls aged 9 and 11 - I hadn't seen them for a long time and so I'd forgotten what older girls are like. In fact, I have no idea really anyway - because I don't know any one much older than Mol. These girls are tall and gorgeous, and behave much older (obviously) than my little gals, with uptodate technology and knowledge of popular-music and they communicate in a way I'm not familiar, and y'know, are just more grown-up.
I was quite in awe of these girls (and vainly wondered what they thought of me) and then I turned to see my little Mol, who - still in a bubble of frank-innocence, Father Christmas features big and so to does the strange fairy who collects teeth at midnight and the concept of magic is way-believable - didn't basically quite know where to look as these exotic girls gyrated (in a slightly off-hand-way) around the kitchen to tz-tz-tz-pop muzac with an air of experienced-coolness.
I wasn't sure what awed me the most.
Was it their confidence with technology that I barely understand? - non-chalently thumbing through their tunes on the ipod? Was it the skinny jeans and jeggings? Their language? Body language? That they were taller than me (not difficult I admit)?
Or was it the fact that one day, very soon, my little Mol (and following shortly on, little Liz) would be thumbing her way over her own i-whatever, bopping in time to pop tunes which I've just about heard of and feel much disdain for?
And I wondered, as I skidded over some cow-pats which decorated the bumpy Hampshire tarmac, how long exactly is it that we have, as a family, before that gorgeous innocence - the belief that magical creatures DO exist, and that Dad really CAN do magic with cards, and that £40,000 is probably not much more than £40 or £4...?
Whilst we have been staying in Hampshire this week with my parents, my two girls have been hanging out with their cousins - a boy aged 6 and another 4 year old...
And what merry times they have had. Running around the garden playing "Cheetah's" and "Lions" and "Babysitters" (Ok, so I'm 21, you're 18, Liz is 2 and Cherry is the baby... and I go out and leave you and Cherry starts to cry because her nappy is pooey, ugh! poo! ... - I mean, these games can go on for DAYS...). And then after a healthy supper of pasta and pesto and chocolate icecream and pringles they all jump into the bath together - having first run around the upstairs unclothing themselves willy nilly room by room...
No one notices that the clothes have come off. No one comments on the bottom (unless conversation turns to farting or poos but that's not in a self conscious way - maybe Liz has done a massive fart so lots of hilarity and fake farting follows...) or the lady bits or the boy bits. They just jump in the bath and carry on with whatever game they had been playing, but naked and surrounded by water.
And as I panted my way up a very steep hill through the pretty hamlet of Ramsdean, I wondered, will Mol WANT to have a bath with her boy cousin next year? She'll be 8.5, he'll be just over 7 - will they be too old to share a bath? I'm pretty sure I didn't have baths with my brothers after they were exiled to prep-school aged 7 & 8... (me being 5 at the time...)
And then I remembered, as I rounded the corner of the steep hill, to see that I hadn't yet reached the top and had at least another 300m to go, puff puff, that when we, as a young family - me (aged 8), my two brothers (10/11-ish) went to the South of France - mum had sort of strongly encouraged me to not buy a bikini top and just wear the bottoms -and I remember feeling mortified by this and totally self conscious and wanting to hide and not go to the pool in case all the boys saw my (nothing to reveal) flat as a pancake boobs. But I did feel embarrassed, and I remember that feeling so well. Please. Don't. See. Me. (I did swim but spent a lot of time in the water as opposed to standing on the edge doing dives...)
So, as I limped my way into the last mile of my run (legs a bit leaden I must admit) I came to the conclusion that we may not have very long before our childrens' bubble of innocence is popped and Mol decides that baths with cousins aren't such a fantastically fun idea and that she'd rather spend her time gyrating around the kitchen with an electronic gadget listening to some teen-hunk-crooner.
And playing "cheetah's" is a bit last year?
So now I feel a bit sad and wonder if we moved out of London now, to a remote coastal hut in Wales, we could extend the period of innocence till they're both about 15?
Or would that be a bit weird?
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