A Parenting Purple Patch

I feel as if Husband and I have hit a sweet-spot in The Boys' development.  We are having a moment of calm, in parenting terms.  We're through the nappy years, through the toddler and pre-school years, through the trauma of the first years of school.  Our sons are working hard, playing hard, developing well.  They are healthy, open, affectionate, and - mostly - still listen to us.

It can't last.

There are so many reasons why I blog.  To give myself a mental workout - can I still string two words together?  To stay sane - if I put it down on metaphorical paper, maybe I can organise my thoughts and convince myself that no, I am not crazy...  To reach out - surely, it's not just me?  To pass the time - because oh, I have SO much of that...  And to record moments of life; the good, the bad, the ugly and downright ruddy hilarious.

This is one of those posts.

Being a parent it's easy to get bogged down by the details of everyday life.  What kit do the kids need for school today?  Did I ever get round to washing their swim towels after last Tuesday's session?  Should we take the car or cycle this morning - is it going to rain by this afternoon? Have I got enough bread in the house to make lunch for them tomorrow?  Do they even need lunch tomorrow or is it one of the days they get to eat in the school cafeteria? And so on.  From the moment they arrive in this world - tiny, shouting, blood-smeared and demanding your attention - raising a child, whilst rewarding, fogs your focus.  The volume levels may alter but the end result for parents can be constant static and white noise.

That white noise - it can be very distracting.  You become so busy dealing with it all that you forget to celebrate the good stuff, the moments that remind you it is all worthwhile, that you are living this life for a reason and that two very large parts of that reason are standing right in front of you.

Where to start on how wonderful my sons are at this moment in time, at 9 and 7 years old?  I almost don't dare.  I don't want to jinx it, you see.  I don't want to look back on this post in the future when the world is collapsing around my ears - as no doubt it will when they hit adolescence, if not before - and think 'Ah.  That's where it all started to go wrong.  When you wrote about your love for them, and brought the wrath of the gods down on you for being too proud of them.'

Because I AM proud of them.  I am.  They are not the product of mine or Husbands' endeavours, they are not our projects, they are not mini-me's who's successes or failures are something to be trotted out to friends and family in 'didn't I do well as a parent?' anecdotes and point-scoring exercises.  They are individuals in their own right, with their own personalities, likes and dislikes, passions, faults, moans and gripes, talents and friendships.

They are funny, loving, infuriating, smart, cheeky, affectionate, frustrating, hardworking, tenacious, clumsy, loyal, adventurous, forgiving, ambitious, intrepid, and grounded.

They are loved beyond their understanding.

And they are amazing.

I've been nominated for a BritMums 'Brilliance in Blogging' award in the 'Writing' category.  Click here to see the full short list - and on the badge below to vote.  For me please, if you're feeling moved to do so...

Thought-provoking

The title of this post was prompted by @Britmum's question on twitter today: 'If you could sum up your morning in one word, what would it be?'

My answer was 'Thought-provoking'.  Which I know probably counts as 2 words - so sue me.

Foolishly, they asked for clarification.  (Those crazy mixed-up kids).

In brief, then:

Why are Russian politicians running so scared of the prospect of any external expression of non-hetero sexuality?

Why do some expats (and yes, I know, this is a failing not only limited to expats) find it so difficult to walk in another person's shoes?  You're living in a country not your own; at least make the the attempt to understand the different situations that those outside the comfortable bubble you inhabit come from.

Just because a woman wears a short skirt and high heels, does not make her a tart.  Neither does it mean she is on the prowl for your husband, or has no idea about Feminism and what it is.

Some food companies are shameless in their drive for sales.  Read this and you'll see what I mean. (Hat tip to Amanda Surbey on facebook for the link)

How can it be that repeated - polite - requests to Boy #2 to get dressed in the morning have no effect, but using one word,  'Clothes' (as suggested by The Mummy Whisperer, here), and pointing to the pile of them on the floor achieves the desired result in less than 2 minutes?  (I do not know the answer to this but will be using this tactic again...)

I've made it to 14 days without Diet Coke.  I deserve to celebrate.  But with what? How about a diet co... oh.

'The chicken & the egg', or 'The Day I Realised Creating Driving Law is Like Parenting'

Hallelujah! Rejoice, brothers and sisters, for this morning what is nominally 5 marked lanes where we join the highway on the journey to drop Husband at the nearest Metro station became not 6, not 7, not 8, but - count 'em - 9 lanes of tailgate to bumper traffic.  I think - I think - that is a record.  I'm used to counting Sixes and Sevens and, on occasion, Eights, but today was the first time in 3 years that I've seen a Nine.

The only silver lining was that for once Husband was driving, thank the lord.  This in itself is unusual on a weekday and has been so for most of our sojourn here.  It's not that he can't drive, or doesn't like to; more that invariably I am dropping him somewhere so it makes sense for him to be able to hop out of the passenger seat quickly.  Given, you know, the traffic (did I mention that already?) and everything...

Being driven by Husband through the morning rush hour was an interesting experience.  I wouldn't say I manage to achieve a zen-like state of calm when behind the wheel these days, but petty annoyances like a big 4x4 edging in in front of me, the truck and mini-van collided in the centre lane forcing the traffic to execute complicated balletic manouevres around it, or the predatory militsia lying in wait at the edge of the road for the unwary driver moving into the bus lane too early, all of these things are now simple facts of life for me.  You just have to suck it up if you want to sit behind the wheel in Moscow and let it all wash over you.  Put some easy-listening fm on the radio and simply get on with it.

Husband, however, has not had quite such a long apprenticeship as a rush-hour driver in this city. (Why would he, when muggins here will do it for the price of having the car all day?)  So as you can imagine, his running commentary on the state of the road was a little less relaxed that mine normally is.  It was after his rantings (and no, I don't think that is too strong a word) on the matter of yet another lane being created out of nowhere by chancing-it drivers that I suggested perhaps he didn't drive enough here.  It was also when I commented that the road system in Russia is very much a chicken and egg situation.

What did I mean by that?  Well, there are various draconian rules and regulations here such as those about not turning left, not crossing an unbroken white line unless you want a fine, not crossing an unbroken double white line on pain of death, or not overtaking on a bridge or in a tunnel (no matter that they may be 6 lanes wide).   After much study time spent in jams pondering this situation it recently occurred to me that this authoritarian approach is counter productive.  The Russian driver is, you see, famously resourceful and will find any way they can to speed their journey up.  Like, for example, the creation of additional lanes on the highway.  Or the not infrequent sight of a car reversing down the hard shoulder of a motorway because it has missed the turn-off.  Or even better, reversing back onto the motorway because it's taken too early a turn-off.  None of these things are actually illegal - unless they cause an accident, of course - so they are 'respectable' driving tactics in some people's minds.

But it seems to me that the road chaos is the result of an impasse.  It's a bit like being a parent, really; if you assume your child is untrustworthy and will behave badly unless you rule them with a rod of iron, chances are that the moment they are let off the leash, that's exactly what they'll do.  So it is with the roads in Moscow: the authorities have imposed a set of rules that assume the average driver is an idiot and unable to think for themselves.  But because the law assumes the average driver is an idiot, and that an individual is unable to make a rational decision about whether it is safe to overtake or turn left etc,  guess what some people behave like the first opportunity they get?*


* Of course this theory does not in any way take into account what is often a lower value placed on human life (widely recognised as an issue for some here) or what is currently still a high number of incidents of DUI, but it's my blog and I'll deal with those issues another time...

Less 'Tiger mum', more 'pushover'

I never for a moment pretend to have all the answers but god, this parenting lark can be a tough one to call, can't it?

Once a week each of my Boys has an additional couple of hours lessons after school has finished. We're not putting them into Kumon Maths, we're not working on their on readin' and ritin'; instead, we're taking advantage of the opportunity for them to learn a little more Dutch than they would otherwise do. Husband speaks Dutch to our children, always has ever since they were born, but of course some English words creep in and since they know he speaks it, that's pretty much always the language they answer him in. Add in the fact that they have never lived in the Netherlands, that their parents talk to each other in English, and that all our Dutch friends and family also speak it, and the end result is that whilst they have a pretty good 'passive' vocabulary (and so can understand most if not all of what is said to them in Dutch), they're not so good at actually speaking it themselves.

Consequently, when we got the chance to put them into a Dutch-government sponsored school program (yes, I know: we never planned that living in Russia would improve their Dutch but life's like that sometimes) , it seemed like the perfect opportunity to boost their 'father-tongue'. Boy #1, after initial protests, has taken to it pretty well. His spoken Dutch has definitely improved and I'm told he's probably the best reader in the class. Boy #2? Not so much. Despite the fact that he probably sees more of his dad than his older brother did at the same age, on balance he hears less Dutch, which is in part my fault. With Boy #1, you see, I was rigorous in ensuring that he listened to Dutch nursery rhymes on tape, and that he watched Dutch dvd's (fyi, Bob the builder sounds more manly, and Wendy sexier in Dutch. Go figure.).

With your second child however, one is usually more relaxed. And whilst this is - overall - a good thing (for example there was no more stinking the house out making chicken stock recipes whilst weaning Boy#2 ; that madness was long passed thank god), it does mean I've been less strict about the Dutch thing too. The outcome of this has been that Boy #2 is less sold than his older brother on going from one school environment and down the hall (for the Dutch school happens on the same premises as their normal school) to another at the end of a day already 7 hours long.

So yesterday, when I went to collect Boy #2 from 'normal' school to walk him the 25 metres to Dutch school, and he looked at me with his big brown eyes and wept that he was 'too tired, mama, too too tired, please don't make me go, can't we just go home and play, and hang up the laundry?', I wavered.

We had been here before. Most weeks, if I'm honest. Usually I talk him 'round, jolly him along, and if that doesn't work, I physically pull him down the corridor until we get the classroom where I settle him down with his snack and distract him with his friends and the fun that he's going to have.

Yesterday, however, I didn't have it in me. I was tired, too. So tired that I could totally understand his 5 year-old request for time off from this merry-go-round of self improvement that we ruthlessly put our children on, telling ourselves it's for their own good and how lucky they are to have all these opportunities. It is for their own good. They are fortunate to have all these opportunities. But at five, sometimes all you want to do is just sit at home and play with your trains, and I get that.

So I decided that yesterday, not only was I not going to be a Tiger Mother and push him through it, but I was going to ignore the disciplinarian lurking in my subconscious who was shouting 'You know he's shamelessly manipulating you, don't you?' and give in to his pleadings.

Does that make me a bad mother? Or just a realistic one? I don't know. Perhaps I should have ignored his request 'for his own good'. But I do know this; I don't get offers of help to hang up the laundry so often that I can afford to turn them down when they do happen...

I never Nintendo'd for this to happen...

I've never been much into computer games. The whole gaming revolution pretty much passed me by; as a child I much preferred to get stuck into a good book, as a teenager much the same, (discounting my text books, obviously, which I shunned completely), and as an adult, well, face-to-face interaction always seemed preferable to sitting hunched over a keyboard. (Although blogging seems somehow to have escaped that embargo.)

Anyway, when I had children, I was determined that I wasn't going to raise two pale-faced sons who never saw the sun, and that instead they would be Proper Boys, running around outside, digging up worms, sometimes (retch) eating them, climbing trees, playing football, and generally living a 1950's dream that does not - in reality - exist.

So no computer games for us, golly gosh no.

Despite all evidence that my master plan had failed and that Husband and I were in fact raising city boys ('Yuck! My hands are dirty, mama!'), this mindset continued until recently. I ignored the fact that rather than build dens and get messy, both my sons are addicted to television (or were, before we arrived here and didn't have one which, thanks to one person in particular - you know who you are - has been a lot less traumatic than I had expected), overall we stuck to our guns and kept computer games out of the house at least.

Then, shortly before we left for Russia, a friend took me to one side and said; "I know that you don't want the Boys to become totally immersed in computer games but really, it's important that they have some exposure to them, otherwise they are going to be odd ones out. It is possible to do these things in moderation, you just need to keep any eye on it."

Interesting take, and food for thought, and once we arrived here it became apparent that this friend was right. We found ourselves surrounded by balanced, normal families, who dipped in and out of the game culture as they felt like it, and really, given the fact that 5 months of the year here are not conducive to out-door pursuits, I began to think that perhaps something to take the heat off me during long days at home when it was minus 25degC outside might not be a bad idea. There are only so many 1950's -style airfix planes and ships in bottles one can build, after all... especially on your own whilst your kids are playing at being Ben 10 or Transformers.

So, when Boy #1 did so well with his skiing recently, braving all weathers, being a generally all-round good sport, and most amazingly just getting on with it without moaning and complaining (which any mother of a 6 year old boy will know is a miracle in itself), Husband and I caved. He had been mentioning a Nintendo DS as a potential birthday present for some time - not in a nagging way, just in a 'wow, wouldn't it be amazing if...' way (he's nothing if not canny, my son) -and we decided that with a summer of flights and car journeys not long off, it was time to reward him.

And so the Potski Familiski has finally entered the 21st century in terms of technology. We didn't give him everything he wanted, you understand; Boy #1 was hoping for a Ben 10 game but I looked into it and didn't like the level of casual violence, so he got a Mario Kart game instead. And so far so good; he's loving it and will even - gasp! - share with his brother. He even asks me to play from time to time (although I suspect this is just for the humour value when I lose horribly). But this new toy has brought about a new question for me.

How much time playing is too much? Or, on the flip side, how much is enough? At the moment we've set a limit of 20 minutes in the morning and the same in the afternoon for the Boys to play with it. That seems to me to be enough to give them the chance to play a couple of games without eating into 'real-life' time, but then I started to wonder if it IS too much. Or, on the other hand, are we being too proscriptive, and should we just let him play with it as much as he dam' well pleases?

I thought technology was supposed to answer problems, not create them...