Can Grumpy Mum turn into Joyful Mum for a day? In your dreams!
I don’t know how I do it
My eldest, nearly 13, refuses to believe I can do it. my youngest, mabel, just four, is behind me all the way. ‘this’ll be easy, stick with me,’ she says seriously. But then mabel is a pint-sized ray of perpetual sunshine, while her sister is currently living under a cloud of apathetic teenage doom.
We’ve been to see the animated blockbuster Inside out and they have challenged me to live a whole day as Joy, the super-happy emotion battling to control the mind of the film’s protagonist, Riley, an 11-year-old girl.
my husband says he thinks a confused and inebriated pink unicorn is already operating the controls in my head, which will make our experiment difficult.
‘Besides,’ he adds, ‘It’s the school holidays, they’re all here all day, there’s no way you can be continuously happy.’
We ignore him. It has to be possible to remain positive. I try to recall the occasions since becoming a parent to four children when 24 hours of pure joy has ensued and I can’t get past the first day. It’s possible the emergency C- section morphine has tampered with that particular memory, but heck, let’s try this happiness thing anyway.
Joy is the latest upbeat, can-do female film character, but I could just as easily be spending the day as tinkerbell, Cinderella, the little mermaid’s Ariel or even Barbie — my least favourite. she’s relentlessly positive even though she has to put up with her idiot boyfriend Ken. In the cartoons mabel and I watch, any setback Barbie encounters is quickly overcome by her smiley jolliness.
you could argue that this is great rolemodel behaviour for little children as they grow up, especially girls, who seem to become chronically negative the moment they hit pre-teens.
Anyway, my experiment starts well. the eldest and her 11-year-old sister are asleep for much of the morning and, as it’s the holidays, I’m not battling rushhour traffic for the school drop- off or frantically searching for a last-minute costume for World Book day.
mabel is writing a letter to her favourite fairy, on the table — actually on the table. ‘Never mind,’ I comment chirpily. ‘I’m sure I can wash it off later!’ Henry, my eight-year-old son, hasn’t put the lid on the milk and spills it far and wide. Never mind! I can combine scrubbing away fast-drying Weetabix with removing mabel’s missive, can’t I? this Joy malarkey is yet another excuse to celebrate my ability to multi-task.
I can see my lack of shouting makes the children nervous while they simultaneously wonder what they can get away with now my emotional sun is shining. they get up to play in the garden in their PJs. Normally I would advise against this and suggest, quite firmly, that they get dressed. But it’s all smiles today. PJ play is go!
things get tougher, though, when the Queen of sloth and the mayor of Crazy deign to drag themselves out of bed.
‘Why is the table all sticky?’ asks the eldest. ‘It’s disgusting.’ everything is disgusting for her right now, especially her mother, so Joy isn’t too affronted.
By late afternoon Joy is seriously in danger of stepping aside at the controls and handing over to despair, disbelief, Confusion or Fury. A family cooking session ends with the mixing bowl of cookie dough bouncing under the table for the dog to lick, after a violent power struggle between number two and number three. We have to start again.
things like this keep happening. I seem to be perpetually clearing up while suppressing an almighty growl.
only when the youngest, mabel, is involved does Joy come more easily. there is laughter to soothe most situations. I thank my lucky stars my littlest one is there to remind me of how it used to be when Joy was in charge of the others, too.