Outwitted by a feisty toddler... and I’m delighted
ALONG with all the home-working and video conferences, life under lockdown has brought with it greater domestic responsibilities. While I feel for all those parents who are dredging up their Standard Grade Maths or Higher French in an attempt to homeschool teenagers – especially when already late dialling in to a meeting – don’t think that pre-schoolers are a breeze.
I keep reading lifestyle articles about how to stave off isolation boredom or the top 50 boxsets to watch, and wonder where people are finding the time.
My partner, Jen, and I are knackered. Not just a little bit pooped, but mind-meltingly, bone-achingly exhausted.
Both of us are attempting to work full-time while passing a toddler back and forth between us each day – and putting pressure on ourselves to make this time count (while beloved son is continuing to wake before 6am daily). It is taking its toll.
No toddlers’ groups or soft play or swing park to take him to is stretching our powers of invention to keep him amused.
All the old tricks – playing drums on pots and pans, making a fort out of sofa cushions, running around the garden using squeezy bottles as water pistols – don’t dent his energy.
Finn can kick a ball, torment the dog, throw himself off a dining room chair and chuck his toys down the toilet in the time it takes to turn your back and answer a five-minute work call.
Yes, it’s tiring. Yes, it’s hard. Yes, I could occasionally throttle him, but it is actually lovely having so much time together.
Finn’s laugh is a thing of wonder and I didn’t have a child to work so much I never see him. But the guilt which seems to be gifted at birth along with hats and scratch mitts kicked in.
Maybe I should be doing more crafts with him? I mean, we don’t even have a table at child height. Perhaps I’m not cooking dinners that are adventurous enough – we’ve rather lapsed into a dozen staples that we know (mostly) won’t get thrown across the room. And, of course, we have to make sure his development continues properly, even without any older children around to bring him on.
To that end, I ordered another parenting book, to sit alongside the half-dozen others that sit (skimmed, but without a crack in their spine) on my bookshelf. This one, Talking With Your Toddler, promised ‘75 fun activities’ for us to do together.
FINN is very chatty at the moment; it’s just only he knows what he’s saying and he’s saying it in the manner of Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show. So after the usual 45-minute fight of tears and balled fists (his, if you’re curious) to get him over to sleep, I dipped into the latest manual to deliver me that Holy Grail – how to be a good parent.
Page 1: ‘By 18 months, children should be using around 50 words. But don’t worry unless they are using less than 10-20.’
Finn is 18 months old. Today, in fact. He has precisely four words in his vocabulary: Mama, nana (for banana), goal and ‘go, go’, which he sings along in time with the Go Jetters on CBeebies.
Cue dreaded guilt. I have failed as a mother. I didn’t even notice my child was developmentally stunted. I mean, if someone who talks as much as I do can’t teach my own child to communicate, what chance has he got at learning the stuff I’m rubbish at, such as mental arithmetic?
Days of pointing at balls and saying ‘ball’, grabbing shapes and calling out their colours or maniacally singing ‘heads, shoulders, knees and toes’, with actions, produced not a sound (although he can point to his head and toes, the rest escape him).
We’ve managed to get our dog, Wilson, to be named ‘Wee-wah’ but I’m not sure that counts.
Big for his age, co-ordinated enough to dribble a half-size football, already starting to tantrum as if the terrible twos have hit early, there is no trouble with Finn’s comprehension. He knows what ‘no’ means, can point to anything you name, and his problemsolving is second to none.
Obsessed with the work laptops his mummies tap away at, yesterday he moved the kitchen step next to an occasional table which was close enough to Jen’s work chair to get him access to the computer on the dining room table. We found him sitting on said table, hammering the keys after his four-stage climb.
Irrespective of speech, we have decided that Finn is already smart enough to outwit us.
The book is banished.