Confessions of a Bad Mother

by Stephanie Calman

  When I get home, the website has received 200 messages from mothers saying they know how I feel. And they keep coming.

  ‘I think,’ says Peter, ‘you may have struck a bit of a chord.’

  18 The Cheeseless Tunnel: Why Parents are Stupider than Rats

  Lawrence, two at the time, wants 20p to ride on the Postman Pat van outside Sainsbury’s. It’s the usual worthless effort: a minimal rocking to and fro – hardly enough to loosen your nappy – while the speakers blast out that bloody awful song. A Formula One, Supercrash, or riddle-you-with-bullets arcade game I could see the point of, but this? No way worth 20p. And I know that after one ride – because they’re so damn short – he’ll want another. And two rounds of that tune will put me in a very bad mood. So clearly, to say No is best for all concerned. I know how to say No. You just put your lips together and—

  ‘Postman Pat! Postman Pat!’

  ‘No way. Come on, we’ve shopping to get.’

  ‘Postman Pat! Postman Pat! Aargh!’

  ‘No! Come on!’

  ‘I want Postman Pat! Aaaarrgghh!’

  Sympathetic looks from fellow parents are replaced, as I drag him away from the cause of his anguish, by more perturbed stares. I try the advice from the books: ‘Do not reward bad behaviour by paying attention to it. Ignore the outburst and carry on with the task in hand.’ So I get Lydia in the trolley and move purposefully towards the automatic doors, which open and close again, leaving the screaming Lawrence on the edge of the car park. A woman in a hairband gives me a glare.

  ‘Muu-mmeee!’ he screams, without moving. A mother who refuses him 20p for a Postman Pat ride is clearly not worth following anywhere.

  I grab him off the forecourt, stuffing him too roughly into the second trolley seat so that he cries even more, and grimly begin the ordeal of manoeuvring a flailing, scarlet toddler – and now a weeping one year old as well – down the aisle. I do this, obviously, for the satisfaction of those perfect, childless shoppers who believe that parents take their children to supermarkets, not to do any shopping but to fight. My frustration is exacerbated by self-loathing because I’ve bashed his hand on the edge of the trolley. As we stop at Pasta, I’m thinking of telling Peter – again – that the whole thing has been a mistake; I shouldn’t have become a mother after all, and both children should be removed from me and brought up by nuns. By the time we get to the Bakery section, my guilt is such that I have to buy them a doughnut each, and then I need one – well, two – because I’ve used up all my blood sugar having my tantrum. We all nibble away with relief, covering ourselves and the rest of the food in sugar. At the checkout we are all calm, and Lydia is dazzling shoppers with her film star beam. But when we come out: ‘Postman Pat! Postman Pat! Aaaarrrrgggghhh!’

  And they ask why we give them sweets.

  Talking to my friend Rose, whose son Jack is a bit older, I discover there’s a wonderful technique known to more experienced parents which isn’t in any of the books. It’s called Lying. You just load the Lies for Windows software and off you go!

  ‘Oh, dear, it’s broken. Never mind!’

  Or:

  ‘I’ve got no change! I’m really sorry, kids …’

  It’s amazing how empowering dishonesty can be. Rose says she has another friend who deals thus with the icecream van: ‘As soon as she hears that music, she says: “Oh, sorry kids: they’re playing that tune that means they’ve run out of ice cream.”’ At this I fall silent, recognizing when I’m in the presence of talent.

  But, as usual, this new gun in my armoury is ineffective in the next battle. Peter comes in from work, where he is reviewing cars.

  ‘Hello,’ I say. ‘What did you do today?’

  ‘Compared the Aston Martin Vanquish with the Lamborghini Murelago. How about you?’

  ‘I took Lawrence to play at Daniel’s, and he wouldn’t put on his shoes.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Shouted “GET YOUR SHOES ON!!!” about 500 times.’

  ‘Did it work?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ah. A Cheeseless Tunnel.’

  ‘And Daniel’s mother’s a child psychologist, so …’

  ‘Eek!’

  ‘Exactly. In the end I dragged him to the car in his socks. He cried all the way home, and I felt awful.’ I pour us a drink. ‘What’s a Cheeseless Tunnel?’

  ‘Well … you know those experiments where rats learn to crawl through a maze, or push open a catch, to retrieve a piece of cheese at the end of a tunnel? If the cheese is taken away, they eventually give up. But people don’t. They keep trying, even after what they’re doing has been proven not to work. That’s the Cheeseless Tunnel.’

  ‘So what you’re saying is that parents are stupider than rats.’

  ‘Basically.’

  ‘So how do I get Lawrence to put on his shoes?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Well, what use are you, then? Go away.’

  ‘On the other hand, though, if people were like rats, we would never have had the Panama Canal.’

  ‘Or the jet engine.’

  ‘Or the disposable nappy, which can hold forty-eight litres of baby urine before it explodes in a blizzard of wet crystals.’ (Do not try this in an enclosed space such as a lift.)

  ‘So man can do all these amazing things …’

  ‘… But can’t get a three year old to put on his shoes.’ Peter considers the matter for a few moments. ‘What about encouragement and reward?’

  ‘You mean another weekend in Paris?’

  ‘Not you: him.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Try noticing when he does something you want him to do and give him a reward.’

  ‘Try noticing when I’ve had a shit day and bring me some chocolate.’

  ‘No, it’s Positive Reinforcement, you see, it—’

  ‘Just leave me alone!’

  This, therefore, is why two adults – one or both of whom may have been educated to degree level – believe that if they shout, ‘Eat your broccoli!’ enough times, the child will eat it. Rats know better.

  The whole vegetable nightmare, and the insane levels of bribery it drives you to, is brilliantly satirized in Kes Gray and Nic Sharratt’s great surrealist work, Eat Your Peas. Starting quite rationally with offers of extra pudding, Daisy’s mother quickly progresses to increasingly outlandish promises of animals, bikes, chocolate factories and entire theme parks, in the hope of getting the wretched girl to eat her peas. And even that doesn’t work.

  I tell Lawrence: ‘When you’ve eaten your broccoli you can have a video.’ And he counters: ‘I don’t want a video.’ But it worked last time! Bugger, bugger, bugger it! And that’s followed by: ‘I’m tired.’

  In other words, what he’d really like is to go to bed early without any telly. Well I don’t know about you, but in my day that was a punishment.

  The Golden Rule being Not to Disagree in Front of Them, tension and confusion are racked up further by our failure to agree on the correct technique. In fact, our worst rows now invariably start this way.

  ‘If you eat your broccoli …’ begins Peter.

  ‘When. It’s when.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘No, not “whatever”. You’re supposed to remove the element of choice. That’s the point!’

  ‘Look, can we just get through the meal?’

  Lawrence and Lydia see the parental fissure opening up, and ruthlessly boot it wide open.

  ‘She kicked me!’

  ‘He was going to steal my drink!’

  ‘Well done,’ says Peter. ‘Happy now?’

  We are worn out. There is surely no other job in which you effectively take an exam every day. Every hour. And all your rough workings are shown. Not only are results consistently inconsistent – what works one day will suddenly for no reason not work the next – but even the attempt to follow some kind of strategy is cruelly exposed. Running fo
r the bus and missing it is tolerable; being seen panting to a halt by the passengers is not. When that happens I have to run past the stop to pretend I was running for some other reason, like my health. The children hearing us debate our methods is embarrassing, like being seen in the car picking your nose.

  Peter – and I have observed that this seems to be a male thing – will sometimes alter, shall we say, certain previously agreed parameters, in the interests of an Easy Life. But as we all know, this is Short Termism, which Makes Things Worse in the End. When I was five, my parents had a huge row after my dad let us have ice lollies, which we weren’t allowed. We went on and on at him, and because Mum had gone out, he gave in. But we were still eating them when she came back. ‘I thought we agreed,’ she kept wailing, ‘I thought we agreed!’ Shortly afterwards they were divorced.

  My own relationship is similarly corroded by the acid of childish determination. Trying to go to my sister’s, I ring – another thing we disagree about – to say we’re running a bit late.

  ‘Where are you?’ she says.

  ‘We’re still trying to get them into the car.’ Her astonishment, for she is not yet a mother, can be heard in the awed silence echoing down the line.

  I remember this from when they first began to resist being put in the pushchair. The body goes stiff and flat like an ironing board, with red, square-mouthed face at one end, and sharp, kicking legs at the other. You practically have to punch them in the stomach to fold them in. And now, with time ticking away, we’re in Car Seat Hell, battling steroidally strong, whirling limbs with the added option of back strain. To twist round, lean down and get them into the car seat, the doing up of which – as with an epidural, requires the subject to be still – demands a combination of determination and forbearance that would defeat Jesus. And he didn’t have a bad back.

  ‘Just get in the seat, will you?’ begs Husband, in Defeated Tone of Voice.

  ‘NO-O-O-O-O-O!’

  Me: ‘Bloody get in your seat!’

  ‘NO-O-O-O-O-O!’

  Him: ‘Get in the car, and – we’ll get an ice cream on the way.’

  ‘What? To eat in the car? You are joking!’

  ‘Well, you do it then.’ (Husband returns to house.)

  Weekends are a flashpoint anyhow, even without involving the car. Peter, who spent his childhood trudging up and down fells, likes to spend Saturday and Sunday lying about reading the papers and watching films. I, who spent my childhood at the cinema, lurch through the house clutching at my throat and gasping because I hate being cooped up. The park is only a short walk away. He says: ‘The children are happy just pottering around at home.’ Which indeed they are – until, with their energy building up like a pressure cooker, they blow their tops and start a war.

  As they throw punches I say: ‘See?’ And he says, in his little-known, Basil Fawlty voice: ‘Right! Mummy wants to go to the park.’ So everyone’s clear about who’s inflicting this torture. Although we can get out of the house with less equipment than when they were babies, the negotiation involved is more exhausting. We reattach hoods, get out hats, wellies, gloves, water, a carrier bag for worms and a snack, then begin the rounds of talks. Lydia, to be fair, can be convinced in less than an hour – so long as she can bring a bag full of soft toys which she will get tired of carrying as soon as we’ve left the house. Lawrence, however, treats the invitation as husbands do the information that they’re to pop in for a drink with the neighbours: as an assault on his precious spare time. The fact that he loves the park once he gets there, is no help. He glances a millimetre away from Tom and Jerry and informs me: ‘It’s my day off.’

  Peter says: ‘If you come to the park you can have a croissant.’

  ‘Well, what’s the point of the exercise then?’ I say. ‘Why bother ever doing anything healthy?’

  ‘Can we just get out of the house?’

  ‘At least consult me before you make these stupid offers …’

  ‘OK, you do it then …’ (Husband returns to sofa.)

  He is also conducting an ongoing bribe, involving squash. Influenced by my mother’s squash phobia, I don’t want them to have their water – and therefore their teeth – ruined by it. He claims to be worried about their ‘fluid intake’. It’s got to the point now where we each spy on whoever’s doing the drinks.

  ‘Oi, no!’ I bark, seeing the pink bottle out of the corner of my eye. Then while I’m opening the wine, he sneaks Lydia her fix. Lawrence will at least settle for fizzy water, though even there Peter has to get back at me by observing: ‘I read somewhere that the carbon dioxide is bad for their teeth.’

  He’s never read an article about nutrition in his life. He thinks he’s clever, going behind my back with the squash, but I do most of the shopping and on the next run I’m going to forget to buy any. Ha-hah!

  Lawrence knows his father will negotiate endlessly for an Easy Life.

  ‘I’ll sit down at the table if I can have a biscuit,’ he tells him, as I am about to serve supper. We’re getting to the point where in order to achieve anything, we’ll have to get in teams of mediators.

  And that still leaves us the problem of reverse bargaining. When I say to Lawrence: ‘You can have a sweet if you do your teeth afterwards’ – he only has to keep his end of the bargain after he’s had the treat. So not surprisingly, I get screwed. When I say: ‘You won’t get a sweet next time,’ he replies: ‘I don’t care.’ Of course, when it comes to next time he does care, and I get stuffed again. Peter says it’s because kids, unlike adults, don’t appreciate anything once it’s in the past. They never say: ‘Remember that time I was bawling my eyes out and you bought me a toy car? Cheers for that!’

  Similarly, Lydia goes to a friend’s house to play, but fails to keep her end of the deal, which is to put her own clothes back on to go home. If I explain beforehand: ‘When I come to get you, promise you’ll get ready without a fuss?’ she nods dutifully and says: ‘Yes, Mummy. I promise.’

  Cut to: Me arriving at friend’s house to find her dressed as a fairy or a princess or a lion, or with nothing on at all. And it always follows the same pattern: ‘Lydia, time to go. Can you get dressed, please?’

  Lydia (running upstairs): ‘Ha-ha-ha-ha!’

  One afternoon, I promise Lawrence we will get Lydia and definitely be back in time for The Simpsons, which I want to watch myself. But not wanting the Other Mother to think our lives are ruled by television, I say: ‘We can’t be late. We’ve got someone coming round at six.’

  ‘Who, Mummy? Who?’

  ‘Er … Katarina.’

  Lydia drops everything. ‘Katarina! Katarina!’

  And while the Other Mother is kindly searching for Lydia’s socks, I whisper: ‘Not really. But if you come now you can watch The Simpsons.’

  ‘THE SIMPSONS!!!!’ yells Lydia, making a fool of me in front of the Other Mother, and becoming so excited she forgets about getting dressed altogether.

  Which is, I believe, where we came in.

  I have no answers to any of this, so I’ll just close on this thought: the three most devoted couples I know don’t have kids. On the other hand, when they argue, who is there to blame?

  19 A Little Light Bedtime Reading

  Peter’s sister and her boyfriend have offered to have both children to stay the night. The excitement on all our rparts is too much. Jessica is their favourite person. She rhas a dog, a cat and endless patience. What’s more, her two sons are nearly thirty and still speaking to her.

  Unable to make a decision about a hotel, we decide to have dinner and see a film.

  ‘There’s the new Jack Nicholson.’

  ‘Sure! Anything with him in it.’

  On the way, we read the blurb in the paper.

  ‘A retiring police chief pledges to catch the killer of a young child.’

  ‘Ah.’

  But: ‘Jack Nicholson in a tormenting, riveting performance.’

  We love Jack
Nicholson. It’s harrowing, but the harrowingness is offset by Vanessa Redgrave doing a Swedish accent. And anyhow, we have worse visions in our heads.

  I remember once trying to defend The Silence of the Lambs to a man who didn’t like horror films.

  ‘Um, well, I think when you see a film with a monster in it, and you experience your fear, and the monster is killed or conquered or whatever, at the end, it’s quite, you know, satisfying,’ I said. And he replied: ‘I think that’s entirely fatuous.’

  But he was wrong. That book single-handedly rescued a holiday in a dark, gloomy house in France when it rained all the time and the ‘swimming pool’ was five feet across and inflatable. We had only one copy, so took turns. I read the last chapter locked in the car, with the rest of the family circling outside like wolves. But that’s not the reason I respect Thomas Harris and his kind. He knows the insides of people’s heads are not fundamentally nice and sweet. And of course it’s not true only of grown-ups.

  Children love stories about monsters; everyone knows that. They are avid for horrible, beastly tales and fascinated by violence. But obviously, there’s violence and violence. Lawrence and Lydia are still at the age where they think it would be hilarious to be hit by a lorry and be ‘squashed as flat as a pancake. Or an ice-cream van!’ – the prospect of being hit at thirty mph by a ton of strawberry cornets being utterly thrilling.

  But it’s hard to gauge the bedtime reading matter just right. Well, it would probably be easier if we stuck to the books labelled for their age. But we get bored. Also, children don’t progress in their taste in an incremental, linear way – any more than adults do. They’re extremely nostalgic for some of the first stories we ever read to them – and no wonder; several are absolutely brilliant. But then there are the books which they can read themselves, or will soon be able to, but which they still insist we read to them. And these are often the ones we like the least.