Carrot Sticks. I mean Carrot or Stick.

Bribery as a parenting technique can be very useful and effective.  It may not be in many parenting manuals as the best way to get your kids to cooperate, but it definitely helps when out and about with grumpy kids: 'If you behave well in the supermarket, we'll see about buying a treat on the way to the checkout.'  Then you can curb imminent naughtiness in the supermarket on the way round by threatening to withhold the treat. Genius.

Until Adam that is. 

Here is a child who will not be bribed. 'If you don't finish your dinner, you won't get any ice-cream.' 'I don't want any ice cream.' Many kids would back down from this position when they saw their older brother tucking into a bowl of chocolate ice cream with sprinkles.  Not Adam. He will quite happily not finish his dinner, not have any ice cream and leave the table and go off and play.

My conclusion with him is that he would rather have the power than the bribe - he wants to be in charge of the situation.  He has a very strong personality! 

There is definitely a positive side to having a strong willed child - rather than a pushover.  Is it wildly optimistic of me to hope that this could have some positive repercussions? In his teenage years, I would like to imagine he would be less easily led and able to stand up for what he believes in rather than go along like a sheep. However, that doesn't necessarily help me now!

The latest scenario in which I had to battle Adam's strong will was that of swimming lessons.  He is in the so-called confidence class; where they just get the kids to splash about in the water in order to feel at ease with getting water in their faces etc. After a summer holiday in which both boys more or less lived in the swimming pool, we thought it was the perfect time for lessons, and indeed Matthew is flying along in his class.  Adam was fine for the first class and I was therefore completely unprepared for the hysterical crying that suddenly erupted as we walked to the learner pool for the second class.  He was really very very upset and very unwilling to even try.  He spent a bit of time in the pool, but I had to wait by the side for most of it, which I wasn't really supposed to do.  

During the week that followed, we took him swimming as a family where he had a great time splashing about with no fear or concern.  We also talked a lot about the lessons and tried to get to the bottom of what he didn't like.  But his responses were a bit inconsistent and bewildering.  So, I went for the bribery option: Moshi Monsters. (No, no idea either...) I also set up a playdate with a boy in the class whose Mum I recognised as a friend of a friend. (I more or less accosted her by text and she was gracious enough to invite us round to play with her son, which was really very nice of her.)

The day of the third class dawns and the first words out of Adam's mouth as he wakes are: 'I don't want to do swimming.' Sigh.  I was really dreading it!  I told him about the Moshi Monsters he would get: 'I don't want them!' And there was a huge amount of crying at the pool and he eventually got into the pool for the second half of the lesson, but refused to take part in the activities. So I gave him one of the Moshis in the pack as he had only been in for half the lesson...

In case I am sounding like a heartless Mum for insisting he got in the pool if he didn't want to: I knew he really wasn't afraid of the water, he said he liked his teacher and I was there the whole time.  And we have already paid for the term...  And I don't want to have a kid who learns that throwing a wobbler gets him out of things he doesn't want to do.  But if I really thought he was genuinely traumatised I would of course have changed my approach.

Ok, defense of me over.

Week 4. New bribe in bag: football cards, which are already being collected by both boys. 'I don't want them!' The crying started and the new development was the fighting - he wouldn't even stand up to walk to the pool and was really wrestling me.  This is all, of course, happening under the interested gaze of many other parents, presumably all thinking :'Thanks God that's not me!'

I decided a new approach was needed and I got down on his eye level and said, firmly: 'We are not going home until you have got in the pool.' I am not sure how my tone communicated this, but he absolutely knew that I meant it, and that I was finished pleading, bribing and cajoling. He got up, walked to the pool and got in and stayed in for the whole class.  

It was a real light bulb moment for me! I never used to understand why people talked about getting to know your baby or your child. Surely you decide what kind of a parent you are gong to be and they have to fit in with that?  Well, to a point... But it's also about understanding what makes them tick - what each individual child responds to.  My older boy will respond to the promise of treats or the withholding of same. It is clear that Adam will not and that he needs to be shown, unequivocally, who holds the power in a situation.  I don't mean that I have to learn how to bully him.  Just that I have to communicate to him that he is not in charge and I am and that he must do as I say, for no other reason than that I am the parent.  I am glad I figured this out when he was 4 and not 14 and I hope I am able to find that authoritative (not authoritarian) tone again - next time I need to.  We'll see how week 5 goes!

Third Culture Adult

The phrase 'third culture kid' is one I have heard flung about for years, without ever really understanding what it meant. It was never very clear to me what the third culture was; evidently not the culture one lived in, or the culture of one's parents.  This quote finally illuminates for me what was meant and defines something I definitely already knew and absolutely experienced.  So now it comes together and makes sense!

My relationship with this quote is as follows: my parents' culture is Irish - they were both born and bred here and lived here till they were in their mid twenties.  The culture in which my sister and I grew up was Dutch, but included a very strong international element.  We attended an international school until I was 11 and my sister was 8 and there were always kids from all over the world around.  Not sure how that element would be part of the definition, but that was my experience! 

The concept of not having ownership over any culture is absolutely true and I remember in my late teens feeling that I would never feel fully at home in any country.  This actually made me quite angry and I went through a bit of a phase of expressing how much I felt like an outsider in interesting hairstyles and clothes. Of course all teens feel like an outsider and maybe I was quite fortunate in having such a clear focus for the usual angst and insecurities.

When we lived in  Holland, I assumed I was quite Irish. This was simply a conclusion I drew because I didn't really feel Dutch.  When I ended up in England at university, it became clear that I was in fact quite a bit more Dutch than I had ever realised: I turned up on time for everything and was told I was very blunt and direct!

For all that I was born in Holland, I didn't grow up in a Dutch family and I could have lived in Holland for a hundred years and never ever fully understood or learned all the social niceties or linguistic quirks. Things that were completely self evident to my classmates were utterly baffling to me, on a daily basis! I never got the hang of the correct 'the' for each nouns: 'het' or 'de' and was always being corrected. 

Equally, now living in Ireland, but not having been here for my childhood, there are always things that I need to have explained - particularly when it comes to kids tv, with which the Irish, and more particularly the English, are utterly obsessed once you get them talking about it. (There isn't room in this blog, or even the whole internet to talk about how out of step I felt with the English culture when I first lived there!)

The quote rings absolutely true when it comes to the third culture: the sense of belonging comes from links with people in the same situation. Of course all siblings share a unique bond; but I do feel my sister and I have a particularly unique bond. She and I are the only ones that know what is was like to be of Irish parents, living in that part of Holland, in such an international setting. My third culture was shared with her, until I moved to England, and it is a culture of fun, imagination, music and creativity. 

I guess my boys will have their own third culture in amongst a mix of an Irish education, an English Daddy, a throughly confused Mummy, Dutch cousins and learning a smattering of Dutch themselves. If theirs is half as unique and meaningful as Rebecca's and mine, they are going to have a wonderful bond.

How To Ask Mothers if They Work

I have a new friend - at least we are becoming friends! Her son is new to Matthew's class and her younger son is the same age as Adam. So we have got together a couple of times to chat while the boys play. And while she looks after her twin 6 month old boys. That's right, 4 boys, 2 of which are 6 months old.

It occurred to me after the other day when we had spent the afternoon together, that I don't know what she used to do when she worked, or if she has worked since having any of the kids. That got me thinking about some awkward conversations I have had where I have ended up over-PC-ing. Example:

'Do you work?' 'No, I am at home with the kids' .Gosh, well then you do work! Ha ha' 'Yes, just not for any pay! Ha ha.' 'I meant outside the home, sorry, not that you did nothing!' 'No, I know what you mean...!' You end up feeling like you have asked someone what they used to do, back when they were a person and not a Mum. I end up throwing 'outside the home' into the initial question to show my complete understanding for the fact that they do in fact work very hard. But should I do that? Is that not more patronising in itself?

At school there was a government initiative that got all the girls to think about jobs in science. It had laudable aims and was intended to challenge the perception that science was for boys and jobs linked to scientific third level education were somehow off limits to women. I remember sitting in this random van that was going round all the schools and the woman going round the group asking us all what we wanted to be. I mumbled something along with the rest of them, possibly teacher, but I remember very clearly thinking: 'Mostly, I want to have a family and be a wife and mum and I am not that bothered about having a career.'  The van was definitely not the right place to express this; this was obvious to me even at 14!

And I am more than happy to have got a degree and to have had a brief teaching career followed by 5 completely different jobs. Jobs as opposed to a career. That distinction is quite clear in my mind and I am happy enough with it. When I didn't know if I was ever going to be able to become a Mum, I remember feeling quite frantic about what on earth I was going to do for the next 40 years. Although I have enjoyed most of my jobs, I really did want to have a family - but this wasn't an ambition I felt I could really share with many people, if it could even be considered an amibition and not just opting out. Out of a career, out of feminism maybe, out of everything that has been fought for on women's behalf for a long time.

Cherie Blair recently made a speech that was widely reported in which she was very critical of so-called 'Yummy Mummies' who are betraying all that feminists have fought for by settling for marriage and looking after their kids instead of pursuing a career.

Or am I in fact doing exactly what was fought for: choosing? Just because my choice resembles what most women ended up doing by default in previous generations, when there wasn't a choice, doesn't mean it isn't just that: a choice, MY choice.  And, bigger than that, a choice Andrew and I have made together. Equality is surely about having the choice, not about being forced into doing something you don't want to do, whether that is 'holding the baby' or doing the 9 to 5 thing.
I am now on the receiving end of those questions: 'do you work?', when , according to the tax authorities at least, I don't. I don't want to appear defensive and retort: 'yes, but not for pay and the hours are terrible!' I do have time to myself every day and I am thoroughly enjoying the absence of that endless pressure to succeed at work while having a clean house and food on the table, so I don't want to paint myself as a martyr. But I don't endlessly swan around boutiques and coffee shops either, and I work bloody hard as a Mum and housewife and in supporting Andrew in his career.

Perhaps the best reply is: 'Yes, I am a feminist housewife!' It's all about choice baby!

Birthday Boys

When I tell people that my 2 boys have the same birthday, despite being 2 years apart in age, I get some very different responses.  

The one I never quite know how to answer is: 'Oh, no, that's awful for them!' It is?  Gosh, how terrible of me to have inflicted this on them...  Oh wait, there was nothing I could actually do about it!  What exactly do people who think this is such a bad thing expect me to do about it?  And why would it be such a bad thing?

No worse surely than having a Christmas birthday, which has always struck me as kind of hard for people.  But I don't think I would point this out to them! Again, it's not like they had any say in the matter and they just have to make the best of it! For example, a friend whose son has a late December birthday, always holds his party in November, just to make sure it's separate.  

A lot of people respond more positively and think it's a huge novelty!  We are sometime asked how we managed this.  Well, just count back nine months from September 9th, it's not a huge mystery really!  No, we didn't intend to have 2 babies with the same birthday, but, here we are! In fact, we had assumed there was a large chance of us having further miscarriages before having a second baby; we had 3 before Matthew was born. Thankfully, this wasn't the case, but we had assumed there might be a bigger age gap.

For the boys, I don't think it makes any difference.  They are now old enough to know that this is not typical and to explain, as Adam puts it: 'we are brothers but we are not twins.' Because the age gap is 2 years, Matthew genuinely doesn't know any different and doesn't remember Adam not being around or having a solo birthday.  For obvious reasons, we weren't even with him on his second birthday, but we had a party for him in August (I was the size of a whale at this stage...) and he had a grand day with his grandparents while his brother was being born.

For the last 3 years we have held joint parties as we were able to keep things quite low key.  But of course once they are at school, kids get invited to loads of parties and are exposed to all kinds of things that they want on their birthday!  And last year's joint effort was tricky, as 3 year olds and 5 year olds don't necessarily respond well to the same activities.  Example: the 3 year olds held on to the parcel at Pass the Parcel and were quite bemused by the concept of giving away this great present someone had just handed them. At this point most of the 5 year olds were freaking out: 'Pass it ONNNNNNN! PASS IT ONNNNNNN!" It was fine, but a bit stressful...!

So, 7 kids tomorrow at home for Adam's 4th Birthday Party: Pass the Parcel, Musical Statues, decorating cupcakes and eating chicken nuggets and chips.  Sorted.  10 kids on Thursday at Kidzone, the local soft play centre: manic running and climbing, followed by more chicken nuggets and chips and cake.  And, the big present for me on Thursday: go home to an empty, clean house and have no clean up to do!

They each got very different presents as they are very different boys and they will have completely separate parties, which will hopefully assuage the people who somehow think we are mean for having them on the same day...

GHD - but not the hair straighteners...

I can't remember when I first knew I was smaller than other kids my age. I certainly don't have any memories  of when I was first diagnosed with Growth Hormone Deficiency and started receiving treatment. This used to be injections twice a week, given by a nurse.  Eventually, as the dosage and medication changed, the injections were daily and my parents had to learn how to administer them.  They used to practise on teddies and oranges. Although they only used water, they used to joke about coming down in the morning to giant bears and fruit! When I was 13 I went on a dance tour for 3 weeks so I had to learn how to give myself the injections; something I really never learned to do more then tolerate.

We would travel for a check up every 3 months. (My sister also has GHD, so it was a family day out!)  We got to miss a day of school and always had chips on the way home.  That was the good bit.  We also frequently had blood tests, x rays and a doctor who always got a slightly higher number then our actual height out of the check up by stretching us up by our chin - painful!

Growth Hormone Deficiency is a hereditary, well, disorder, I guess, rather than illness.  In my family it comes from my Mum's side.  She had 2 uncles who were small, but neither had kids.  She is one of 6 kids; 3 of whom grew normally and 3 of whom also had GHD. My mu had 2 daughters and my sister and I both have GHD.  My sister has since found out that we had a 50% chance with each our kids of them also having GHD.  This has proven to be a very accurate statistical prediction as we each have 2 kids and in both families 1 of them has grown well and 1 of them has turned out to need treatment for their growth.

In my case it is Adam, my younger son (pictured here showing how big he is, but cheating slightly...) who more or less stopped growing when he was about 4 months.  His check ups at the local clinic showed such small amounts of growth for several months that it was pretty clear pretty early on that he was likely to need some help with his growth.  My niece had just been diagnosed, so it was not hard to figure out what was going on  When we went to Crumlin children's hospital for the first time to meet the consultant, I really wasn't sure how seriously we would be taken and how many months they might decide to monitor Adam's growth before starting treatment. So, I took my mother with me!  She was a brilliant illustration of our family history and the consultant was actually delighted to see 3 generations of GHD patients.  We were very pleased that he started Adam on growth hormone medication just 2 months later at only 14 months old.

It is very odd to take your child to their growth check ups every few months as a parent when you have such vivid memories of being taken as a child! The clunk of the measuring bar as it came down sent a shiver down my spine the first time Adam was old enough to be measured standing up.  His latest visit was last Wednesday and he is growing so well!  On our first visit, he didn't register on the growth chat at all for his age he was more or less under the 0% percentile! On Wednesday he registered at the 75% percentile! It is truly astonishing to be told by random strangers at the playground that he seems tall for his age!  That certainly never happened to my sister or me, but the medication has been developed since the '80s and we can expect Adam to achieve a completely normal height compared to his peers, which is just brilliant.

2 final thoughts on this:

I am immensely grateful for the Drug Payment Scheme in Ireland which covers his medication.  Apparently, the full cost would be about 15000 EURO per year. We do hit the full monthly charge every month, but that's much much less than the total should be.  I wrote to Mary Harney while she was still Minister for Health to express my thanks for this as I don't take it for granted!

And lastly, a visit to Cumlin absolutely exhausts me - I come home every time feeling flattened. Then I remember that Adam isn't sick in any way and that there are parents visiting the hospital while I am there to bring their kids to chemo appointments or to have serious and life limiting diagnoses confirmed.  Every time I come away wondering how they cope with the emotional and physical exhaustion this must bring. I hope I never have to find out.

Brookmyre's Bias

Christopher Brookmyre is one of my favourite authors and I have read his books many times. I am currently re-reading them all again and thoroughly enjoying them! He writes with biting wit, creative violence and true humanity. Some of his characters are truly memorable, in particular Angelique de Xavia and Jack Parlabane. He hits many themes and takes no prisoners in his satirical plots: politicians, the Catholic church, the arms trade and many other targets. 

It is clear from many of his characters' utterances that Brookmyre has a catholic background but has since rejected the teachings of the church and come to be very anti-religion. There is quite a theme of this running through his books, in particular Not The End of The World and Attack of The Unsinkable Rubber Ducks. 

My views on Christianity are very different to Brookmyre's. Or indeed to many authors and I am certainly not one of those christians who only reads christian books or listens to christian music.  However, I do find some of Brookmyre's descriptions of christians oddly misinformed.

When his plots include what might be termed Bible-believing christians, he tends to have them behave and speak in a way more suited to someone from the Westboro Baptist Church than any of the christians I know... Extremely hateful about gay people, judgmental of everyone who doesn't share their views and not really able to participate in normal society. Louis Theroux did a couple of documentaries about this group - I call myself a christian but would no more relate to anyone from the Westboro Baptist Church than I would to a Nazi.

In Unsinkable Rubber Ducks he really gets it wrong and links being pro christianity to also being well disposed to the occult - to communicating with the dead and 'woo' generally. It's truly bizarre to think of Bible-believing christians (a clunky term, but I can't think of a better one...) engaging with anything of that kind. There are of course people who believe in God who do also believe in angels communicating with them, communications from beyond the grave and who would visit fortune tellers.  But I would call them people who are interested in spirituality as opposed to people who follow Jesus as christians and believe that the Bible is God's word. It is very clear in the Bible that anything in the area of magic, witchcraft and divination is absolutely not of God and on no account is a christian to get mixed up with any of these things.  I certainly don't know any christians who would be into any of this stuff. 

So I found it a very odd connection that Brookmyre made.
He is also very anti homeopathy so my best guess is that Brookmyre simply lumps christianity, homeopathy and spiritualism together as unscientific and therefore more or less the same thing. (NB: I have no particular opinion on homeopathy.) I admire him for grappling with some of these issues and will continue to read and enjoy his books as they are original, funny and gripping, every time.  But he really does have a blind spot on this and I have considered writing to him.  But I am not sure what I would say! To give him credit, I am not suggesting that he is ignorant, merely that his own experiences have left their marks and he has come to his own conclusions about the merits of christianity without, I would suggest, an encounter with the truth of the gospel. 

Why Book Clubs are Brilliant

To date I have been a member of 3 book clubs and have absolutely loved it! Currently, I am in 2, each of which meet once a month and one of which I started 2 and a half years ago. It is still going strong, although all of the original members except myself are no longer in it! (It wasn't anything I said....!)

My first book club was started by a friend in Dun Laoghaire and I went for about 6 months before starting my own slightly nearer to home. The experience of being in a group of people who like books and have opinions and questions to ask was great - I loved it.  It was helpful to see how group was run as well, to get an idea of what works and what doesn't as I started my own.

Personally, I don't think it works very well to have it in people's homes.  It puts a lot of pressure on the person hosting, especially if a group culture develops in which there is an expectation of home baked treats or wine and nibbles.  And what is the other half supposed to do while a horde of book clutching women invades the living room?  If the kids are unsettled, this can be very disruptive as well.  One memorable occasion that really sealed the deal for me on this one was when the rest of us had to wait an hour, an HOUR, for the hostess to get her kids to sleep before we could start to discuss the book.  Her husband was also at home, but apparently she had to be in the room until they were asleep.  Call me insensitive, but I was NOT impressed!

So, we meet in a hotel bar - much more relaxed!  We have a few other rules too: we try to keep to books of 400 pages or less so that you have about 100 pages per week.  The intention is to prevent it feeling like homework, as you plough through a tome a month with an eye on the calendar.  Book Club is meant to be a social, fun part of life - not another item on your to do list.  Another rule: you can't suggest a book on hearsay - you have to have actually read it. And if your book suggestion is on that month, you are asked to have at least one question to get a discussion started.  This last rule is more of a suggestion than a rule and isn't really followed!

We have read some great books and some that I have hated.  Ok, that's a bit strong, but really not enjoyed anyway. Here are a few we have read:

Our absolute number unanimous favourite was: (deep breath) The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows. It starts slowly, but blossoms into a beautiful, moving and quirky story. It is set in World War 2 and explores the story of Guernsey under German Occupation.  This was an aspect of WW2 of which I was only hazily aware and it was really fascinating with some truly great characters. 

Our second favourite was The Help by Kathryn Stockett.  What a book!  It has so many ingredients: a social commentary, a misfit finding her place, danger and drama, political turmoil, women in different spheres of society and one of the bitchiest characters ever to get her comeuppance in a truly memorable way! We all really enjoyed reading this and I remember it being a great discussion.

The book we least enjoyed was Letters to Sebastian.  I don't remember the author and haven't kept the book, which tells its own story. The premise was good - a Dad who receives a terminal cancer diagnosis writes to loads of famous, clever and interesting people, mostly in Ireland, and asks them to write a letter to his son with advice for his life. The letters ranged from dull and pointless to totally trite and cliched, with the most random being a huge essay on fishing. It just didn't really work, but could have been great if the initial letter asking for input had had clearer parameters.

Another we didn't like much was The Slap by Christos Tsolkias.  It has a promising plot: at a suburban barbecue, a man slap a child that isn't his own.  The books charts the repercussions of this within the social group.  I picked this book and thought it was an interesting idea, especially in a group where so many of us have young kids. What became apparent however was that the characters were just horribly narcissistic and mostly drugged up or drunk for a lot of the time. I couldn't relate to any of them and there was no one who was sympathetic, which made for an annoying read in the end.

If you are not in a book club, but thinking about finding one -go for it!  But try and figure out if your group is about serious literature only, or a mix of different genres. Are the other members big readers or are most of them only reading this one book a month? It makes a difference and it's helpful to think about how much of a reader you are before you commit to it.  That's why some of the original members left; I think they liked the idea of being in a book club, but found it hard to prioritise the actual reading as it really wasn't something they would have been doing anyway.

For me, one of the best things has been discovering authors I would never have been drawn to, but have really enjoyed. Sometimes my expectations have been completely confounded and I have loved a book I expected to hate - this was true for The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. Other times, the opposite was true - like The Slap. Andrew reckons we chat about the book for all of five minutes before just chatting and gossiping...  This is not the case!  We do of course have great chats about life in general and I have made some good friends through the club. But we absolutely discuss the books and it's a great way to find out what people think about things that might not come up in every day conversation.

The next book club meeting is a week tomorrow and we are looking at The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls - a fantastic book. But I already know that one member didn't like it at all. That will make for a good evening's discussion and I am already looking forward to it!