I'm conscious, when being out with people who do not have children, to try not to be "baby this and baby that" in my conversation (that, after all, is what this blog is for), and I am aware that people without children often moan about people who do talk about their kids.
But I've been giving this some thought and I've decided to stop being so accommodating in my topics of conversation. After all, having a child is the biggest thing in my life. It impacts on all that I do and how I participate in the world. These people who moan about parents talking about their kids - do they moan about pet owners the same way? After all I've had two conversations about other people's pets this week. What if I spoke about a holiday, or a new car, or buying a house? This, I suspect, would be considered 'normal' conversation. If I were buying a houe and having difficulties, ground down by estate agents and surveyors and gazumping and gazundering, I would be pretty peeved to meet a friend for a drink and not be asked about it and sympathised with and and made to laugh about it and given advice and generally engaging with it. Well guess what? A child is much more important than that.
So I've decided - I shall stop making the effort to keep it in and I shall talk about my baby. And those who don't like it will just have to tolerate it the way you might listen to me talk about a failed romance while internally rolling your eyes and thinking I'm a sap, or a work situation where you think I'm unreasonable, or a novel I like that you think is crap.
Except of course when I'm with other parents - after all, we're the ones who most need a good chat about wine, or travel, or culture, or anything other than babies.
Showing posts with label parents. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parents. Show all posts
Thursday, 9 February 2012
Monday, 26 September 2011
My mum is not my best friend
My mum and I have a firm belief that wonderful as the mother-daughter bond is, we are not best friends, and that mothers and daughters should not describe themselves as best friends.
In part this is because our relationship is much more than that of friends, so to describe it as a friendship diminishes our relationship. But I think it's more than that. I think it's because with friends you have a responsibility not to judge them where as with your children you have a responsibility to judge them.
After all, if a friend is badly behaved then providing you are not the victim your job is to provide hankies and chocolate and fun and analysis and chat and distraction and advice, but only when asked, and if whatever they have done is so bad that you can't do this then you can walk away. However with your children you can never walk away and you have a responsibility not just not to ignore bad behaviour, but to take active steps to make it better, to show disapproval and to set boundaries, all under the blanket of unconditional love.
For although one always hopes a friendship is long term, but often they are not. Some are ephemeral, lasting the duration of a conference or a course or even an evening out. Some last for years but you grow apart, either metaphorically or geographically. Others peak and wane in intensity depending on where you are in life. But the parent-child relationship should not do this. If I am to fulfil my role in our relationship, I will be a constant, not always approving but always there.
What's more, if a friend disappears from your life, you may be sad but you do not define yourself to others, or to yourself, as someone who was once a friend of that person. But once you are a mother (or for that case a sister), you are always a mother, regardless of what events may happen. Even if you left you would remain a mother - it is fact as much as feeling.
So whilst my relationship with my mum has many elements of best friendship about it, I'm proud to say she is not my best friend, she is my mum. And nor do I seek to become my daughter's best friend. Rather I seek to be the best mum I can be. My friendship I will save for those who do not need mothering by me.
In part this is because our relationship is much more than that of friends, so to describe it as a friendship diminishes our relationship. But I think it's more than that. I think it's because with friends you have a responsibility not to judge them where as with your children you have a responsibility to judge them.
After all, if a friend is badly behaved then providing you are not the victim your job is to provide hankies and chocolate and fun and analysis and chat and distraction and advice, but only when asked, and if whatever they have done is so bad that you can't do this then you can walk away. However with your children you can never walk away and you have a responsibility not just not to ignore bad behaviour, but to take active steps to make it better, to show disapproval and to set boundaries, all under the blanket of unconditional love.
For although one always hopes a friendship is long term, but often they are not. Some are ephemeral, lasting the duration of a conference or a course or even an evening out. Some last for years but you grow apart, either metaphorically or geographically. Others peak and wane in intensity depending on where you are in life. But the parent-child relationship should not do this. If I am to fulfil my role in our relationship, I will be a constant, not always approving but always there.
What's more, if a friend disappears from your life, you may be sad but you do not define yourself to others, or to yourself, as someone who was once a friend of that person. But once you are a mother (or for that case a sister), you are always a mother, regardless of what events may happen. Even if you left you would remain a mother - it is fact as much as feeling.
So whilst my relationship with my mum has many elements of best friendship about it, I'm proud to say she is not my best friend, she is my mum. And nor do I seek to become my daughter's best friend. Rather I seek to be the best mum I can be. My friendship I will save for those who do not need mothering by me.
Monday, 5 September 2011
The secret life of parents
I have an image of the future in my head in which our daughter asks us what we do after she's gone to bed and we guiltily look at each other before turning to her and emphatically saying "nothing". And as parents are inherently uncool and even sensitive children are self-centred, I suspect she will believe us.
Turns out though that parents have a secret life. Somewhere behind the boundary setting and the saying no, the 'up to beds' and the 'dinner times', when the baby isn't looking we have fun. We have fun with the baby too of course, but we have fun just the two of us as well. We can spend twenty minutes laughing at a rude joke or making faces at each other or gossiping or just, you know, having a laugh, I wonder whether the baby will ever realise we have this secret life of immaturity, where farts are funny, swear words are used with abandon and all the boundaries we give her are broken by us.
And if we have fun when the baby isn't looking, casting aside the responsibility of parenthood for a moment and becoming two people who can do other things, then isn't it likely our parents did the same? Which is weird because you know how you think all that happened when you were younger and in bed was your parents watched telly and spoke about you? Well they probably did that, but they probably spent a lot of time laughing at farts too.
Related post: How to tell you are a grown-up
Turns out though that parents have a secret life. Somewhere behind the boundary setting and the saying no, the 'up to beds' and the 'dinner times', when the baby isn't looking we have fun. We have fun with the baby too of course, but we have fun just the two of us as well. We can spend twenty minutes laughing at a rude joke or making faces at each other or gossiping or just, you know, having a laugh, I wonder whether the baby will ever realise we have this secret life of immaturity, where farts are funny, swear words are used with abandon and all the boundaries we give her are broken by us.
And if we have fun when the baby isn't looking, casting aside the responsibility of parenthood for a moment and becoming two people who can do other things, then isn't it likely our parents did the same? Which is weird because you know how you think all that happened when you were younger and in bed was your parents watched telly and spoke about you? Well they probably did that, but they probably spent a lot of time laughing at farts too.
Related post: How to tell you are a grown-up
Monday, 22 August 2011
The way you make me feel
You know how much you love your children, that primal animalistic way that means you would quite literally rip the throat of any predators out with your teeth, the way that means you can stare at them for hours congratulating yourself on how clever you are to have made them, the way their cry makes you cry in an instant, the way you cannot believe that someone as flawed as you can make someone as perfect as them, the way that if they look at something with longing you want to buy it for them, and how you can't bear the thought they will be old one day except the alternative is so much much worse, how you take anything anyone says that isn't an out and out compliment as a judgemental slur, and how if we didn't have running water you would be prepared to lick them clean, even the icky bits, and how your ambitions are now all for them and not for yourself, and the way you look at their face and see in it everybody who has ever been before them and everyone who will ever come after them and how even though you may be an athiest it's almost enough to make you believe in God. Well just a thought but that's probably how your parents felt, still feel even, about you. Mindblowing isn't it?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)