The things kids say

Dear Jess. Tippi writes a letter to her best friend after her big holiday.

/ Lexyvale / Leave a comment

Dear Jess,

Hello, it’s Tippi! I can’t wait to see you in Sydney at your birthday party next week. I wish I were turning 6 too – it’s not fair that you always get to have a birthday before me. But it’s ok, I love you anyway.

We got back from our holiday in the UK and the South of France yesterday morning. It was a very long flight from London, and we flew in to Sydney so early in the morning it was still dark. I didn’t sleep much on the flight – Mummy kept asking me to go to sleep but I wasn’t tired. Mummy mustn’t have been tired either, because whenever her eyes closed, I would ask her for a cuddle and she stayed awake too.

I have had a mazing holiday. On our first day there, Mummy and Daddy made me walk all over London. I was very tired and it was a bit boring, but I did it and it made Mummy and Daddy very happy. London has these wonderful shops everywhere full of useful stuff with English flags on them – money boxes, pens, cuddly toys, t-shirts and loads more. I love love love those shops! Mummy calls them souvenir shops and says they are full of overpriced crap. I’m not sure what that means – maybe that they’re lovely – but she did start to get her cross-face on whenever I asked to go to one. I got a Big Ben statue that broke that very same day, here is a picture;


I told Mummy that it doesn’t matter, we can just buy another one. She got cross-face again and I wasn’t allowed another one.

Then we went to my cousins house in a place called West Sussex. My first tooth fell out! I wrote the tooth fairy a letter and left it and my tooth under my pillow. The next morning the tooth fairy had left me one pound, but did not reply to my letter and I was a little sad. I wanted to know what they did with all those teeth. Mummy says maybe she was too busy that night to write back, and she might write next time. Now I have another wobbly tooth and cant stop wobbling it.

We went to France where everyone speaks funny and I don’t understand what they were saying at all. It was super hot, I was very sweaty all the time. But we were close to the sea and we were able to swim lots and lots. I swam in really deep water with my Mummy and Daddy, and could look down and see all the way down to the bottom. I learned to use a snorkel and saws loads of fish. We even went out on a boat one day.

Best of all, I played with my cousins who are English. They are three girls, Stella, Rosie and Hattie, and their big brother Charlie. Charlie is a teenager and I was scared of him at first, but it turns out he is really nice and funny. My girl cousins played and played and played with me. I got a bit sad when they went off and played big girls things that I couldn’t do like long swims out to sea, and playing cards. Mummy says that she was the little one once and also got sad when her sisters wouldn’t play with her, but that one day suddenly she was big enough to join in. I was still sad and didn’t like being the littlest.  But soon they would come back and we would play again or watch my new favourite show Barbie Life in the Dreamhouse. We even did a show for the grown ups and I got to be Queen Elsa.

Now we are home and we picked up our dog Pepper on the way. It was still early in the morning when we got home and Mummy wanted me to have a sleep but I still didn’t want to. But then I did fall asleep for hours and hours. Mummy tried to make me wake up in the afternoon. She said that if I didn’t wake up in the day, I would be up during the night but I was so tired I didn’t care I just stayed asleep whenever they weren’t looking. Then I did wake up and had dinner and because I’d slept all day I didn’t want to go to bed. Eventually Mummy got really cross and went to bed and Daddy lay with me till I went to sleep. I woke up first and it was still very dark – Mummy says it was 2 o’clock in the morning. I was really hungry and finally got to have a midnight feast! It is morning now and Mummy wants me to have a sleep but I’m not tired, really I’m not. She says that there’s no way on this earth am I allowed to sleep this afternoon, and I promise I wont. She says that stopping me from sleeping will be like holding back the tide, like it was yesterday. She often says things that I don’t really understand.

I didn’t eat much while we were away. All the food tasted different and the food on the aeroplane is yuck yuck yuck. I really only liked the bread and croissants. Now I keep asking Mummy for food and she gets me some, but when she gives it to me I don’t really feel hungry anymore so I take one bite to be polite and leave the rest. Then in a little while I feel hungry again, or maybe just bored I don’t know, so I ask for more food. Mummy says to eat the food she put out for me before, but I want something else so she gets me something else. When she gives it to me I find I only want one bite of it again. She is sighing a lot, I wonder why?

I have to go now. Mummy seems a little cranky so to cheer her up I am running around the house singing “fly birdy fly” over and over again at the top of my voice but she just wants to type on her computer. I think I’ll have a little nap after lunch, I’m starting to feel a little tired. I wonder what’s for lunch.

Love,

Tippi xxxx

How long do I have to pander to my kids’ fears ?

/ Lexyvale / 4 Comments
Scared

Scared

It’s a loooong time ago that I started kindy, so long that I cant even face working out what year it was. Somewhere in the mid 70s I’m guessing. Around 40 years ago, so I cant profess to remember the whole experience, but I do remember snippets clearly and have an overall feel for how it went.

We went to school. Full stop. No clinging, no crying, no begging Mummy not to leave. We were dropped off and went inside and got on with it. I don’t remember it even occurring to me to cling or cry even when I was scared or uncertain. Granted I had two sisters there, but the very last thing they were going to do was look after me. I barely got a grunt out of them until we all got home after school.

In fact, I don’t actually remember being dropped off at school. In Sydney we caught the bus. When we moved to Perth, I was 8 and we rode our bikes to school.

I know, I know, I’m doing the “in my day” thing. Ugh. Sorry. But it’s relevant.

Tippi has always been a nervous, shy kid. She’s always stayed close to me, she’s not the kid that gets lost in the shopping mall, she’s not a risk taker. Which has served me well over time as kids who wander are harder work, but it means she misses out on experiences. As she’s grown in age she’s grown in confidence, which has been frankly a big relief, but not that much confidence. At least 3 days a week, there’s some kind of clinging when I take her to school – it might be as mild as needing a few cuddles, or right up to the full blown Beg and Cling dance. Yep, she’s that kid. You’ve all seen them.

And then there’s the night fears that appeared a couple of years ago. I know, I GET that! I was terrified of the dark as a kid thanks to my two older sisters’ constant torment (cue evil Russian accent): “Dracula is coming to suck your blooooood”. Teeth time, story time, snuggle time, ‘night, love you’, dark…… ARGGGHHHHHHHH! Terrifying. The dark was so so scary for me right up until adulthood and then some.

But I had to suck it up. The hall light was left on while I was falling asleep and that was it. No parent checking on me, no staying with me, no lullabies. It was goodnight, get myself to sleep. I remember lying there in a sweat sometimes, trembling. But I went to sleep eventually and now I can live on a remote farm with no other adult in the house and all lights off and sleep soundly all night.

Tippi has the door open, the hall lights on, lullabies playing softly, a 2 minute check, 5 minutes, 8 minutes etc until asleep which doesn’t usually take long but jeeeez it is interminable when has started, it’s the end of the day, couch is beckoning.

So here’s the thing. I want Tippi to grow into a person who is independent, resilient, brave, fierce, adventurous, confident, able to take risks, living life to its fullest, and every other cliche I can think of. I don’t know for sure, but I strongly believe my parents did that for me, with a little help from my big sisters.

I confess, I’m over pandering to her fears whether they’re real or imagined. Surely by doing so, I’m fueling them, aren’t I? By hugging her 10 times at school drop off, hanging around, waving, encouraging, maybe I’m being nice and loving, but it’s not helping her to learn independence. By staying with her in her room when she’s scared at night might be a motherly thing to do, but doesn’t it confirm that if I’m not there, monsters might come in?

I’ve toughened up lately. I walk away at school after just a couple of hugs. I speak sternly if she follows me out, and I don’t look back. Actually this week I did look back and she was skipping happily back into school which tells me she’s playing me. I don’t stay in her room after lights out.

Then on the flipside… she’s 5, that little teary face breaks my heart into a million pieces.

Oh FFS, no it doesn’t, it’s infuriating, I have other things to get on with and this kid needs to learn resilience.

So tell me, how loving and patient do I have to be to these fears without cementing them for her, and how tough do I have to be without traumatising her?

Parenting Dilemma #5078.

Do you have a fearful child? How do you manage it?

Is Katy Perry a Caterpillar?

/ Lexyvale / Leave a comment

Tippi chef

“Mummy”, Tippi said on the way to preschool this morning, “Is Katy Perry a caterpillar?”

“No, she’s a person who sings, why do you think she’s a caterpillar?”

“She just feels like a caterpillar, a purple one.”

“In what way, darling?”

“Well, she sounds like a caterpillar.”

Katy Perry…. caterpillar…. I can see where she’s coming from.

That’s My Girl, Doing Us Proud

/ Lexyvale / Leave a comment

I’ve always been a bit miffed that our only child  is so her father. From the moment she popped out, her lips, her tall, slim body, everything is him. Put a baby pic of them both together, they are the same baby. There is nothing, NOTHING of me in her.

I hoped that maybe she’d be left handed like me. No. She’s not, no matter how hard I cane her hand as she practices her letters.

Then she walked me through this drawing she did at preschool:

261

“So that’s Maddie, and Evie, and Evie’s Mummy, and Evie’s Daddy with a MASSIVE PENIS! BAHAHAHAHAHAH!”

Oh dear, maybe there’s a bit of me in her after all….

 

 

 

 

 

My Kid Gave me Goosebumps Today

/ Lexyvale / Leave a comment
Minnie Mouse reincarnated?

Minnie Mouse reincarnated?

…And made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Miss Four and I went to the medical centre to get her vaccinations done, she was being surprisingly calm about it, actually she felt quite grown up.

I parked in the parking lot next to another car and in the drivers seat was an old lady – maybe 85 or so – glaring at me I assumed for parking so close to her. I live in a rural area dominated by seniors and they get really cranky about all the SUVs in the car parks in town. I mean, if the car spaces are too small, take it up with the council, right? What other car could be more practical for both farm and family life? I shoved and shunted a bit to give her more room to open her door, but really I was perfectly positioned in the middle of the marked out space. So I was internally eye-rolling at yet another cranky old “dear” tch tching me.

As we were getting out of the car, Tippi – Miss 4 – said “I like that lady, can I talk to her?” and straight to the window she went and said “hello!” with a big, gorgeous smile and a wave. The lady was nice to her, but said not a word to me – not that she had to mind you but I’m just making the point that she wasn’t exactly engaging us in any exchange – this was all driven by Tippi. We walked in to the doctors surgery and went about our day.

When we came out of the nurses room some 45 minutes later, Old Lady was sitting, waiting for her turn. “Hello!” says Tippi.

This time Old Lady was quite lovely with Tippi and they had a little chat. I should point out that my daughter is charming as all four year olds are, but she is also OFTEN extremely shy and whilst not unheard of, it is very rare for her to initiate conversations with strangers. I needed to go to the loo so Tippi begged me to let her stay with Old Lady while I did that. She didn’t seem to mind, so I went, gobsmacked wondering where my shy little girl went and bursting with maternal pride. Tippi was being utterly delightful and the Old Lady couldn’t help but be charmed by her.

As we were leaving, we said our goodbyes, and then Tippi ran back to Old Lady and said: “Excuse me, can I come to your house for a play one day?” The poor old thing spluttered out an excuse that she didn’t live in a house, she lived with lots of old people who might not like her to come and play. Tippi accepted that and off we went.

In the car on the way back to preschool, she was quiet for a while then suddenly said: “In the olden days, when mummy wasn’t around and daddy wasn’t around, I played with that lady but I cant remember her name.”

Hellooooo goosies! It reminded me of a time around two years earlier when she would be in the bath and occasionally looked past me out the window and said “who’s that?”. There was never anyone there, but it always rattled me a little.

Tippi must have seen a look on my face, because she then said: “But it’s just a story, Mumma.” I told her I thought it was a lovely story, and that was that.

If I did give her a look that made her think she’d said something wrong, I deeply regret that. I’m not taking this as some kind of evidence that reincarnation exists, but equally I don’t want to stifle her imagination with grown up perceptions. If it was just a story – and it more than likely was – what lovely creativity is starting to come out, I would only ever want to nurture that.

Do I believe in reincarnation? I’m open to it, but I tend to shrug it off with the belief that if it does exist, we’ll know soon enough when we’re dead.

Have your kids ever said or done something that spooked you just a little?