It is my job as a mother to teach my child certain things. And I do. I try every day to teach him to be compassionate and kind, to be respectful and caring, to make positive choices and not to talk with his mouth full.

I teach him about road rules and water safety. I instruct him in manners and courtesy, I have even taught him how to ride a bike. Okay that’s a lie, his father taught him how to ride a bike.

I’ve taught him about where we come from (literally and figuratively) and about other races and cultures. I’ve encouraged him to love books and reading and I’ve also taught him how to blow bubble gum bubbles that reach his nose.

I’ve guided him through the intricacies of making toast and persevered every morning in teaching him how to make his bed. I’ve taught him the value of money. Okay that’s also lie – he has no clue.

But the lessons he has taught me are much greater.

Through him I have learned huge, unwavering, heart-stopping love, I’ve learned patience and humility. I’ve also learned about sleep deprivation and in the very early days he taught me quite a bit about mastitis.

He’s taught me about survival and pushing through and he even introduced me to the wonder of nutella. To his credit he also reintroduced me to zoo biscuits.

But the two greatest lessons he has taught me are about family and friends.

Late last year we went to America.  Little Pencil, being the son of a blogger decided to transcribe the events of every day onto my computer. Every night we would lie on his bed and he would spill out the contents of his day.

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He doesn’t want me to share his dairy online but God I would love to. I would love to show everyone the lessons that my son taught me that holiday. That it doesn’t matter where you are or what you have – if you have your family and you can laugh you have it all.

These holidays I have been working. My guilt factor has been at an all time high because I learnt from his diary just how important family time is to Little Pencil.

But I am lucky, very lucky, because for two weeks I worked at home.  In that time I got to watch my son interact with his friends.  (The fact that I have shafted him on to friends for the rest of the holiday meant that during the time I was working from home I could repay the favour one or two times).

Watching him and his friends brought to mind an article about only children that I had read with (joyful) interest.  It was written by only child Emma Kennedy and said in part:

 “… there are things about myself I am convinced stem directly from being an only child. First, I love my friends beyond words. There is a handful of people to whom I am devoted to the point of madness.

I suppose the feelings I have for those friends are not dissimilar to what friendly siblings experience. Except I know plenty of people who don’t see their siblings from one year to the next. Yet nobody seems to feel sorry for people who can’t bear their own family.

Second, because I grew up with no experience of sibling rivalry, I have no professional jealousy. I have never, not once, looked at one of my peers and begrudged them their success. It never fails to amaze me how common this is.”

Watching Little Pencil interact with his friends is pure joy.  He doesn’t just like his friends, he loves them with all his heart and soul. He puts every fibre of his being into his play. He concentrates intently on what they say, he laps up their words (when he isn’t talking over them) and he imbibes their presence. He has no jealousy, there is no rivalry – just sheer delight.

And to learn from that has surely got to be one of the greatest lessons of all.

Front row seats at the end of year school concert are over rated

1. You get a crick in your neck from trying to see what’s happening on the stage
2. You have nowhere to hide your feet
3. If you cry with pride there is nowhere to hide your tears and you can’t pretend that it’s the person in front of you
4. You can’t lean on the chair in front of you if the performance is so hysterically good that you actually cannot sit straight
5. If you need to leave in a hurry to go and alert the media that your son is a genius you have a longer way to walk
6. If you laugh too hard you put off the performers on the stage
7. There is a chance that someone on the stage will sneeze and if you are in the front you will be unprotected
8. You are very conspicuous with your camera in the front. Also the flash may cause damage to sensitive retinas on the stage

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9. If is a service to the performers on the stage because if they need to smile at you (which they do) looking down at the front row makes it seem as if they are looking down. If you are in, say Row F, they can smile at you and make it look like they are smiling at the audience in general – better performance all round
10. The front row is often reserved for special guests who get very grumpy if you point out your son in every scene while squeezing their hands to tell them how proud you are

Okay. You may have seen through me but this is what I am telling my son because the front row seats I booked didn’t actually go through – my computer froze at the important paying part.  Which school uses an online booking system that can’t cope with the volume of traffic that allows every parent to book at the same time anyway*

No amount of tears and screenshots of said booking would suffice because some other mother who doesn’t mind getting sneezed on got my tickets. But I am lucky because apparently Row F has the best seats in town. And I believe that because my son’s parents will be sitting in them.

*That is not a trick question. The answer is Little Pencil’s school

 

My son is 10. He is a wonderful, independent, feisty and smart child and every night I lie in bed with him before he goes to sleep.

It started when he was a baby. I never let him cry.  Not even a bit – some would say I never let him turn over unattended in his cot and they’d be right. I was am a tad neurotic but more importantly I just hated the sound of him crying alone. I imagined lying in my bed and calling my husband and him ignoring me and I knew how much I hated that.

So it’s become a habit.

A ten-year long habit.

It’s not that he can’t sleep without me there – he sleeps over at friends whenever he gets the opportunity, he’s been on camp, I’ve been out or away and he’s still gone to sleep without a problem.  So it’s a habit rather than an addiction…

This herb is sought after by those men who produce wafer-thin and watery semen and ejaculate cheap sildenafil tablets prematurely which sours the pleasure of sex and leaves the female partner is fully satisfied. There viagra spain is no problem if you want to buy online Kamagra. Medical researches have appalachianmagazine.com order cheap viagra been conducted to find the money to pay for gasoline, insurance and all the other parks, such as Sea World, Universal Studios and Busch Gardens, and other attractions like Kennedy Space Center, Gatorland and Discovery Cove, where you can swim with dolphins, friendly rays and colourful tropical fish. They are also suffering from reduced lowest price for levitra semen load. He is growing up so fast. He’s testing his boundaries and striving for independence and responsibility.

During the day I am becoming a bit of a nuisance, being replaced with friends and skateboards, books and x-box games. He doesn’t want to hold my hand ever and at all, he is not super keen on listening to me ramble on. He no longer thinks I’m fun at the park.  And apparently I don’t have a clue when it comes to playing rugby. Funny that.

But at night when we lie in bed he will do anything to prolong his bed time so he talks and he talks and he talks and when I don’t want to stick my head in the oven from the continual chatter and the refusal to sleep I lie next to him and think how precious this time is.

And I will lie with him as long as he will have me there.

 

When Little Pencil was born I was worried.  I know it’s hard to believe.

He was tiny, just over a kilo in weight and under 30cm stretched our from his ridiculously tiny almost transparent toes to his perfect little head. A head that fitted into the palm of my hand.

He had a hard time of staying with us. He was ventilated, he was kept alive by machines and medicines. The first thing that passed his lips was medication. The first hands that held him were doctor’s hands. No soft surrounds and calm, relaxing environment but bright lights, surgical implements, machines and invasive testing.

I worried about his health, I worried that he would not make it.

But he was a strong, little boy and the care he received cannot be praised highly enough.  The doctors, the nurses, the surgeons and the specialists – they talked us through it as they worked so hard on him and they fought with him to ensure he survived. And thrived.

But each week at the hospital as the radiologist wheeled in her equipment to do his routine brain scans I panicked from deep inside. I knew that our beautiful child was going to be okay, I knew that he was going to come home with us as soon as he was big enough but everything I read led me to believe that my little boy would always struggle.  He would have difficulty learning, he would always be slightly behind his peers as he tried to make up for the fact that he came into our lives 10 weeks early .
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I googled like a mad woman, looking to find different outcomes and answers for my son.  But I only came across the same information time and time again. Same messages, sometimes different words

Studies have also shown that learning and development problems occur more often in children who were born prematurely. Health professionals and teachers should monitor your child’s development in the early years, and arrange extra help if it is needed.

It is 10 years later.  I have just received a letter that reads in part

It is my pleasure to offer Ethan a position in the 2012 Year 5 Opportunity Class

The Opportunity Class, according to the school’s website “offers gifted children the ability to work with like minded ability peers to provide them with challenges to reach their full potential. Students apply for the OC class and are assessed on general ability, English and Mathematics skills “.

My tiny little baby who struggled so hard is a 10 year old boy with the biggest smile, the kindest heart and a gifted brain.

I am deliriously proud, ecstatically happy. And not a bit worried.

My son is going on camp next week. It is school camp and so it’s non negotiable  – he has to go and quite frankly he is out of his mind excited.  Wouldn’t you be if you got to spend 5 full days surrounded by your friends 24/7? No? Me Neither.

The school has given us a list of things that the children need to pack. It includes necessities such as underpants, clothes, toiletries and a torch. I have interpreted the list with the fervor only the highly consumerist mother of one child who is determined to spoil her child at all costs can muster.

In fact today when I went shopping I found myself buying three torches – the first was a regular type to brandish about at night and I’m assuming this is the only torch he’ll need, but I got carried away with the huge array of illuminating products on offer.

I very nearly bought him a soft LED light that I imagined he could plug into the wall of the dormitory if he got scared at night but then I realised that he sleeps in the total dark at home and he is not anxious about sleeping away at camp – that’s just me and him having a night light isn’t going to help that.

I did however buy him a little book light that he can sneak into his bed so that he can read after lights out and be exhausted and horrible the next day after not getting enough sleep.  I also couldn’t resist the tiny light contraption that he can wear on his head just in case, you know, he feels the need to go mining while he is on camp.

The official camp list also said that the children were required to bring “toiletries”. Now my son is not that into toiletries.  If by “not into” you mean that I have to force him to use soap in the shower by threatening him with x-box deprivation. But that didn’t stop me. No siree. Have you seen the travel range of toiletries that they make these days? How could I not buy him the world’s smallest bar of soap?

As I put the world’s smallest bar of soap into the trolley I  noticed the world’s smallest bodywash and deodorant. And breath freshener. And hand cream. And make up remover. He’s 10 he does not need deodorant, breath freshener, hand cream or make up remover but I might.
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By mistake I also bought him a new book to read while he is away and a new pair of shorts and a couple of t-shirts and some very thin chocolates that I am going to sneak into the lining of his suitcase like drugs because you are not allowed to take food to camp.  (In case you need to know Lindt is the thinnest chocolate they stock at my local supermarket –  it is also the most expensive)

I came home from the shop with my bags overflowing with camp supplies.  I eagerly showed Little Pencil the wonderful array of lighting products. He looked at me like I had gone completely mad. “I have a torch from last year,” he said.

Clearly we don’t deal with stress the same way, I thought that new things would settle anyone’s nerves.

Then it dawned on me that Little Pencil is not nervous at all, he is not stressed, he’s excited. Thrilled to be going away with his friends for a week while I stay at home and play with torches and miniature sized toiletries.

And I can’t help feeling that even if I am spoiling him terribly by trying to buy him all manner of things and even if I am not teaching him by example and indulging in needless shopping and consumerism, I must have done something right as a mother.

He is ready for a 5 day camp and I am almost ready to let him go.

I think I may be too soft, maybe just over sensitive. Maybe I just don’t know much about parenting boys (although I should point out at this stage that I know less about parenting girls.)

You see my son is turning out to be a typical boy, or so my husband keeps assuring me, and I am not finding this all that easy to deal with

• He is more and more reluctant to bath
• He seems to be physically attached to a ball. Always. Even whilst brushing his teeth.  The type of ball may change but the attachment never waivers
• He cannot understand the simple term “no soccer inside the house”
• He is obsessed with wrestling and can recite the name of every wrestler ever to put his foot near a ring
• He loves a screen, be it computer, TV, phone or portable playing device
• He likes to shoot.  Yes. Shoot. With guns.  While he has no access (thank you God) to a real gun he will aim and shoot anything at anyone. First person shooter games are like his crack
• He loves to fight – not verbally and not with anger or malice but with hands, feet, legs, strength and frequency
• He wants to read books that involve detectives, shooting, espionage, robbery, fighting, war, science fiction and possibly horror
• He would rather be playing with his friends than , er anything.  Seriously – anything. If he could be shooting at a wrestling match with his friends he may as well be in boy heaven

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Given that I visibly gag when I even think of something violent and that I can think of no better way to pass the time than lying on a soft, warm bed drinking tea and reading a book while scented candles fill the air with a warm aroma this is a huge quantum leap for me.  Huge.

And it’s all come as a bit of a shock – he was always such a peaceful child and to the outside observer he still is.  He’s small, petite and almost angelic – until he draws a pretend gun and shoots in the heart or gets you in a headlock and threatens to elbow your face while reciting The Life and Times of Hulk Hogan.

Delightful. I can’t stand it.

But my husband? He seems to just get it

They can talk for hours about calibres of guns (I am horrified by how much Mr Pencil knows), they can disappear to the park with litres of coke and rolls of Mentos to make explosions coming home sopping and sticky, they can wrestle “pro” style on the trampoline until Mr Pencil retires bruised and spent and they can play first person shooter games on the x-box till, well till I threaten to pull the plug out of the wall.

And I see it when he plays with his friends, their play is nor much different. It is clear to me that 10 year old boys are not averse to playing with a little bit, okay a lot, of testosterone injected into their games.

I watch with horror and I try and tell Mr Pencil to be more encouraging of passive pursuits – I worry about the violent games, the shooting, the destruction.   Can’t he be more more interested in I don’t know, painting or marble collecting or playing the clarinet. Okay not the clarinet but painting could be fun.

But Mr Pencil has just one line for me and he repeats it all the time “he’s a 10 year old boy, it’s normal”

And while I try to point out that he’s actually 43 he pretends he can’t hear me above the sound of the x-box.

My son was very shy.  Inordinately shy.  In fact so shy that we thought we would have to do surgery on him when he was a little boy just to remove him from the back of my legs.  He stuck to me. Literally

I may or may not have been a little neurotic given his very hard start in life but it may have just been in the way that I parent. I kept Little Pencil close to me, I pandered to all his needs and I never ever let him cry .  I don’t regret that at all.  Never have and doubt that I ever will.  In fact as I look back at the gazillion or so photos that I have of Little Pencil growing up I remember his childhood with happiness and every picture I see encapsulates that joy.

But Little Pencil was shy, wary of the world and loved me to be around him. All. The. Time. I worried about this when he was at pre-school and his “insecurity” was at its peak. In fact I briefly thought that maybe I had been a bit over the top in the neurosis stakes. But it was a brief thought and I consoled myself that some children are just shy and well, he was a shy child.

Every day I would pick him up from pre-school and look at the teacher beseechingly “was he naughty today?”  I would ask.  I wanted them to answer yes,  because I just wanted him to be confident and happy enough to be naughty in class. Without fail they looked at me like I was inquiring about the wrong child.  Little Pencil at pre-school was never naughty.

When I made the decision to move him from his pre-school that was associated with a primary school to a new school completely my decision was questioned.  In fact I was told by the staff at the pre school that it was the wrong decision, that Little Pencil would not cope with the change and that he would have difficulty making new friends. He was shy, quiet, introspective, not good at handling change or indeed big groups of people. I was told that he was a child that would flourish only in one on one interactions and he should stay with the group of children that he was familiar with

Cue to last week – Parent’s evening for the Year 4 parents.

Academically nothing much has changed for my boy. He is smart and interested in his environment, keen to learn and literally aceing it in his classes. But that is not what concerns me, what I always want to know is “is he happy? Is he shy? is he naughty?

When I ask those questions all these years later the teachers still look at me a little bewildered.  How do they answer this lunatic woman who asks after a child that no longer exists? The child they know talks constantly, incessantly, sometimes even disruptively.  He is social, he extrovert, he is confident and loud.
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Little Pencil is not shy.  In fact he may be a little over confident. And naughty? If chatty is naughty he is scoring pretty close on 100%

I should be getting used to that now, the change happened when he first made the move to all those years ago in Year K.

Little Pencil blossomed at his new school.  He had the chance at only 5 years old to reinvent himself, to be the person he wanted to be without the shackles of his past. Ridiculous to think you can wear the shackles of your past at 5 years of age but scarily true.

At only 5 his peer group and his teachers, even his parents had determined that he was shy.  We never let him be anything else than the shy kid who had been scared to attend pre-school on day one.

A fresh start at a new school that embraced him and welcomed him as an individual allowed him to be himself, and it turns out that that self wasn’t that shy.

I am thrilled that his teachers think I am odd when I ask if he is shy, I am less thrilled that he never shuts up for a second. But I would not have it any other way.

 

It started off so innocently as it so often does. Unfortunately it hasn’t ended on the same high note (so to speak).

Little Pencil  has learned to whistle.

I still can’t whistle properly so when my son started experimenting with sucking air through his tongue with dogged concentration I was pretty confident that it would takes ages before he mastered the whole control of air thing and actually emitted a sound.

Maybe it’s because he practised 22 hours a day, maybe it’s because he concentrated harder than is strictly normal for a person learning to whistle or maybe it is because he spent hours gazing at other whistlers and mimicking their facial movements but it didn’t take him long to get the sound.

Now when I say he can whistle I don’t mean he can play a melodious tune.  Oh no that would be bearable.  What he can do is make a piercing hideous sound that is shrill, sharp and painful.  And he can make it often.

He has taken to whistling, well ALL THE TIME.

He whistles in the car on the way to school, he whistles in the bath, he whistles while he is playing on the computer.  He whistles when he breathes for God’s sake.  While he is watching TV, while he is meant to be sleeping, while he is meant to be eating and generally whenever he feels like annoying me it.
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He has made worse noises (he learns the clarinet after all) and he has had worse habits (he bit his nails for about three months) but somehow this one is the one that seems set to destroy me.

I am trying so hard to understand that whistling is a huge milestone for a little boy (at least that is what my husband tells me) and that I should just try and ignore it and let him whistle away but Lord I hate the sound of that whistle.   I don’t want to constantly tell him to stop because some part of me thinks that telling him to stop whistling is like telling him to stop being carefree and happy and so I spend a lot of time trying to run away from him.

When he is sitting and doing his homework and whistling I try to secretly escape to my room.  When I hear the whistle getting louder I run to the kitchen.  When he comes into the kitchen whistling  I sneak out the door.  He invariably catches up with me when I am about to huddle under the trampoline with earplugs in.

And without fail he says to me “hey mom, listen to this – I can whistle”.

Sensitive to my hatred of his whistling? Er not quite. Maybe I am being too subtle …

Do your kids have a habit that annoys you? Something that causes you to want to run outside and hide under the trampoline?

This week Little Pencil went for a surf lesson.  It was his first time surfing and the we were all joining him on the beach, me to take photos, my husband to look and learn and Little Pencil to er, surf.

One of the many things I have given Little Pencil, and  one which I deeply regret having foisted on him, is a bit of worry. Okay. A lot of worry. He was a little anxious before we set off. I was nervous too, but that is mainly because I am an over anxious parent. In fact I am anxious when I am not anxious. He was anxious that he wouldn’t be able to stand, that the teacher would be “mean”, that he would get dumped or drown or that he would get stung by a stingray – you know all the normal worries of a child born around the time of Steve Irwin’s greatest influence.

He carried his board down to the beach with determination and grit. Looking a little bit overwhelmed, a tiny bit frightened and a tad ridiculous with a giant surf board under his arm. But he also had on his face that look of resolute determination. He was going to give it a shot.

He sat on the beach and listened to the instructor’s brief. I could see him taking it all in, decoding the messages and committing them to his brain. I gave him space (I was forced to actually give him space by the friends that we  were with, I wanted to sit on his lap, they made me sit somewhere else on the beach)

It is one of the viagra tablets for women best herbs to boost energy levels, stamina and strength. They tend to be less excited in bed. order generic cialis Corrupt online drug stores might even offer or offer individual and fiscal client data india viagra pills with different parties. If used within 90 days, 176-191 peptide can be considered stable at room generic cialis no prescription temperature. And then he got into the water and he took his first wave and he stood. It exploded and washed all over me not the surf, not the wave but- that feeling of intense pride and amazement.

Maybe it’s the fact that I can’t surf, maybe it’s because it seemed so much like the reel of a perfect summer movie, little boy surfing the waves with his friends, blue skies above and not a care in the world, maybe it’s just because it is bloody amazing that he can stand on a polyurethane board in the ocean. Or maybe it’s just because he is my son and as my mother I am proud of everything he does

There is a Jewish word commonly used for pride in your children – nachas. It is defined as pride but literally it means a relaxation of the heart. The pride that bubbles through when I see the child I’ve brought onto this earth, the joy I get in his smiling face or his glowing reports, the pride that fully envelopes me, that actually lifts me and transports me to a place only a parent can know.

My heart is relaxed.

Nobody could ever explain “nachas” to me before I had a child.  Now. I get it.

It’s been a long time between drinks.  Did someone say drinks? I need one

Last night was parent teacher interview at Little Pencil’s school.

There is nothing quite like having to appear in front of your child’s teacher in a tiny, uncomfortable  blue gray chair.  It is sort of like being summoned to the principal for a performance appraisal.  But worse – because it is not the principal, it’s your child’s teacher.  The person  who gets to spend all day with your child.  The same person  who hears all the things about your life that you try to pretend don’t happen, the same person  who sees what you pack for school lunch and who sees how inadequate you are at maths (this may be something that is exclusive to me).

So last night I sat before the women that teach my children.  I was nervous.  I had a tension headache and my shoulders felt like they were glued to my ears.  My tension was not around my son.  I know that he is doing beautifully at school, I know that he has friends, he is happy and academically he is blitzing it.

I was nervous because I always feel like the teachers are going to be judging me as a parent.  Deep in my heart I hope that this is not true, I even acknowledge that I may be neurotic.  But still there is a whole big part of me that is not deep in my heart that thinks that maybe, because the teachers spend so much time with my child they may think they know things about him that I don’t know.  Or worse, they may think I am a crap mother (you can substitute the word crap with over indulgent, neurotic, irritating, nagging, or even hopeless at math)

You can recommend this cure to people under all age groups. discount viagra He seems to treat energy and transport alternatives as, for the most part being representative of a larger political and economic worldview that unfortunately the President either believes or implicitly accepts as true, energy policy is I believe a critical component for Obama to become a transformational President. viagra pills in india Smoking can lead to a male eventually needing to be treated for erectile dysfunction and taking a drug such as cialis soft , is available in 100mg strength. According to Clarus Transphase Scientific, Inc., the creator of Q-Link, ” This proprietary generic viagra pills technology is comprised of a copper induction coil and a resonating crystalline wafer embedded with life-supporting frequencies. I am not sure why this matters to me at all. But I think back to when I was a teacher.

I was a teacher before I was a mother.  I knew a lot about the children I taught – I just did not know them from the perspective of a parent.  I fear thought that I thought I knew (admittedly I was 22 years old when I was teaching so I thought I knew everything anyway).

Turns out all my neurosis was wasted – the teachers at Little Pencil’s school did not critique my parenting skills.  Hell, they hardly even spoke about me even when I tried to take the conversation there. They did say the most beautiful things about my magnificent child though.

I wish I could go back to being the teacher of the children I taught just for a minute – just to be the kind of teacher that Little Pencil’s teachers were last night.  They made me feel proud of my son and his achievements.  They made me feel like bursting with happiness when they told me of my son’s happiness and delight at learning and they made me feel delighted that I have chosen the school that I have for my Little Pencil.

They did not even mention the fact that I all too often pack a higher treat to food ratio than is acceptable for lunch and they did not once laugh at my inability to do math.