I have three kids, three boys (cue a cacophony of noise along the lines of “Three boys!? Oh I don’t know how you do it!”).
I love those three boys more than life itself. They are the reason I work all the hours god sends. The reason I can pull myself out of bed on my saddest days. The reason I have hope and excitement and enthusiasm about all the days that lie ahead of me.
You get the picture; I adore them. But sometimes… and by sometimes I mean on a daily basis… I think they are absolutely awful.
It’s true.
I can’t bear a day where I don’t get to kiss them, hug them, inhale their (quite musty) boy smell. We are very connected and close… But I am not one of those parents who reaches the end of the school summer break and feels tearful that their kids are going back to school. I’m not one of those parents who gets their phone out constantly on a girls night out to show photos of my kids. I’m not one of those parents who can’t listen to a single anecdote without ‘bettering it’ with a story of something my kid has done.
My soon to be 14 year old who can make my heart melt with a single half-smile, who makes me so proud when I speak to his teachers and friends’ parents; all of them waxing lyrical about how funny and friendly and polite he is. That same child can also be so unbelievably cruel to his middle brother that it disgusts me.
My 11 year old, who makes my eyes fill up when I see just how beautifully kind he is. Always including people, always making friends with the kid on the periphery, who seems a little anxious or odd. That same child can (and does) drive me to the brink of insanity with the absolute filth he is happy to live in. The things that might be growing in his bedroom don’t bear thinking about.
My seven year old, who everyone assumes is my favourite child (he’s not, he’s just the one who is by far the nicest to me), who tells me a minimum of twenty times a day that he loves me so much he could burst, that I’m the kindest Mam in the world, that he would marry me if he could; who writes me love letters and poems and pictures and runs out of school thrusting them at me with the tightest hugs imaginable. That same child can have me screaming into a pillow because of his incessant use of the words willy, bum, poo, boobs… almost always delivered at full volume in a supermarket. When oh when will this toilet/genital based humour phase end?
So, I suppose the question we need to ask here is, ‘Why do they think it’s fine to be such absolute self-centred immature little… (insert your swearword of choice here) around me?’
And the answer is both adorable and annoying as hell.
They think it’s fine to behave like that around me because I am their safe space. I am the home of unconditional love for them. I know this to be true because I’ve been told it by not one, not two, but three psychologist friends (I collect them like some women collect earrings).
I have raised three securely attached young boys who know how to behave around other children, adults, elders; in a variety of formal and informal settings. Their manners are lovely, their behaviour in school and at the million weekly sports activities they attend, is impeccable.
I am honoured apparently. Seriously, that’s what one of the aforementioned psychologist friends told me. Honoured that out of everyone in the world, my child knows I am the one person who will see them at their worst and still cherish them.
And it’s true. I will love, cherish and protect those boys with every breath. But unconditional love doesn’t always translate to unconditional like, does it? Sometimes I’m so highly irritated by one, both or all of them that I have to take myself away from them. Whether that’s heading out for a walk or a drive, or just firmly closing my bedroom door and screaming through it that they just need to LEAVE ME ALONE.
My frustration at them never lasts long and is usually swiftly followed by guilt. They’re only kids, I tell myself. This is your fault anyway because you left their Dad and broke up their family.
That’s my go-to guilty accusation; fired at myself point blank. But in my more rational moments I know that’s actually not true.
They’re acting like morons because they’re children. They would’ve acted like morons had I not got divorced; possibly even moreso. It’s the privilege of being a child isn’t it? We probably have 18 years where we can get away with being selfish, reactionary and immature… and they’re just embracing that, right? In their safe space: me.
What I’ve found interesting since my kids have gotten to know, and love, my new partner, is seeing their (at times) incredibly irritating behaviour through his eyes.
I take my hat off to anyone who introduces their kids to a partner who is childless. Every day I thank the Lord that my fella has had his own kids and seen it all before. Their fighting and name-calling and bareback wrestling is all water off a duck’s back to him.
I tell him regularly that he’s allowed to think they’re awful from time to time, because I definitely do.
He rolls his eyes and tells me they’re not awful. They’re kids. And they’re perfect. And he’s right.
They’re perfectly imperfect in every way.
// Sarah Lawton
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