Mothering Sunday & Fraudulent Flowers

These are the flowers that we all pretended today my 2 year old purchased for his darling mama. Of course when I tried to persuade him to hand them over he elected instead to crush a number of the stems in his hot little fist while laughing maniacally in my face. Which is rather what I feel the rural Sussex florist was doing behind my back when she added £10 to the price, having elicited from me that I was from London, and a further £10 penalty for being a barrister.

I can never really tell where Mothering Sunday falls in the pecking order of Christmas, Valentine's Day, birthday, wedding anniversary, first date, first time we went to Waitrose together of essential dates that any sensible husband remembers if he knows what's good for him. All I know is that it takes a braver man than me to find out what the consequences are of ignoring it.

The thing is, I know what my wife would prefer to a bunch of flowers, howsoever fragrant; it is sleep, a Celine handbag and never having to change a nappy again: in that order. You might think that handbag is crazy expensive but it is nothing compared to paying for live in childcare.

The problem with 2 year olds, and yes I know there is more than one, is that trying to get them on board with the whole Mothers' Day thing is an exercise in futility. Next year I'm going to skip the whole cold, rubber eggs in bed thing and take him straight to fixing her a dry gin Martini when she walks through the door at the end of the day, but for now, it's on me.

And I must confess that this evokes in me a confused feeling. Because as I bashfully present bouquet and card insisting she is the world's best mum I can't help remembering the many, many occasions on which she has tersely reminded me: I'm not your mother, you know.

Childcare - child cares

A close friend and I were talking about children and competence and he said that he eventually felt his son was becoming competent when, finally, he could clip in his own seatbelt. Of such little things are the most maddening parts of parenting made. It is easier for a rich man to pass into the Kingdom of Heaven than it is to strap in a toddler mid-meltdown.

Every parent will have their own personal bugbear about the things that their children can not do. In a strange way it is easiest when they are a newborn because they literally can't do anything. Even, in the case of many babies, suckle. So steeled are new parents for their  baby's incompetence that they will often check they are still breathing.

As the months pass and such feats as not needing the head supported, not needing to be burped and not needing to be fed five million times in the night are achieved it can feel that real progress to basic competence is being made. Then they turn two.  The problem with the toddler years is that development continues but to the soundtrack of regularly random screaming which tends to obscure the progress. Recently I had to carry my child out of Waitrose like a rugby ball tucked under my arm so close were the security guards coming to calling the police or social services or both.

Nonetheless, slowly but surely, skills are being learnt and the inching towards independence continues. Of course, until recently, you would be well within your rights to expect your child to get a job at 16 but as decades have been added at the other end of life there has been a begrudging acceptance that children should be permitted a little more dependence before they take flight. Although living with your mum at 40 is still definitely not OK.

What I find interesting is the concept of catching up with your parents. Eventually one day you're on a level with them. Your competence at life matches theirs.  This is a hallowed time that in many families goes unnoticed but for a period, which may be years or decades, the parent/child dynamic take second place to mutually respectful and beneficial adult dialogue.

Of course if the slights or wounds of childhood are allowed to linger this time may never come, equally if a parent refuses to acknowledge the independence and autonomy of their child they will never look at them eye to eye.

Eventually the circle of life dictates that the child's competence will surpass the parent's. At this point the child has to make a choice, either consciously or unconsciously. If the child's incompetence was met with love and care the chances are the child will reciprocate that in turn. The lessons learned in childhood reach their fullest fruition decades later. Conversely poor parenting at the start is likely to lead to poor care at the end.

As the saying goes; what goes around comes around. Food for thought for parents of any age.

The ABC of class for children

I had a nanny. A few in fact. One was a Dutch harpist and she used to practise outside my bedroom door as I went to sleep; I soon learned that this was not normal. A later nanny was keen to ensure I minded my manners and was quick to upbraid me: 'Don't say what, say pardon'. Confusingly, however, my mother was just as swift to insist: 'Don't say pardon, say what'. And thus it was, in my tenderest years, that I was introduced to class consciousness.

As a child grows it becomes aware of groups around it. A classic trope of the American high school genre is the sorting of the student body into well established cliques: the jocks, the stoners, the nerds, the thespians, and, of course, the princesses. This selection occurs by a process of self-identification but also by a form of group sifting and enforcement.

English schools don't tend to replicate these groupings. They do however provide a constantly renewing supply for a uniquely English form of categorisation namely the class system. The branding of an English education will dictate, to a very significant extent, what tribe you belong to and what tribe you are accepted by. 

'P'olitics as an activity is receding ever faster from most people's lives 'p'olitics has never seemed more accessible and urgent. The opening paragraph readily betrays the political tribe of my upbringing. However it doesn't take long working in the criminal courts to find one's political steering wheel turning sharply to the left.

For a time I was a member of the Labour Party before it succumbed to its current orgy of self-identification. In recent years I have pinned my colours to the mast of the Women's Equality Party. Some deride supporting what is condescendingly referred to as a protest party on the basis that split votes will keep Labour out of power.

However until Labour abandons its obsession with symbols and its mythology at the expense of communicating its values it will, in fact, be the protest party. A core article of faith for many tribal Labour supporters is hatred of the Tories. I will never subscribe to compulsory demonisation of an opposition party because politics and the exercise of power has to be dictated by pragmatism not ideological purity.

In the desert of talent and integrity that is the current Parliament there are a few, sadly vanishingly few, politicians that are prepared to distance themselves from 'my party right or wrong'. Jess Phillips is one such politician. The frenzy with which she has been accused of class betrayal for wearing 'nice' clothes and for having a professional mother is perhaps a reflection of how many on the left are threatened by a plain talking woman ready to communicate far beyond tribal Labour.  They would do well to encourage her because, in or out of the party, she won't be stopping any time soon.

Meanwhile I need to get back to giving my son his tea/supper/dinner.

Bad to the Bone - Who's to Blame?

There are many child rearing conventions that you breach at your social peril but which also do not withstand one minute’s scrutiny. High on the list is what I call performative discipline. A child of two is not a creature of reason and yet when in the playground it floors another youngster running pell-mell for the slide we have to go through the charade of explaining to it why this is unkind and wrong. Even to the extent of getting it to lisp 'sorry' the meaning of which is as significant to it as 'blancmange'.

This is not done for your child’s benefit nor even that of the other child. Instead this is for the consumption of the other child’s parents. And yet somehow when a child of 10 behaves in a completely horrid way how rarely does one see such public admonitions from the parent. The truth is when a child of 2 is a terror that is because they are a child of 2 and prince or pauper nothing will change that.  When they are 10 they are no longer doli incapax and capable, in England at least, of forming a criminal intent.

1, 2 add a few and suddenly the bad behaviour has a cause and that cause is you, or at least that is the assumption when children’s behaviour tips over the edge of criminality. In the early years of my day job as a barrister I spent a lot of time practising in the Youth Court. The Youth Court is one of the private/secret places in society. You’re not allowed in unless you’re a party to the case. The perfectly sensible rationale is that when children and the Criminal Justice System come into contact this should not be done in the glare of the public eye.

However if you subscribe to the maxim that it takes a village to raise a child you might say that it absolutely should take place in the public eye so that the local community can bear witness to what has gone wrong with the child and the families involved. And a child committing a criminal offence must, we assume, come from a family gone wrong.

Jihadi brides and unfathomable child killing has been much in the press recently and reading articles about the children involved leads one to wonder what was happening in their homes and upbringing that brought this about. But what if the answer is not drink, drugs, domestic violence and family strife. What if within those homes are loving and attentive parents asking themselves precisely the same questions but with an urgency we could never imagine?

In one of my first posts I wrote about how the really interesting milestones of childhood almost never get written about or remarked upon. One of those was noticing the first time your child is naughty. Not when they were infuriating or maddening through unreasoning impulse but the first time they deliberately did something that they knew was forbidden, simply to vex and annoy.

There is the first glimmer of a child's agency that leads one day to a junior barrister mitigating on behalf of a mother being prosecuted for failing to ensure that her 15 year old, the size of a man, is attending school as required by law. It is bizarre that practice in the Youth Court is largely undertaken by the youngest and most junior barristers because it is there that the causes of criminality are most immediate and the prospects of doing something about it are the highest.

When children commit crime through nurture it is incumbent upon all of us as members of society to take account and step in to lend assistance to ensure that child is protected. If children are committing crime through nature, something many deny exists with the idea of being ‘born bad’ treated as anathema, that needs to be established at the earliest possible juncture to ensure that other children are protected.

In the mean time I recommend an indifferent disregard to all anti-social behaviour by your toddler in the playground and if other parents complain remind them that the Good Book enjoins us to forgive them for they know not what they do.