Clock watching and Kids

Parenting is quite often thinking to yourself ‘Nobody told me to expect that’ and then realising in fact absolutely everybody told you to expect that. Somewhere close to the top of the list is being told you will have no time to yourself. The inability to apprehend what this will actually mean is demonstrated by people who say to themselves that they can’t wait for the baby to be born so they can finally get a break from work, finally sort out the house renovations or, most ludicrously, finally write their book. 

The basic and hard reality is that when a baby arrives a completely new clock will start in your life and that clock tells baby time. It is not a clock you can ignore or wish away. And the secret to successful parenting is getting your clock to synchronise with that clock as much as possible and for as long as possible. 

First time parents that are fortunate enough to enjoy new baby bliss often do so because they advertently or inadvertently surrender totally to the baby clock and they do so gladly. For the rest there is the shocking realisation that their clock, and in particular their body clock, is coming under attack and they are completely defenceless. ‘Just sleep when the baby sleeps.’ LOL! 

The good news, if you find babies difficult, is they don’t remain babies forever. The bad news is that just when you’ve worked out how to ride the bicycle you quickly discover you have to fly a fighter jet. Baby time becomes toddler time becomes school time. 

The total sublimation of the self in the early days and weeks is, in some respects, actually the easiest time for parenting because there is something completely unequivocal about the totality of attending to a newborn’s needs. You simply can’t pretend that you can juggle your needs, far, far less your wants, with theirs. 

The complication begins and then accelerates like a chain reaction when you try and in fact need to attend to your clock. Parenting is very expensive. Parental leave is very short. Paying the bills inevitably means not paying your child attention. And there are very, very few parents that don’t feel the pain of that compromise like a lance in the side. 

I’m soon to have two of school age. That brings the benefit of predictability to the clocks. For part of every weekday their clocks are completely known. If it wasn’t for my calamitously chosen profession where on Monday I might be in Maidstone and on Tuesday in Taunton, so too would mine. [As an aside when you have children I could not more strongly encourage you to have a 9-5 job, and by 9-5 I really mean 9.30-2.30]. 

Some parents hanker almost immediately after birth for a rigid demarcation between their clocks and the baby’s clock. Hence sleep training just months in and nursery before 1. Other parents really struggle with the separation of the clocks once merged, staying at home 24/7 with their child all the way up to their first day in Reception, hence weeping at the school gates and massively premature Empty Nest Syndrome. 

For everyone else there is gradual extrication and trying and sometimes failing to stop the clocks from clashing. Sick childminders, sick children, school strikes all punctuate early parenting with drop everything moments; easier said than done when you’re in the middle of a speech in Court 1 of the Old Bailey. It hardly needs saying that the more one avoids the clocks clashing the easier and more enjoyable parenting becomes. And the real enjoyment comes in finding common ground when the clocks synchronise. While my children were still toddlers I found the one activity that was absolutely guaranteed to bring mutual gladness was trampolining. Childcare is not a chore when you’re having fun. 

It is obviously amazing when your children genuinely share your passions and interests, rather than affect to through filial devotion, but what is really magical is coming to enjoy theirs in return. Children provide a constant opportunity to see the world with new eyes or with eyes you foolishly closed long ago. 

If you’re involved in partnered parenting the position is hugely more complicated. You’re not balancing two clocks you’re balancing a wall of them, like the clocks on the wall at NASA. You have your clock, you have your child’s clock, you have your partner’s clock. Those clocks will synchronise and clash in many permutations. There is your time, there is your partner’s time, there is your child’s time, there is your time with your child’s time, there is your partner’s time with your child’s time, there is your and your partner’s time with your child’s time and (if you want any chance of your relationship surviving) there is your time with your partner’s time. That is a lot of spinning plates, or dials if we’re sticking with the clock analogy. Single parents bear a very, very heavy burden but managing and negotiating that many concurrently running clocks is not one of them, although I imagine it is only a very small mercy. 

Something that requires my constant improvement and effort is not treating my child’s clock as mine. Time spent together is best spent doing things enjoyed together. When I was a child my sister and I spent most holidays and many weekends visiting almost every National Trust property and historic house in the land. I attach no blame to my father for that, there’s not a day that goes by when I don’t need to distinguish an Ionic capital from a Corinthian, but Disneyland exists for a reason. 

The only warning I can really urge upon you is never ignore your child’s clock; as Harry Chapin wrote and Ugly Kid Joe made Millennial: 

“When you comin’ home, Dad 

I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then 

You know we’ll have a good time then.” 

There is only now: never then.

Emotional Peaks & Troughs

I saw a question posed recently on Twitter asking whether you would prefer to live the rest of your life with double your emotional range or half of it. The highs yet more Olympian or the yawning chasms rendered gentle dips? 

If you’re able or willing to live your life on an emotional even keel it obviously wouldn’t make much difference if the range available to you was much bigger or smaller. But for those condemned to or desirous of living life at its edges it’s a genuinely interesting question.

How much control do we have over our emotions anyway? When you see two drivers, complete strangers to each other, squaring up over a minor roadway squabble or a friend mooning calf-like over a new partner it can seem that the answer is not much. Certainly some seem to have a greater facility for self-control. Resolutely not losing their heads when all around absolutely are. But if you were five years old with a grazed knee are they the ones you would go to for hugs and consolation? 

One thing I know for certain is that if you asked most parents whether they would like their small children to have a doubled or halved emotional range you would have to wait for their hysterical laughter to subside before getting a pretty unequivocal response. Imagine the Terrible Twos to the power of two!

It’s a pretty trite observation that small children are what might euphemistically be described as ‘naturalistic’ in exhibiting their emotional range. And, in my opinion, a 3 year old that has learnt to keep its emotions strictly in check is somebody I would want Social Services checking out pdq. 

While my children slowly (sometimes very slowly) evolve out of unconstrained emotional display I have realised that this is one of the aspects of parenting I find most interesting. What is the dividing line between rearing deplorable man babies unable to get a grip in the face of life’s most inconsequential obstacles and emotionally constipated furled umbrellas unable to tell their wives they love them even on their wedding days? 

As with most things parenting only time will tell. But it’s telling isn’t it that ‘If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands’ doesn’t have a second verse ‘If you’re a gloomy and you know it cry your eyes’ or a third ‘If you’re livid and you know it ball your fists’. The one emotion we’re encouraged never to self-regulate is happiness. 

One thing I am confident of is that we have words for a reason and while you can’t always and should not strive to reason emotions away words are the way to understand better what lies behind emotions. The unhappy truth is that children are often condemned or criticised for their emotions because their emotions are either inconvenient or uncomfortable for the adults around them. 

Sometimes discerning what has prompted an emotion is plain as day. Hunger, tiredness and boredom will all make themselves unmistakably known. However fear, shame and embarrassment often have causes well out of sight and can trigger curious or even counter-intuitive emotional responses. 

Whether your child’s emotional range is as high as the Himalayas and low as the Mariana Trench or it’s more Scafell Pike and Ullswater it is one of the chief responsibilities and privileges of parenting to become familiar with every gradation and to learn how to help your child comfortably and confidently ascend or descend the scale as the occasion demands.