A Mothering Sunday

Homemade climbing complex

This Mothering Sunday I have mothered. The day started with cuddles at 5.30/6.30am (the clocks went forward), followed by gifts, breakfast and a lie-in. Lovely. When I got up, I discovered the children had watched a movie and were starting on their second, breakfast half-eaten and the house a state.

I started my usual morning routine of making beds, carrying laundry downstairs, putting the washing machine on, emptying and re-filling the dishwasher, letting the dog out, clearing the breakfast things away and making a second cup of tea. Then I helped the children plant seeds and baked pain au chocolat for everyone. Eventually the kids went out to play, and I realised that – with the clocks changing – it was too late to go out for lunch.

I had only one request for Mother’s Day – that we could go out for a roast lunch so I could eat a meal I hadn’t had to cook. When it was decided that we weren’t going to go I was pretty cross and stomped round the kitchen preparing a roast lunch, to make up for the one I missed.

I even made a kebab on request for my daughter (that she didn’t eat) and carrots for my son (which he didn’t eat.) By the end of lunch my mood hadn’t really improved. In an effort to buy some time to read my book, I opened and raked over the sandpit, before clearing away the dishes.

Homemade is best

Somewhere admidst it all, I realised I was enjoying providing for my family, making yummy meals and watching the kids cause carnage in the garden. I gave in to domesticity and made an apple crumble for after dinner (hubbie’s favourite, because he needs cheering up.) I did all the ironing. Finally I snuck upstairs to read my book for an hour, until a screaming child took me back downstairs.

While I was preparing lunch I felt irritated that I was having to cook, rather than being taken out, and I wished for a family who pampered me on Mother’s Day, who bought chocolates and flowers and booked a table for lunch. But then I realised this is our first day at home for weeks, because of all the birthday parties, and it was lovely. Hubbie pottered round the garden, building a makeshift climbing frame for the kids and sorting out the accumulated junk. The kids ran and dug in the sand and played with water. Unwatched and unfettered (mostly) as I want them to be.

And do you know what? I’ve enjoyed my domestic day much more than I would have enjoyed a day alone to read (too guilty! Besides I can do that tomorrow) or a day out (too stressful, noisy, busy, expensive.) Homemade apple crumble was just as nice as chocolates and the last flowers my daughter bought me ‘just because’ are still (dead) in the vase.

Mothers of small children don’t really get a day off. But I got a day to do my thing, up to a point (cooking curry for dinner while watching Homes Under the Hammer without being pestered by children IS a day off!)

So, thank you family. Today I have felt useful and nurturing, like a mother. I feel loved.

Fading Scars

Dad, me and sis at the beach

Yesterday marked the 8th anniversary of the unexpected death of my father, and for the first time the day drifted by in mundane normality. I couldn’t have imagined, back then, that the pain of his passing would ever be anything but raw and unbearable. Despite having a complicated and often turbulent relationship with my dad, and despite not having lived with him for more than a few weeks at a time since I was nine, his death left a huge hole in my life. The last years saw us come to an understanding and we had a friendship, a shared view of the world, that I’ve never found with anyone else.

The tragedy of my father’s death is that it came before any of his grandchildren were born. I believe that spending time with his two granddaughters and two grandsons would have completed my father’s journey. Despite my in many ways awful childhood, Dad was much better with small people in later life. He would have been an amazing grandfather, taking the children fishing and to cricket matches and for walks along the canal.

What hurts most, now I’ve become a parent, is that I now understand my father and my childhood and utterly forgive him for all his flaws. He wasn’t a great Dad at times and I’m certain he was a terrible husband. But he didn’t have the best upbringing himself, with two volatile parents, and a dominating, controlling mother.

Dad as I remember him

Like me, he had little patience and a quick temper. Like me, I imagine he found it hard to be home with the children, trying to fix cars and mind the kids, while Mum worked a 9-5 job. But he didn’t have the support network that I have. There were no Dads Groups in the 1970s, no blogs and online forums. I’ve never hit my children, but I’ve come close. And I’m pretty certain I’ve repeated every terrible thing I heard as a child. The difference is I can cry and apologise and explain. I can’t imagine Dad doing the same.

My hope and fear is that my dad was reborn in my son. He reminds me of Dad in so many ways. It gives me hope for the future, that Dad’s memory and legacy are not lost. But fear that, just as happened 8 years ago, my son may also be taken from me, suddenly, without warning, with no chance to say goodbye. If I’m an over-protective, worrying, clingy parent, it is for that reason. All the love I couldn’t show my dad, that I didn’t know I had until it was too late, is lavished on a cheeky, naughty, charming little boy. And maybe, somewhere, Dad is watching. I hope so.

The Art of Negotiation and Solving International Conflict

Ace Negotiator

The hardest part of parenting, particularly parenting three and five year olds, is the constant negotiation.

It starts at 6am and doesn’t finish until at least 8pm.

“Mummy, can I go downstairs?”

“Is your sun up?”

“Well, there’s one star left.”

“Then you need to go and read quietly.”

“But it’s sunny outside.”

“Go back to bed, it’s six am.”

“But I’m hungry.”

“Then you should have eaten your tea.”

…

And so it goes on right through to

“Can I have three stories tonight?”

“No, you can have two like normal.”

“But these are short stories.”

“It’s past bedtime already.”

“But I’m not tired.”

…

I swear if you sent mothers in to sort out the crisis in Ukraine it would go something like this:

“Russia, Ukraine, if you can’t play nicely, go to your rooms. I’m putting Crimea on a shelf until you stop squabbling.”

Failing that, I could send my son to handle negotiations. I’ve not seen him beaten in an argument yet: he can come up with a way round any problem.

“Mummy, when are we going to go on a bus?”

“One day. We went a few weeks ago.”

“Why can’t we go today?”

“We’re going swimming today.”

“We could catch the bus to the swimming pool.”

“We could, but we might not get back in time to get your sister from school.”

“But we could leave swimming early.”

“We could, but the bus is expensive.”

“You have money.”

…

And on… If he were in the negotiations I’m sure Putin would end up saying,

“Fine, you have Crimea, just STOP TALKING.”

In the meantime, I have the trump card, the parenting phrase we all swear we’ll never use, until our child turns three.

“Because I said so!”

The Hidden Cost of Parenting

Seven gifts for the next three weeks!

Of all the things I thought would cost time and money as a parent, it would never have occurred to me to factor in birthdays. Not my children’s birthdays – of course they are costly things – but the birthdays of other children.

It wasn’t a problem until this year. My daughter had maybe half a dozen close friends at nursery, my son has about the same. I like going to children’s parties – it gives us something to do at weekends and someone else entertains my child for two hours while I drink tea and gossip. Lovely.

But since my daughter started in Reception it’s been relentless. I should have realised, when we invited forty-odd kids to her party, that it would be reciprocated. And it has been. We have two/three parties every weekend for the next three weeks. Most of which only my daughter is invited to, so we have to divide and conquer on parenting, rather than taking it in turns to have a break.

And the gifts, and cards, and wrapping paper. Never mind the cost (and I set a miserly budget!), having to sit with my five year old and try to tolerate her attempts at wrapping is an exercise in patience I don’t have. Ditto writing cards and labels. “I can do it, Mummy!” yelled at volume is a common occurrence. I like wrapping gifts and pride myself on my neatness. And my ability not to tangle yards of selotape or cover it in dog hair and fluff. Some parenting tasks are above the call of duty. At least I’ve stopped letting her choose each gift. Now I buy them in bulk as part of the weekly shop.

Rumour has it it isn’t so bad in year one, when she’ll only mix with her class rather than the sixty kids across the whole year group (they have a shared classroom much of the day). I love that she’s popular, I do. But I could live without five parties a month for the next decade!

Too Many Words!

Why can’t they all be nice and quiet like the dog..?

After my day of zen on Friday I had a bit of a relapse on Saturday, culminating in me loudly biting out the words “just shut up” to my son in the middle of a busy supermarket. I so love making other parents feel better about themselves.

The problem is the talking. The endless, incessant, dual voiced, competing in stereo, “Mummy, mummy, mummy” talking. Alone or together, my kids are driving me nuts.

The irony, of course, is that I am a chatterbox. A talker rather than a listener. I have spent my whole life being teased for having too much to say.

My mum thinks it’s hilarious that the kids are driving me crazy. Of course, as the office-based parent when I was growing up, with my father the working-from-home one who presumably looked after us (I don’t remember) she didn’t have as much first-hand experience as she might think.

For six hours a day on nursery days and twelve on days when they’re at home, I’m expected to be able to hold two or three concurrent conversations, and tantrums ensue if anyone isn’t answered directly. And I do try. Because it upset me so much to be ignored as a child or to be ridiculed for having too many words, I try so hard to answer every query with patience.

But oh my the repetition.

Chatterbox Children

In the twenty minutes preceding my loss of control in Tesco, my son had said the same sentence a dozen times. Like a Chinese water torture it broke through even medicated calm.

I suppose the difference is that, instead of blowing up at them, ranting and bellowing, then sobbing and apologising, I’ve had no release, so I’ve been snapping at them all afternoon. Frustratingly to the same end result that my daughter sobbed through dinner because of something mummy said: albeit in a snappy voice rather than a sergeant major shout.

It seems that maybe the bellowing rage works as a release valve and without it I’m just a mean mummy instead of a monster. I read a beautiful post on Amy Saab’s 2me4art blog today saying she is trying to listen to her ten year old son because she knows it won’t be long before he stops wanting to talk. I found myself looking forward to the surly uncommunicative teenage years today.

I’ve heard people say ‘listen properly to the small things or they won’t ever tell you the big things’, but how can you listen and listen and listen when you’re a talker? A ‘babbling brook’ as Gary Chapman describes it in The Five Love Languages. And as my children are talkers rather than listeners they’re not even happy using up their words on each other: I’ve taught them not to talk over people so all I hear is “he talked over me!” “but she wasn’t listening to me” followed by a tantrum, tears or a thump, because no one hates being ignored more than a three-year-old second child.

I don’t know what the answer is. The more I sit in silence the harder it is to be abused by the torrent of noise. And, is it me, but do they use fewer words at school than nursery? I suppose it’s all that listening they have to do. Certainly my daughter seems to need more of my attention than she did before she started school. I might have to go back to plugging them into Cbeebies before we all go mad.

Food And Filling Prevention: My Latest Sources of Mummy Guilt

Mummy-guilt trip to Waitrose!

Today I have been obsessing about food and tooth decay. I found out recently that my three-year-old son has cavities. I was horrified. He loves his sweets and juice and though we minimise his intake of both, he is also a fussy eater and so has many other bad-teeth foods like dried fruit and toast with jam.

Probably as a result of latent anxiety, which seems to be the latest phase of medication side effects (or just my natural state), when I saw the hole in my son’s tooth this morning it tipped me over the edge. Even though I later allowed him to eat a muffin (and don’t get me started on the guilt I felt when I saw the 11 lines of ingredients, most of which were unpronounceable) and some crisps.

So while he slept this afternoon I spent an hour on Google. It didn’t improve my anxiety; quite the opposite. Because it turns out that grain-based foods are bad for teeth too. And my fussy child only eats breakfast cereal, sandwiches, toast and pasta. All wheat. (Also all full of salt – and a news report I heard this morning bemoaned how much salt kids eat – is there no end to my parenting fails?).

My sister has started following a Paleo diet (a diet that seeks to recreate the foods our ancestors would have eaten – meat and veg – while eschewing grains, potatoes, dairy, refined sugar and processed foods). She’s the foodie in the family. I hate cooking, I hate thinking about food and I’m rubbish at anything that requires hardship and excessive thinking. A diet without grains falls into all those camps, especially when pancakes and pasta are key elements of happy parenting for me. I have got lazy recently, feeding particularly my son the things I know he’ll eat, like spaghetti bolognaise and cheese sandwiches. I thought as long as he had a few fruit pouches, plenty of milk and some rice cakes, he was getting an okay diet (he gets great food at nursery and eats better for strangers).

But while I figured he would outgrow his fussiness, I hadn’t factored in his teeth issues. And now all my laissez-faire parenting, my not insisting on fresh fruit and vegetables and fish in the hope that – like his sister – he’d come to all the things in his own time, seems to have backfired. Because apparently nutrition can affect teeth. Obviously I knew that calcium was important, but both my kids drink buckets of milk. I didn’t really think about all the other vitamins, like A and D and the Omega fats. My daughter doesn’t like cow’s milk so she has powder milk – fortified with vitamins – as well as happily eating fish and meat. Is it coincidence that her teeth are fine?

Anyway, I won’t try and unravel all the sources of information I ploughed through today. I came away with one relatively-easy solution: cod liver oil, with one concern – vitamin A overdose. I didn’t come to a happy resolution, but I did decide that cod liver oil might be good for all of us (particularly hubbie’s bad back and my dodgy knees). I also decided that if I can’t banish grains from our diet, I might be able to widen them away from just wheat. A bit more maize and rice. Cornflakes (also nicely lower in sugar than most of our current breakfast cereals), rice cakes, some minestrone soup. Baby steps. And eggs, eggs are meant to be good. I used to cook lots of scrambled egg, until my son refused to eat it. He might just have to learn to eat what he’s given or lump it!

Conscientious parenting: so full of pitfalls it should come with a health warning.

How Much Should You Entertain Your Children?

Picnic in the sun

It’s the weekend. The sun is shining and it’s warm outside for the first time this year. The children are in shorts. Hubbie and I are not at fighting strength and the desire to spring clean house and garden are being decimated by an overwhelming need to curl up and read a book (me) or get back to stripping the engine in the garage (hubbie).

Saturday saw a whirlwind of sorting from hubbie, in response to a plea from me that the lounge had disappeared under weeks of accumulated detrius. I do cleaning, he does sorting, that’s our skill set and division of labour. I was still feeling sick and disorientated from the tablets and the kids were slightly flummoxed by having a whole weekend without children’s parties to go to.

Grandpa came round to put the world to rights and help tinker with the engine. The children were told to shush, go play and mostly they did. But promises were made that today would involve more games and attention. Then Grandad called late to say he’d pop in for coffee in the morning. So Sunday started with a frenzy of cleaning (as he comes less often I make more effort to maintain the illusion that his son married a clean and tidy person. My stepdad knows this is a lie – my mum won’t even come round anymore because the clutter in our house drives her bonkers.)

By 10am this morning (his anticipated arrival time) we’d cleaned and hoovered and found the house under the filth and clutter. The children assisted by cleaning dust with wet wipes. But still, they reminded us continuously about the request for attention and games. Grandad spent half his time looking at the stripped engine and the rest imparting typos to me that he found in Two-Hundred Steps Home. When he left at 12 o’clock the children had been left to bounce on the trampoline and play in the playhouse. They were quite happy, but still asking for games.

Playing with the hose

Hubbie finally managed a game of chess with our daughter while I baked cookies with our son. I then played dominos with them both for twenty minutes. But that was the extent of our attention, as I went off to iron school clothes (and ended up writing this post!) and hubbie mowed the lawn.

They’ve been happily (mostly) playing with the hose and trampoline for the last hour (hurrah for early spring sunshine!), but I still feel a bit concerned.

After all my reading on The Five Love Languages, I suspect that Quality Time is important to both of them. But they do also need to learn to play by themselves. Weekends can’t always be children’s parties and trips to the farm. I at least get time during the week to myself but hubbie needs downtime at the weekend. I used to take them to lots of places when I had them both at home, because they’re easier to manage at the zoo or the park than in the house, but I worry that they had so much fun and mummy time it is why they both cry when being left at school and nursery.

They’re not neglected children, but parental attention can be pretty thin at times. They have each other and are expected to find solace in that. And mostly they used to do that. But more and more, since my daughter started school, they’ve been demanding adult attention at home. Assuming I had the patience to offer it, is it still wise? I don’t remember our parents doing much in the way of entertaining us as kids. We were taught to ride bikes and taken to gym classes, but we also played with our dolls and books and colouring. We sat in the car eating crisps while they went to the pub to play darts, or while they did the supermarket shop.

Parenting these days is all about quality time and enjoying every moment, but what if we’re raising kids that don’t know how to be and play by themselves? What if school becomes harder and harder because being with mummy and daddy is such fun? But what if they need my attention to thrive? It’s a pickle. I’m beginning to understand why people take their kids to ballet and football at the weekend. Wear them out and pay someone else to entertain them. We’re not quite there yet, we enjoy our relaxed weekends too much, but it might happen soon.

In the mean time hubbie is explaining rugby to them both while I cook tea. Somehow it’s only 4pm. Is it bed time yet?

The Perfect School?

Sudbury Valley School

Almost as soon as my nephew was born, my sister began to speak about sending him to a particular school in America. A free school, a democratic school – run by the children for the children. A place where a child could ride their bike or play video games all day, everyday, if they chose.

I scoffed. My parents rolled their eyes. I’m an academic at heart, with straights As and a first class degree and a Masters (we won’t mention the B in A Level General Studies – after all it wasn’t a ‘real’ qualification – it was only about life and that’s not important to a student who wants to succeed.)

Over the years, my brave, courageous, determined sister never let go of her American dream. Her husband’s sister’s children went to the school and her desire grew. I never got it. Three years ago, after untold hours of effort, my sister and her family emigrated to America to live near my brother-in-law’s family, with a view to my nephew and now niece going to the school.

The school run for my sister

I still didn’t get it. School is about learning and classes and exams and school uniform and all that, and my children were going to love it. There were going to be reading and counting to a hundred by the time they were five, they were going to be top of the class. After all, I was, and that made me happy, didn’t it?

My daughter started school six months ago, and my confidence began to waver. School seemed so regimented, especially for these tiny four-year-olds looking so serious and adorable in their smart uniform. The school run was chaotic and emotional and full of stressed parents snapping and snarling (particularly me).

To begin with, my daughter loved it. As suspected, she thrived on learning and was reading and counting to a hundred by her fifth birthday. She loves the community of school, idolises her teacher, and adores singing, reading and PE. But, here’s the thing: after spending a whole year desperate to go to school, my bright, academic, sponge-like learning child doesn’t want to go anymore.

“Mummy why do we only do PE once a week, I love PE.”

“Mummy, I love singing, is it singing assembly today? Is it?”

“Mummy, we didn’t get to do reading today.”

Drumming with his sister (click for video)

Then, yesterday, I watched this video on the Sudbury Valley school my sister has set her heart on. And I cried. Oh my. I want that for my children. I want them to be able to play piano for three hours straight if they choose. I want the calm, majestic, green surroundings, the rocks and the lakes and the books and the teachers there to facilitate enthusiastic learning. I want my children, my artistic children who often spend hours playing in their band, to have that.

Who cares if they meet some government-decided tick box of success. I want them to know what makes them passionate by the time they’re fifteen, not fifty.

Already, in six months, I’ve seen my daughter lose her edge. Become less able to find things to do without direction, become more concerned about breaking rules than having fun. She gets some of that from me, but where did I get it from?

I read a post yesterday written by the talented and successful writer, Kim Bongiorno, who wondered if the fact that she didn’t finish college would affect her own children’s desire and ability to go to college. She wondered whether she was a good enough role model for them. This was my reply (before watching the Sudbury Valley video!)

“I think you are being a better role model by not having finished your college degree. I don’t think university is for everyone. I went to university because I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. For people with vocations, like doctors or teachers, of course university is essential. However, if you’re not academic then it’s a way to run up huge debt and be no nearer to a job at the end. Certainly that’s true in the UK.

Fifteen years ago I graduated with a first class degree and it marginally improved my chances of getting a good job. Which I did. But I hated it and had a breakdown after three years. The next job was no better except I lasted five years before realising I don’t handle office stress well and I need to be creative.

And I AM academic, I loved studying. What about the people who don’t learn through lectures and essays? My sister struggled for four years to get a 2:2 in a language she hated, and graduated with massive debt, great pool playing skills and a love of Jack Daniels. Since then she’s started from scratch, building up her own businesses and finding what she loves and is good at.

In fifteen years time, when my daughter would graduate, I suspect a degree won’t be enough to compete. She’ll need a Masters, maybe a PhD. Years more of study and debt, for what? She wants to be a writer like her mummy, my son wants to be a racing driver (he’s three). I truly hope I’ll be strong enough to encourage them in those desires because happy is as important as well paid.

There is a great lecture I watched http://new.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity all about academic inflation and how university is really only good if you want to be a professor. I have long debates and worries about education and making sure it’s right for my children and this lecture consolidated some of them.

If your children want to go to college, the fact that circumstances outside your control prevented you completing your course shouldn’t stop them. And if they don’t want to go, you’ll be the best person to show them that – with hard work and determination – they can be a success without it.”

Daughter drumming – stuff she can’t do at school

This all sounds like I’m upping sticks and moving my family to Boston, doesn’t it? Oh I wish. But I don’t want to live in America, not even for an amazing school. For all my angst and depression, I’ve travelled the world and found myself home. But it does mean I can now say,

“Sister, you are the bravest, smartest, strongest, kick-ass person I know, and well done. Sorry I didn’t always understand.”

And I can keep looking for a better school for my children, and give them space at home to be children. To be themselves and to be happy with that. It’s taken me nearly four decades to achieve it, and I’m only partly there. In the meantime, I hope more schools look to the Sudbury Valley model and at least take some parts of it away. Watch the video and tell me you aren’t just a teeny bit impressed.

Dear World; SAHMs and Writers Still Work, You Know

Reminding myself that I do work

I took my children to a play date this morning and had a fabulous few hours watching them enjoy new toys, sunshine and company while I enjoyed a comfortable chat and plenty of hot tea. The talk, as often happens with parents you don’t know very well, turned to work.

The other three were teachers and when I explained that I was at home writing I got the dreaded response, “So you don’t work then?” followed by the embarrassed proviso of the working mum: “Except of course looking after these,” with a smile towards the children.

The funny thing was I was more bothered by writing not being considered a proper job than being a SAHM, even though looking after the children is much harder and takes up more of my time. There was another comment later, along the lines of, “You’re doing what we’d all love to be doing,” and again I wasn’t sure whether it referred to being able to pick my kids up from school, being about to do my hobby as a job or having endless free time to do laundry or, you know, drink coffee and paint my nails. 😉

I don’t know the other parents very well but I know they’re lovely people and it was clear that nothing was intended maliciously or even said with a great deal of thought. Much as I used to think being a teacher must be easy – short days, long holidays – before I spent any time with teachers and realised it’s the hardest job in the world and you couldn’t pay me enough to do it: we none of us have a blinking clue what’s really involved until it’s our job. And even then we all approach life differently.

Some of my light reading

I have to be working; I feel guilty if I don’t. So if I’m not writing I must either be cleaning, doing social media (which I don’t love) or reading (which I’m only just accepting as training for writers). It doesn’t feel like a hobby, but of course I do have a choice whether to work or be a housewife, which many don’t. I know I’m extremely fortunate.

Equally when I said to them that I loathed the school run (their children aren’t yet at school so they have that joy to look forward to) I’m sure they were envious that I have the luxury of doing it, as their children are in childcare all week. We all want what we can’t have.

There’s a lovely post on Facebook – two letters from a Stay at Home Mum and a working mum – which actually sympathises with the differences rather than finding reasons to hate. I’ve done a bit of both and I know they each suck in some way. (Incidentally, for a completely different take on the Facebook post, and why we parents should all STFU and stop moaning, read this). I preferred working (or, I should say, I preferred being employed, getting paid and knowing what I was meant to be doing from one minute to the next and not feeling guilty) but I only did it for a short time and before I had a child at school, so childcare was easier. Writing is a lot less stressful in many ways, of course, but it’s not always an easy way to spend your day. And the pay is lousy 😉

There’s another meme on Facebook – a quote from Katrina Monroe – that sums it up:

“Writing is like giving yourself homework, really hard homework, every day, for the rest of your life. You want glamorous? Throw glitter at the computer screen.”

Amen to that. You don’t get a day off, even when – like today – the only writing that gets done is on a phone in the dark while walking the dog at 6.15pm after hubbie gets home. You lie awake at 2am wondering what your character should do next or – as I have been lately after reading too many blog posts about how self-published authors are a scourge on decent literature – whether you should even be a writer. Can you call yourself a writer with a hundred sales to your name and more one star reviews than fives? (Well, almost. Hyperbole is accepted to make a point.) You’re never an aspiring teacher, no one ever called a teacher at home marking books ‘not working’. (Well, not to their face anyway!) I choose to be a writer, and to take all that entails, but it’s not a walk in the park (even when you’re walking in the park).

So, next time you’re chatting to a writer, or a SAHM, just nod and smile and maybe keep the phrase “So you don’t work then?” to share with your husband once you get home and vent on how the others have it easy. Much appreciated! 😀

Medicate Me?

Looking for Life’s Rainbow

I’m back in the eternal dilemma I’ve struggled with since having my second child. I know I’m (probably) depressed, but I don’t want to go back on anti-depressants. I’ve been on them once in my life, when I had a breakdown after three years in my first grown-up job. I needed them, as I wasn’t sleeping and could barely function. But they put me in a glorious bubble where the world couldn’t touch me. I left my job, my home, my friends, my guide unit, my family, and I barely felt it. No joy, no grief. And, when I came off them, I was introduced to the world of anxiety and panic attacks as an unexpected (as unknown at the time I guess) side effect. Since then I’ve been prescribed the same drug three times and each time I’ve carried the pack of pills home as a lifeline and refused to take them.

But now I’m spending more and more time in the dark place, where I am worthless, where I am a terrible mother who is damaging her children beyond redemption, where it makes perfect sense that they might be better off without me. Where I cry and cry and it never gets better. Or the rage builds, inflating like a balloon in my chest with every petty annoying thing the children do – every time they whine, or refuse to eat, or don’t listen, or ask and ask and ask, until I pop and the shouting starts.

The I Wasn’t a Good Mom letter that I included in The Parent I am and The One I Aspire To Be post has a whole heap of supportive comments underneath. But the one that stood out, when I re-read them this week, was the one which said your poor daughter, you need medication, she will remember these days and be scared for life by them. And it raised the endless debate that wars away in my brain.

Should I medicate?

Will it take away the extremes of temper and grief? Will I lose me or find me? What if the shouty ranting person is me? Or what if I realise I’m a hundred times better on medication, and I’ve been battling all these years – making the children’s life, hubbie’s life, my life awful – for nothing?

Happy Food my Son Refuses to Eat

The bit that’s stopped me in the past is the part in the information leaflet that tells you it gets worse before it gets better. I’m not sure there’s any capacity for worse.

I remember, also, that last time I slept and slept. I don’t have that luxury now, who would run the house? Who would take the children to school and pick them up? What would I miss?

And then I realise there are whole chunks of the kids’ lives I don’t remember because of the sleep deprivation (did you know you only write the events of the day to your long term memory if you reach second-stage sleep? Like that ever happens in this house). So what difference would it make?

The biggest challenge is finding someone to talk it through with who understands. The last time I saw my GP she blamed everything tangible, refusing to accept that I might be depressed. She even suggested I send my husband in to ‘fix’ his snoring because clearly that was the cause of everything. A factor, occasionally, possibly, but hardly a major one. Might as well tell me to give up being a wife and mother completely, because husbands and kids cause sleep deprivation and therefore mood swings. That makes about as much sense as my sister’s doctor prescribing her prozac for PMT. my psychiatrist said it sounded like I was overwhelmed, rather than depressed, and I just needed to take more time for me. (I take half the week to do my writing, how much more would it take?)

It’s true that it’s got a lot worse since my daughter started school and I lost both my long nursery days – which gave me time to reset – and my freedom to manage our week as required. Quiet days at home to nurture, days out to recharge. Which terrifies me. I always thought it would get better, as the kids slept better, as my time became my own. The opposite is true: my time is so much more squeezed, my chores have increased, with extra ironing, packed lunches, assemblies, home work, and my self-doubt increases with every day nearer to adulthood my children get.

How many mothers need medication to survive the school run? It makes me feel selfish and pathetic. But every time my daughter sobs hysterically for no reason, I take the blame that she’s learning it from me, and it eats away at me. I remember my own mother battling with depression as I grew up. I read somewhere that children who grow up taking care of their parents end up missing out on their childhood and spend their grown life adrift and unable to connect. I could relate to it and it hurts me each time my son pats my shoulder and asks “Are you okay, Mummy?” as I sit sobbing. He’s three. It should be me comforting him, not the other way around.

Sigh. I wish life, or at least parenting came with an instruction manual. Or a crystal ball. Something, anything, to give you a hint about the right path to take. Until I find one, I guess I’ll muddle on through, getting it right and wrong and never knowing which is which.