Stormy weather

S- had her first real tantrum yesterday. It started around lunchtime when we got back from the shops. Actually the warning signs had been there for a while – check out repeatedly lying down on the floor in the supermarket for a good example – but I hadn’t read them correctly.

When we got home and I lifted her out of the car seat she first resisted and then tried to get back in to the car. At which point, loaded down with shopping and simmering with exasperation, I had to pick her up and carry her into the house.

In the kitchen I needed to put her down again to deal with the stuff I’d bought as well as some housework. I also had to make lunch.

As soon as her feet touched the floor she went apeshit, running from one side of the room to the other, banging on the walls and wailing. Then she tried to open the doors to the cupboard where the knives are kept.

Needless to say this was a little alarming.

When I got her away from the cupboards, she threw herself down on the floor and held her arms up, her sign that she wanted to be picked up. But to be honest I didn’t respond straight away: perhaps wrongly a) I reasoned that she needed to calm herself and b) my hands were full.

She was pretty soon in torrents of tears and it took ages for her to finally choke them back. I suppose it started to get back to normal only when I put her in her high chair and moved it so that we sat side by side, rather than at our normal right angles, to have lunch.

I remembered Penelope Leach’s books and her assertion that toddlers constantly see-saw between their overwhelming desire for independence and the fear that their emotions will drive their parents away.

One of the lessons we picked up from our adoption classes is that adopted kids have that extra terror of abandonment. Yet they spend much of their young lives trying to get you to turn your backs on them, trying to test you out. This is why adoptive parents can’t always react in ways that birth parents might [they shouldn't, for example, use the Naughty Step with their kids]: because it’s important not to reinforce the child’s inner belief that they’re not wanted and are unreformedly bad.

It seems to me that children, adopted or otherwise, need to be as close as possible to their parents [though maybe not always in their arms] when they’re having these emotional meltdowns. It’s not just about physical safety but also about psychological support: ‘I still love you,’ you’re telling them, ‘and it’s ok to feel like you do’.

‘Though possibly not to throw your yoghurt in my face!’

Shout!

Where it came from I wouldn’t like to say. I was tired and I’d been unwell for a few days, but my reaction was, in retrospect, a little over the top.

It didn’t seem to worry S- though. At least not too much. She looked at me wonderingly with those blue eyes as I stood over her and gave her all six barrels.

‘No,’ I said, the decibels rising with every syllable. ‘No, no, no, S-. Don’t do that. DON’T do that. NO!’

What was it that had set me off? Something major, obviously. Something earthshattering. Something that threated to tear the fabric of our family apart.

Well, actually it was that she’d just spilt her drink all over the kitchen table.

For the third time, admittedly. And deliberately, yes. Challengingly, for sure. But for the Lord’s sake it was just a few drops of juice. A miniscule amount of housework. And I’d absolutely blown a gasket.

When I look back I think she was trying to reassure me because when I picked her up from her high chair she clung to me and patted me on the shoulder. ‘Aaahh,’ she said. ‘Aaah’. [Her version of 'all better' or 'come on, old chap, it's not as bad as all that', I think.]

But I was still steaming. A few minutes later, changing her nappy [diaper] ready for her afternoon sleep, I almost boiled over.

Instead I stood up and walked out of the room [shutting the child safety gate behind me, obviously]. I went down the hall and into the kitchen, where I bellowed out my frustration for a good couple of minutes – luckily our neighbours all work during the day, so no one could hear my rather unbecoming vocalisations. Then I went back in and finished her nappy and put her down in the cot.

Later, when I was supposed to be washing the dishes, I stood and stared out of the window, feeling very ashamed of myself.

There’s a school of thought that says adoption gives you the chance to be better parents because you can put theory into practice. You can be more considered. You can apply what the social workers teach you to call a therapeutic approach to your parenting.

I knew that the next time she knocked over her drink [and there would be a next time, of course] I’d have to come up with something slightly less apoplectic. Something that an impartial observer might consider more suited to the occasion. Something – actually almost anything would be better, come to think of it.

One of the hardest things seems to be learning, as the cliche puts it, how to lose a battle so as to win the war.

I’ve got you under my skin

‘Ouch, that looks sore,’ says G-, sympathetically.

‘It is,’ I say.

[I've done manual work in my time and had the scars on my hands to prove it. Blisters, dermatitis, cuts and grazes - you name it.

But the housework that goes along with parenting is unending! Water and towels. Water and towels. Washing. Drying. Cleaning. Scrubbing. Tidying. Undressing. Cleaning. Dressing. Washing again.

Your skin gets dryer and dryer. Eventually it splits and cracks and, each time you knock your hands against cold utensils, wicker baskets, sharp cutlery, it's exquisitely painful. Mainly because you can't stop doing what you're doing.]

‘Yes, I had that for ages when I was looking after S- all the time,’ says G-.

‘Did you? I didn’t notice …’

‘No, but I didn’t make a song and dance about it’ she says, meaningfully.

‘Oh. Er.’

‘Just moisturise. Keep moisturising.’

Relax, DON’T do it

On D-day [her first day back at work] G- left the house before S- awoke. I was up not long after her and showered and tidied the house and did a load of little houswork jobs.

These were highly important jobs that really needed doing first thing in the morning, such as emptying out that little drainy thing that stops all the food in the washing up water going down into the plumbing.

No, I’m not really sure what I was thinking, either.

I paced around for 10 minutes. Why? Because I was too early. I’d worked out a routine that involved getting S- up at the same time every day, and by God I was going to stick to it: this childcare thing was going to be done properly!

I’d like to say the pacing helped. It didn’t. Nor did the three cups of coffee I swallowed one after the other. I could feel the tension winding itself tighter and tighter around my chest.

Eventually the time was up. Into the bedroom I went. The next thing that happened was that the blackout blind fell off the window with a huge crash when I pulled on the roller.

It turned out to be one of those days. Things just kept going wrong.

S- likes to give B-, our black labrador bitch, her food in the morning. Today, of course, she spilt the dog biscuits all over the floor.

Later, on the way out of the house I realised I hadn’t folded up the pram, which we keep on the porch. So now it was soaked from the downpour overnight.

We took B- for a walk, and a large dog ran up to S- and licked her all over the face.

When G- came into the lounge that evening she found me crashed out on the sofa, moaning and groaning fitfully. I hadn’t had any rest all day. Rather than lying down when I’d had the chance, I’d spent all of S-’s afternoon sleep time doing more housework.

I just hadn’t been able to get out of the mindset that I’d started the day with earlier: that I was going to be a perfect stay-at-home dad, come what may.

Actually, when G – and I talked it over I realised it hadn’t been totally rubbish. S- and I managed to go to a kid’s party at one of her friends without too much going wrong – unless you count two of the smelliest nappy fills of all time, within 10 minutes of each other.

She also ate nearly all her food at all 3 of the day’s meals, and she went to sleep at the right time like an angel: just took the bottle out of her mouth, gestured for the dummy and then waved ‘bye bye’.

As she often does in the evening, she chuckled to herself as I put her down. Perhaps she was laughing at me and my ludicrous ambition to treat the day as though it was work, with objectives and goals and such like.

I should have realised: it’s much harder than that.