Summers with small children

Oh. My. Goodness.

This summer has been a completely new experience for me. I absolutely do feel like I just want to lie down all day, all the time. I almost don't know what to write, I'm so tired. 

I thought summers were supposed to be fun, casual, carefree? Not a bit of it. With small kids? Summers are ridiculous. 

Summer is full of boundaries pushed until they fall over, crafts that never get started or if they get started never get finished, of unreal expectations, endless lost shoes, (to be fair that's every day of the year with kids) sticky fingers, toes, noses, chins, screaming through the "sun scream" application, (both of you), hours packing stuff for the beach and then hours, and, let's face it, usually days to unpack the wet, sandy, dirty clothes, banana peels discovered in the bottom of bags days after the trip, empty juice boxes, daily ice cream demands, fights with wasps, and the complete and total defiance when you ask anything at all to be done, like getting into the bath, getting out of the bath, getting dressed, brushing teeth, having dinner, having breakfast, having any meal at all, getting into bed, getting out of bed, and then trying and failing throughout every single day to suppress the constant frustration you feel, and then one day just snapping.....

and Breathe......

Also...playdates!?!?!? Why did no one tell us that playdates, which I thought were supposed to be relaxing, are actually the most stressful part of our lives? I am in a continual state high alert during playdates. I feel like a mediator in a high stakes hostage situation. The snatching, the not sharing, the exclusion of other children, and of my own child, the obsession to eat the other child's food and not touching the beautiful snacks I prepared for her, the needing to have the EXACT same things as her friends, the  wail "she's not being kind to me!!!!!!" or "she's not playing with meeeeee", the stress from the other parents if the playdate is at their house... it's a nightmare. The other day one of Pickle's friends actually grabbed her hair and pulled it and bashed her head into the wall because she was so angry! There is nothing relaxing about playdates yo.

Some things I've noticed about myself this summer....

I've been gradually rolling through three house cleaning stages

1) When I first had a baby, and indeed, before I had a baby, I would clean the house as best I could, and then when anyone came around I would apologise for the mess in the house. 

2) Up until about 3 months ago, I wouldn't clean the house, and then when people came over, I would apologise profusely for the mess

3) Lately, and I'm sort of loving this stage, I don't clean the house, and then when people came over, I am completely unapologetic about the state of the house. 

We take out the bins, we clean the dishes every night, we make sure that the bathrooms are clean, (mostly) we wash the sheets and do the laundry, we sweep the floors, you know, all the regular things you do. But that is really all we can handle these days. For a while, I was one of those mums who would clean up as soon as the mess was made, bits of paper everywhere, a mixture of beads and glitter icing the floorboards at random places in the house, stuffies lining every ledge, every chair, blankets strewn with wild abandon on each couch and the remnants of inside chair forts in every room, piles of books placed like turrets 

Another thing I've noticed is that gentle parenting DOES NOT WORK. For sure, there is a strong and unyielding foundation of respect, empathy, gentleness and dignity with which I treat my child, but gentle parenting so often spills into permissive parenting that I am noticing how entitled children in general are. It is not their fault that they are like this. We are making them like this. But the thing is...gentle parenting is flipping HARD. It is being used almost everywhere I look, and parents are exhausted. 

So, it begs the question; is it worth it? Does it work? 

The concept, like Christianity or Communism, is a good one, and if it's used properly, yes it does and it will. How can one intuit that treating children with respect and gentleness whilst instilling a proper moral compass using clear and consistent boundaries produces somehow inadequate human beings? 

Jimmy Carr famously says "hard choices now, easy life later". I do think that a balance, like everything, is the way to go. But if you do stick to the gentle parenting model, you have to do it right. And, like the rest of the world, I am a human, and on an hourly basis, I do it wrong. But I cannot and will not for a second stop treating my child with respect and love, so I continue, like the rest of the world, to try and do what's best for me and for my child. 

Thanks for reading x