Discipline

I was raised in a strict family. Raised to not answer back and to do as I was told. We all were. This was the eighties, there were no iPads, no internet, four channels on the telly and I mostly played with my sister. Lego and barbies and imaginative play. We had our turn on the TV and then we watched what my parents were watching. It sounds harsh but it really wasn’t, just normal and expected and that was that.

Jody was raised slightly differently, there was a little more openness, perhaps because they were boys, he and his brother, and we were girls, my sisters and me, but there is a difference in the way that he talks to his parents, in the way that he challenges them. It makes me cringe, if I’m honest, but even then that is nothing to the way that I have heard his nephew, six months off 16, occasionally talk to his parents.

Anyway, all this to say that children are raised differently these days. There is more autonomy for kids, more understanding of them as people, equals that have their own opinions and thoughts and whilst those should absolutely be acknowledged, there is still, in my view, a need for discipline.

I took the girls to a dance class trial on Saturday and then to soft play. On Sunday, their grandparents came over and took them out to lunch. They came home with sweets and an attitude. They were rude basically. I’d ask them to put on their pyjamas and they’d say no, to eat their tea nicely and they’d giggle and be silly. Bedtime was a relief. They were better this morning, got ready for school no problem but these evening again, it’s been difficult.

My instinct is to tell them that if I had the nerve to talk back to my parents, then there would have been hell to pay and whilst I am right and truly I can still remember being told off by my parents to this day, it isn’t the right thing to say. Times have changed and while I have nothing bad to say about the way I was brought up, it isn’t appropriate now. We know more about the way kids brains work, the way they think and feel and the way memories stick and it’s important that we nurture all of those things, even when we want to explode with anger at yoghurt on the floor despite the three times you’ve said that there will be yoghurt on the floor if you put that much on the spoon.

But really does any of it make any difference? Ultimately, will my fifteen year old twins be rude to me when I ask them to do something? Or will one of them be? Will Grace’s devil may care attitude continue as she grows and will she then, as she does now, grin as she does the wrong thing, knowing that ultimately, it means a short time out and a cuddle. Is follow through the answer? A sticker chart? Praise for good behaviour rather than punishment for bad? I don’t know the answers and honestly, I don’t worry too much about it.

Generally, we all end up good. Good kind people who want to do good and be nice people. The anomalies are there, of course, but I can’t tell now whether Isla will be a surgeon who visits her elderly grandparents on a regular basis or Grace might sit behind a supermarket checkout and be the happiest person in the world. Both are fine. More than fine. I would be lucky. I am lucky.

Just stressed out that bedtime just can’t come quick enough at the moment!

Better

Instagram, the platform for the perfect photo, the sponsored post that only becomes clear at the end, the heavily filtered selfie that represents a heavily filtered life, the place where celebrities post a picture with a strawberry on their child’s face, would show that I am a good parent. There are many thousands of pictures of my girls at all stages of their lives and in every single one, you would see that they are happy and healthy, well dressed and clean, articulate and funny. And I could accept pats on the back for the role that I’ve played in that. Even on my instastories, a disappearing snapshot of the days, where I am a little more honest about things that I might be finding difficult, you would still see me as an active, engaged parent.

In truth, I am bordering on average. I am impatient, I rise quickly to anger and I shout at them more than I should. I put them on time out if necessary and though I try to do all the right things, explaining calmly what they have done and why I am cross, I don’t always and they reel away from me, a bit bewildered eager for cuddles and kisses once they have counted to twenty in the time out spot in the hall. Yes, I also praise them extravagantly, I scoop them up for kisses and tell them over and over how much I love them. Today, I told Grace that she was spectacular and you have never seen a more proud little girl. Spectacular! What a big word.

And she is. They both are. They are true miracles, the start of a family that I never thought I’d have and I would step in front of a train for them. But they are hard work, exhausting and frustrating and I struggle sometimes, often with the overwhelming feeling that I am somehow failing. Failing them mostly but also failing at the only job that actually really matters to me.

Until Poppy. I was worried, as I’m sure most second (third) time mums are, that I wouldn’t cope, that it would be too hard, that I’d end up in a heap in the corner, three kids running rings around me. But the truth is vastly different. The baby makes me feel competent, and that competence seeps into my parenting of my big girls. I feel able to compartmentalise what I have to do, to be calmer and more understanding, to not obsess over the fact that Grace had three accidents yesterday or that Isla seems to have forgotten how to speak at a normal volume.

Babies require confident, regular care. They require you to be on top of jobs, have the right amount of bottles ready for the night feeds, have a stash of nappies close by so your tiny infant isn’t left flailing on the changing mat waving their scrawny chicken legs as you run from room to room collecting the things you need. They also like cuddles and to stare at you for hours but that is the fun stuff, the bit that I didn’t get with my twins and the bit that I’m savouring now.

Older children require emotion. They require consistency and rules but those rules must be delivered compassionately, never changing, never shifting, even just slightly, even if they desperately want those rules changed.

I never imagined that the introduction of another child would make me a better parent. I imagined myself stretched more thinly, stressed and emotional at the thought of what I had put my girls through, the disruption that a baby had bought to their lives. But it isn’t the case. I am a better parent for having Poppy, a better parent for my big girls and the best parent for her.

Just better.