Eight is a difficult age

There are times when I really don’t want to be in the same building as my eight year old. I’m sure I’m not the only parent who thinks this. Two nights ago, I walked into the bathroom following twenty minutes of intense prevarication on dudelet’s part and asked him if he’d cleaned his teeth.

“You’ve already asked me that!” he whined.

I know, I wanted to say, and I’m asking again because you ignored me. And because you’ll ignore me this time and then again until you finally get the reaction you’re looking for: an explosion of frustrated rage on my part generating dramatic tears and an even larger explosion on your part culminating in your slamming the bathroom door on me and screaming every time I try to engage you or attract your attention. The previous night I’d been foolish enough to tell him that I’d actually been waiting for half an hour and had triggered slammed doors and inarticulate howls of rage and sorrow every time I’d come near him until he finally fell asleep, still furious.

This time, I didn’t say anything. Ten minutes later, he cleaned his teeth. But I felt like I was walking on eggshells.

You can probably tell that we’ve got a bit of a cycle happening here – we ask him to do something, he doesn’t do it, we wait a reasonable amount of time and ask again and he explodes in fury. It’s unpleasant, it happens on a daily basis and we still don’t really know what to do about it. Eggshells, many of them broken, all over the house.

We know it’s related to a number of issues:

• Self-esteem

• Tiredness

• School

• Growing up

Growing up is the easiest one to accommodate. We know hormones and testosterone are raging throughout his (still) little body. He’s an increasingly independent being who struggles with that independence and the responsibilities. There are changes going on with his body and it’s both interesting and frightening for him. The good news is that he at least talks to us about him and the those conversations (that’s a whole other post) are going well. The bad news is that it contributes to the thunder and lightning of the other issues.

Tiredness is a big problem. Dudelet is an early riser. Four thirty isn’t unknown. At eight, he knows to keep the noise down and to find something quiet to entertain himself with and we’re lucky that he’s a good reader. But if he wakes up before five during a light sleep phase he just won’t try and go back to sleep again. There are simply too many distractions and short of stripping every book out of his room and putting a lock on his door (NOT under consideration for even a single moment!) there isn’t a lot we can do about it.

But this means that by six or seven o’clock, after a long day at school, he’s often cranky, grumpy and carrying huge bags under his eyes. He’s generally asleep before eight thirty but we’re pretty sure he isn’t getting all the sleep he needs.

School is another challenge. His tiredness is starting to impinge on his behaviour in the classroom (his teacher reports that he sometimes ‘loses it’ over the tiniest of things) and getting him to engage in out of school activities is a constant battle. He seems to be well socialise and popular but he’s clever and still hasn’t learned how to manage how he uses that cleverness. In other ways, he’s immature for his age – he cries more readily than other children. He’s physically timid (this frustrates supermum, who can be a bit of a Hemulen, a great deal) and avoids teamsports or physically activities like the proverbial plague. I suspect (and feel rather guilty about it) that he gets a lot of this from me. In other ways, he’s ahead of most of his peers ( a full stage above in areas like maths and reading).

Looking at books and commentaries leads us to believe that self-esteem, or lack of it, at the core of dudelet’s tantrums and difficulties in coping with everyday elements of family life. On some occasions he’s come right out and said it – “I’m no good at anything” “You don’t love me” “You think I’m rubbish” – and it breaks my heart.

It also makes me feel terribly guilty, as if my own feelings of inadequacy and failure have somehow infected him like an airborne virus

So what are we doing?

Nothing very spectacular. We’re biting our lip, we’re avoiding getting drawn into confrontations (which always end appallingly badly), we’re praising when possible and avoiding being negative. We’e already doing most of the things one finds on typical parenting checklists (except, of course, when we forget ourselves – we get tired too). I can’t help feeling that a lot of these tensions would dissipate if he could only learn to go back to sleep. But that’s not something we can impose – he has to learn to do it himself.

Anyone else find themselves trapped in this sort of a cycle? How did you manage to break out of it?

Genital origami, or I get a vasectomy

“So you got a vasectomy. Well, bully for you!” I hear you cry.

Oh, come on. It’s got to be a more intriguing post than my usual Friday fodder of a few links or an obscure black metal band I’m way too old to be listening to.

Anyway, if you’re a dad of a certain age and with a certain number of kids, this is bound to be something you’ve thought about or even had done.

Supermum and I began discussing more permanent ways of contraception a year or two ago. She’s been on a particular  kind of pill (Yasmin) for about three years and there are a number of good reasons why she shouldn’t carry on putting additional hormones into her body (e.g. the additional small risks of cancer). On top of that, we’d agreed after Little Elf that we wouldn’t have any other children. I’m in my late 40s and supermum is only five years younger so the idea of going though another couple of years of sleepless nights and mayhem, let alone dealing with the physical impact of another pregnancy on her part, didn’t appeal. Also, there’s the matter of age. I don’t want to be retiring just as the third one starts agitating for college fees. And I don’t want to be playing catch in a Zimmer frame.

Anyway…

Condoms split, coils are icky, sterilisation for supermum wasn’t something I ever considered at any point other than typing it out right now and as for the rhythm method, I’d rather trust “Am I fertile?” answers delivered by cutting a deck of cards and assuming the answer is “No” if its spades or diamonds*. So that left vasectomy if I wanted us to carry on having sex. Which I did.

After a chaotic attempt to have a vasectomy through the NHS ended up in their moving the appointment forward two months to an impossible date with no notice and substitute offered, I checked out how much it would cost to go to a Well Known Provider of birth control. It wasn’t insignificant but it wasn’t bank-breaking. I booked and today I showed up and had the deed done.

The particular branch was apparently where M**** S***** moved her first clinic in 1921, a narrow Georgian townhouse near Fitzroy Square. I hoped, as I read the blue plaque, that they’d updated the equipment since. Across the road, a lone anti-abortion protestor knelt, clutching a set of rosary beads. I passed him on the other side of the street and we eyed each other up warily. He was surrounded by scattered plastic baby limbs which (a nurse told me) he’d try to press into the hands of already stressed women on their way into the clinic. A kind of emotional terrorism of a deeply unpleasant kind. I went and got a sandwich and by the time I came back, he’d evidently gone for lunch.

Inside I checked in, paid the balance of the fee and was soon taken into the basement to the pre-op/recovery room. Two other men were already resting on the blue recliners there. We all avoided each other’s eyes. A nurse took my blood pressure, explained the procedures to be followed after the operation and went through the consent form. Then I waited, Classic FM softly torturing my ears. I twittered a little and reviewed the kindly thoughts of my Twitter followers:

tikkabootwo @dadwhowrites It won’t hurt as much as your wife being sterilised. Good for you manning up …… or not

Snowgirl1972 @dadwhowrites that can mean only one thing. Condolences’

scrummycupcake @dadwhowrites on my hub they didn’t wait for local anaesthetic to take effect before making the 1st cut, heard him scream from waiting room

scrummycupcake @ dadwhowrites hubs was in agony for days…in contrast, my dad went back to work an hour after op.

And my favourite:

pureartifice @dadwhowrites aubergines. Expect them. That is all I have to say. Good luck x

Soon after, the surgeon came out to collect me. I think he was Nigerian and, whilst I’ve no doubt he was fully qualified**, his English wasn’t entirely up to speed. His first question was

“Tell me about your history of heart problems.”

That nearly started a history of heart trouble there and then – I’ve so far never had cardiac problems of any kind. I think he heard something in my tone as he quickly rearranged the question as “Have you ever had any heart trouble?” which made much more sense. After that, he left the questioning to the lively Chinese nurse. I mention their nationalities specifically as I found it interesting that the medical and surgical procedures were carried out by foreign nationals whilst British staff dealt with all the admin.

The other thing I noticed as soon as I entered the small surgery was a strong smell of burning.

Anyway, the nurse had me take off my trousers and lie down on the padded surgical table with my underpants about my ankles. It was all too business like and matter-of-fact for me to realise that a strange woman was looking at my penis and a strange man was apparently carrying out some form of genital origami before it was too late to argue. The surgeon (who was highly professional and inspired a lot of confidence, despite his English) warned me that there’d be a scratch. There was. “OW!” I said. He ignored me  and carried on manipulating my scrotum. I suspect he was shaving it. I haven’t dared look properly yet. The nurse engaged me in cheery, hairdresser like conversation (“Do you have children? Do you work near here? How old are they?…”) as various weird prods and sprays and twists carried on in the by-now numb area of my groin.

“This will scratch a bit more…”

“OW!” That was the main local anaesthetic.

“Do you have a boy or a girl?”

“Ah…one of each…What exactly is he doing down there?”

“He wants to know what you’re doing down there.”

“I’m looking for your tubes.”

I didn’t ask any more questions.

“You’re done.”

That’s it? My underpants apparently weren’t supportive enough so they provided me with a fetching pair of briefs in white netting.

“All the way from Harrods! High Fashion!” the cheery nurse chuckled. The only evidence of the surgery I’d just had was a white pad of bandages. I felt nothing in my groin whatsoever.

“Thank you,” I said. “But that burning smell is a bit off-putting.” The nurse nodded sympathetically.

“I know,” she said. “We’ve tried to get rid of it but nothing works. And we have to work with it all day!”

She had a point.

Afterwards, I hung out in the recovery until the light-headed feeling generated by the local anaesthetic went away and then I went home to lie on a bed and feel a bit sore.

I wouldn’t take it up as a hobby but it was ok.

*Look, if you’re interested in trying out this method, I accept no responsibility. But let me know how it goes.

**I’ve had occasion to work with non-UK medical staff in an NHS context. Current GMC requirements are very rigorous and anyone who doubts a Nigerian or Indian doctor’s professionalism is reading from a Daily Mail script of misinformation.

Virgil, Dante’s “Sweetest Father”

I finally finished Dante’s Purgatory, the second canticle of the Divine Comedy. I suspect many of us get rather stuck with the Inferno and I certainly don’t know of any video games based on Purgatory or Paradise but, much to my surprise, I found the mountain of Purgatory a much more compelling journey than the long descent through Hades.

Initially, its a tougher read. We are in the heart of the medieval Christian mindset here and at some level, one needs to suspend disbelief, as it were, and surrender to the idea that man can only be saved through grace. But Dante’s vision is also an optimistic one – the sins of Purgatory are all sins of love misdirected and demonstrate man’s natural potential to be good. Further, the sinners are there, gladly, to be purged, to be made ready for Paradise. Quite literally, the souls of Purgatory needed only to ask (or ‘knock’, as the Biblical exegetics amongst you might note).

But Dante also realises the relationship between Virgil and the Dante of the poem in a wonderfully subtle way. Virgil, his mentor as a poet and as a man “lost in [the] dark wood” of his middle years struggling towards some kind of maturity, is ever at his elbow – encouraging, cajoling, instructing. For Dante, he becomes the ideal father figure for a man in the doldrums of middle age and as the poet travels through Hell and Purgatory faced with spirits, devils, centaurs, angels, and much else, he grows to depend on Virgil’s firm-minded kindliness and good counsel utterly.

As such, the point in Canto 30 when Virgil silently departs, his mission done, is the most quietly devastatingly moment I’ve encountered in Dante’s poem to date. They have reached the River Lethe, on the borders of Earthly Paradise. After various marvels are revealed to them, Dante realises that, waiting across the stream, is none other than Beatrice, his long lost love, the motivating force for the whole of the journey and the promise – and the threat – of his regeneration. Stricken with awe and a kind of rapturous terror

I turned left – as a little child will do
wide-eyed and running over to its mama
when he’s afraid of something or he’s hurt
To say to Virgil, “Not a drop of blood
runs in my veins that isn’t trembling now
I know the traces of the ancient flame
But Virgil had deprived us of his light
Virgil, the sweetest father, Virgil, he
in whom I trusted that I might be healed*

Virgil has returned to Limbo, the outermost circle of the Inferno, doomed to dwell with the ‘good pagans’ even beyond the resurrection. The author Dante’s treatment of Virgil in the Comedy remains puzzling when the suicide Cato and the later poet Roman Statius are saved. Dante gives Virgil primacy above all other poets and draws on the Aenid again and again. Still, Dante expresses the loss of Virgil as one might feel the loss of a parent and reading these lines again, I think of the loss of my own father. Though the loss in my case is a selfish one, full of might-have- and should-have-beens. But still, there were moments. And there is always that moment on the banks of the Lethe that awaits all of us, Virgil or Dante.

Perhaps that’s why Dante’s Virgil had to leave, was unable to travel further with the man who’d become as a son to him. The hardest thing for a father is to realise that one day his children will have to travel on without him. And that’s a law as immutable as the divine judgement of the God of the Comedy.

Gateways

Dudelet is digging into his bowl of Hoops and humming to himself. I have the same habit.

“How do you feel about Year 3?” I ask him. He’s only got a week and a bit of Year 2 left.

“Well, I’m a bit worried because we’ll be the smallest in the playground.”

He’s not joking. All this year he’s been one of the biggest – the Year 2s tower over the Reception class and amiably lord it over the Year 1s. But next year, he’ll literally pass through two gateways into the Big Playground where the mysteries of Years 3 to 6 lurk, tooled up and ready to rumble. Also, how typical of my son to say ‘smallest’ instead of ‘littlest’.

“How do you mean?”

“The Year 6s are really big! Even bigger than you!”

“Well, some of them. People are sorts of sizes at that age.”

“I’m a bit nervous.”

“Hmm. I know it’s scary but there are always going to be those gateways. Like when you went to Reception or when you go to High School. I can’t remember my first day at primary school – your Year 3 but I still remember when I went to High School.”

“That’s funny! I was just going to ask you that!”

I look at him. He’s actually interested.

“Well, you know how teachers at your school, when you squabble…”

“Squabble?”

“Kind of argue or push or shove each other for some reason. You know how teachers tell you to be friends and perhaps make you sit in the thinking corner for a bit?”

“Yes. I suppose that happens. Sometimes.”

“Okay. Well, on my first day at High School, I got into one of those squabbles with another boy in a craft class and we got sent out. And the craft teacher – a really huge man who looked like he should have long fangs like a goblin – grabbed us and threw us out of the classroom. So we were a bit nervous and we decided that we’d explain to him that we’d made it up and sorted things out and so on. And…”

“And what happened?”

“He came out, whacked us both on the side of the head – it really stung my ear – and told us not to do it again or we’d be up before Brother X, the Headmaster and he’d give us six.”

“Six?”

“Look, you know they used to hit children in schools? And how they aren’t allowed to do it anymore?”

“Yes I know. Phew.” He shakes his head solemnly.

“So, anyway,” I finish up, a bit lamely. “Year 3 is nothing to worry about.”

“Okay. Can I watch telly now?”

“Okay.”

I sit down for two minutes to eat my toast (I can hear that little elf, who is a complete grump in the mornings, just like her mother, is in-bound). I don’t want him to pass those gates any sooner than he has to. But here they come.

Three things I tell dudelet each night

Warning: Contains parenting. And sentiment. And a teeny bit of very un-Dad Who Writes-like slush.

Something which supermum and I noticed a while back (and continue to struggle with) is how a bad day with dudelet (nearly seven years old at this point) can overshadow all his many wonderful qualities, actions and general all-round fabulousness.

So, much to my surprise, I introduced a little positive thinking practice into our bedtime routine. The last thing we do before “lights out”* is for me to tell him three things he did during the day that I loved. I’ve set myself a few parameters

• No reference to anything bad that’s gone on, like particularly naughty behaviour
• No comparison with his little sister
• No use of something I’ve heard from supermum – they all have to be from actual, real, concrete interactions I’ve had with him.

On work days, this can be tricky. But I manage it. If I forget, he reminds me. Ands recently, he’s started asking me to add three things that I’ve done during the day that I think where pretty good or worthwhile (I’m paraphrasing). So I suppose he’s now reforming me a little.

Is it working? Who knows? I suspect all parenting techniques are essentially homoeopathic, if you see what I mean.

But at least we both remind each other that every day, he’s given several new reasons to love and value him so it’s probably doing some good somewhere.

*It’s actually “Lights turned down a bit” as dudelet often reads himself to sleep