10 Things They Don't Tell You About Toddlers

It’s one of the things you probably hear most before you have a baby. “You don’t realise how much they’ll change your life,” usually said with a dreamy faraway look. At this time, you probably assume that the speaker is thinking fondly of their little darling, and how life is so much better now. With hindsight, the odds are just as good that they are remembering the last time they were able to eat a meal in peace or get a full night’s sleep.

Well, having been caught out by this ourselves, I’ve decided to be selfless and tell people the Truth About Toddlers. (sounds good doesn’t it? It could be a book…) You may have heard some of these before, or some may be a total shock, but if you haven’t got children, take heed and learn. If you have got children, feel free to heave a sympathetic sigh and add on any vital points I may have missed. We need to work together, people.

1. They are in training for adolescence as soon as they hit eighteen months. The Terrible Twos doesn’t start at their second birthday and end at their third- as soon as they can walk and talk the Terribleness is in place right up till their teenage years. They have strops, they have mood swings, they tell you to go away. My two year old even stamps into his bedroom and slams the door on me. All that’s missing is “You don’t understand,” and I’m sure that’s just a matter of vocabulary.

2. They are experts at manipulation. They could write a book on it (if they could write). Machiavelli could learn a thing or two from any toddler. Tactics vary, from going straight from one parent to another hoping for a different answer (everyone knows about this one though), to using emotional blackmail that they learn from Grandma when you’re not looking. They keep you on your toes – just when you’re all fired up, in strictest, no-nonsense mode, they switch to utterly adorable and you cave instantly. And you fall for it every time.

3. The mess. Seriously, even if people tried they couldn’t warn you about the mess. I was never a great housewife (I can hear my husband choking as he reads that understatement of the century) but even I get depressed by the sheer scale of mess one tiny little body produces. And they do it without you noticing. It’s one thing to tip the toy box upside down – at least then you just pile it all back in. But I’m talking about the house exploding. It’s relatively tidy one minute, so you go congratulate yourself on keeping on top of it and go to make yourself a cup of tea. Five minutes later you can’t find the floor.

4. The amount of ‘stuff’ you need with you. When they’re newborn, that’s fairly self-evident, what with bottles and muslins. And I imagine once Daniel’s toilet training it’ll be the same, pants, spare trousers etc. Now, I thought I had it easy. After all, all he needs is a few wipes and a couple of nappies and a drink? Yes, but he also insists on bringing a train, or Buzz Lightyear, or a cow. Soon you’ve got half of Toys R Us in your handbag, and get a funny look at the checkout because instead of your purse you’ve pulled out a toy shark. And you wonder on the way back to the car why your neck and shoulders ache all the time.

5. Speaking of shops, the old ‘tantrum in the aisles’ chestnut is a classic. This is a tricky one, because everyone’s seen the cliche on tv and is prepared for it. But the true horror of it actually builds up over time. It starts when your child is around eighteen months, and you’re thinking behaviour problems should be starting any time now, but since they’re not you must have the best-behaved child in the world. You go around the supermarket, outwardly commiserating with the harrassed mother coping with meltdown in the biscuit aisle but secretly smug because your little angel is sitting contentedly in the trolley smiling serenely at the world. Then one day they decide enough is enough and you are suddenly the harrassed mother, caught totally unprepared because you’d been lulled into a false sense of security.

6. How much you can love and loathe CBeebies simultaneously. No matter how much you swear pre-parenthood that you won’t let them watch too much tv, it’s a rare parent that doesn’t, in a moment of desperation, blurt out “How about CBeebies?” and savour the moments of peace that follow. Mister Maker is pure genius, at least that’s what my son thinks. On the other hand, Waybuloo is just weird and you want to shoot Little Cook Small after about three minutes.

7. Their unerring sense of timing. They will desperately need something (insert most inconvenient request you can think of here) right when you need to make a phone call / leave the house / go to the toilet. They are at death’s door until the moment you get them into see the doctor, at which point they jump up and run around, completely healthy. They will sleep through for the first night in eight months the night they sleep at Grandma’s (not that I’m bitter and twisted in any way).

8. The total lack of fear. They’re tiny, they look so fragile and you hear horror stories about children who’ve landed on their heads. So you spend your life a quivering wreck if they are higher than 5 centimetres off the ground or even slightly close to the road. But the little so-and-sos really don’t care. They climb onto the sofa, jump off, roll off. They climb onto the slide and try all sorts of interesting ways to come down, none of which include nice and safely on their bottoms. They launch themselves off every piece of furniture they can get onto. They arrange toys so that it makes a precarious ladder to the top shelf just to reach a DVD. Or just for the fun of it. And every hair on your head that turns grey overnight they count as a job well done.

9. The lack of freedom. Yours, not theirs. When they’re a baby, they lie in their pram looking cute and you can go just about anywhere and do just about anything. Please, make the most of it. Yes, you have to stop for an occasional feed or nappy change, but this is nothing compared to going out with a toddler. They don’t like a shop, they WILL let you know. You fancy a pub dinner? Forget it. You can’t just up and out for some late night shopping because they need to be back in bed by seven. I hadn’t realised how often we had popped out for an evening, browsing at Borders and having a leisurely latte in Starbucks (with our only constraint the closing time), until we couldn’t do it any more.

10. How much none of the above matter. You are totally unprepared for how much you love this little person. When I am upset or ill Daniel will come and give me a cuddle and ask “alright Mummy?” with such love and concern in his face, and there is no way of describing the feeling that comes with that. Just as there is no way of describing the feeling you get when you haven’t seen them for a couple of hours and their faces light up when they see you.

Is there anything I have missed?

A Helping Hand

I’m coming to the conclusion that writing can be a teensy bit frustrating. You can be flying high one moment and then totally without inspiration the next. Now, I realise this is groundbreaking stuff that no-one has ever written before. You may need to sit down to carry on reading. But joking aside, you don’t actually grasp the reality of it until you are doing it, and it’s a lot like parenting in that respect. A complete shock to the system.

I have also realised, however, that writers as a breed are supportive, caring and genuinely want to help each other. I know, this is a sweeping generalisation and there will always be the odd recluse who likes to tuck himself up away from the world and avoid contact with other human beings as much as possible. In general, though, through my experiences mostly on Twitter and my own fledgling blog, the writers I have encountered are caring people who want to help you through sticky patches.

In a world where publishing seems to exploding – everyone is writing and blogs and sites like helium.com give opportunities to anyone to be heard – it is a huge challenge to get anywhere. I am always reading advice on how to stand out in the slushpile, descriptions of mountains of manuscripts drowning publishers and agents, warnings that for every success story there are x number of rejections. It would be natural that in such a competitive world, every writer would be out for themselves, and offering help to someone else would be akin to shooting yourself in the foot. I remember auditioning for Oklahoma! once in a local dramatic society, and another girl had missed the rehearsal where we were given scripts and set audition pieces. I typed out the pieces for her and emailed them to her in time to practice for the big day, and she actually got the lead part and I was in the chorus. If I hadn’t done that, who knows? I could be on my way to the West End right now (probably not, but since we’ll never know I can daydream a little).

But there isn’t that kind of mentality at all. Everyone I have come into contact with since calling myself a writer has been kind, encouraging and genuinely pleased at their colleagues’ successes. I would like to take advantage of that a little.

I have set up a social network on Ning called Writing Cafe – writingcafe.ning.com – where I’m kind of hoping to start a sort of online writing group. I know there are probably lots of these already, but my Google searches haven’t really brought any to light so they must all be hiding somewhere – perhaps run by the miserable recluses I mentioned earlier. The idea is to connect with other writers  (with a little more intimacy than Twitter allows), publish pieces of writing to receive feedback (with a little more privacy than sites like Helium allow for the more bashful among us), and basically see what else people would like to get out of such a group. I also had the idea that there could be a regular online chat time.

Anyway, that’s my little contribution towards helping writers connect together. And it’s completely selfish, I felt so touched by the support I had during the week on Twitter I want to take it further. Have a look and sign up!

Writing Cafe

Why Write?

I’ve been congratulating myself a little the last couple of days. Having gone from being close to giving up completely on writing I am now feeling more confident and have even finished a couple of projects. I can feel writing becoming a more and more integral part of my life, to the extent where it seems strange to go a day without writing anything. It’s taken me a while to get there, but I feel much happier.

This has led me to wonder why I ever wanted to write in the first place. What was it that, even when I felt so low, kept me going instead of giving up as I usually do so easily with other things?

I had a dim memory, a few days ago, of when my grandma died. She had always lived in London, whereas we live in the north east, so we didn’t see her all that often, but when we did she was always good fun. She was a proper old Irish lady, full of stories about the fairies at the bottom of the garden and tales from the part of Ireland that she came from. When she died, about fourteen years ago, we went down to London to sort out some of her things, and came across a rejection letter from a publisher.

She had written and submitted a children’s book – I don’t remember whether it was a collection of stories or one long story. It was something I had never known about her and I had a strong feeling of pride that she had actually taken the leap and submitted something. Now when I am starting to take myself seriously as a writer it feels quite apt to keep hold of that memory. It feels like a link to someone very special, and in some strange way like I am carrying on from her.

This isn’t the only, or main, reason I write though. I only remembered this incident a few days ago, after all, and I’ve been writing on and off for a while. I have been a voracious reader since childhood, does that explain something? A desire to emulate the authors I admire and to make up for the ones I don’t?

I have always enjoyed words – at school I was best at subjects that used words and language like English or French. I was the one people asked about spellings and synonyms. I have written little pieces since I was a child, just for the fun of it, until I became a teenager, and fitting in and being cool became more important (not that I ever managed it!).

But perhaps the most important reason to write is just…because. Because I can, and I know that with work and perseverance I can do it well. Because it feels right (no pun intended) and increasingly natural. Because when I am doing some mundane, everyday activity and I get a story playing in my head, the logical next step is to jot it down to play around with.

I’m fairly sure I’ve missed some reasons, and I will shout out at some random point “Yes, that’s another one!” In the meantime, what are other reasons people write?

When Did That Happen?

When did my son turn into a miniature human being?

I remember when he was first born. We marvelled, as all new parents do, over his tiny hands and feet, his amazingly loud voice and how clever he was to be able to look at us and recognise us. But he was still almost like a different species. A baby, not quite a human being like the ones walking and talking around us. He couldn’t actually do anything. He couldn’t choose what activity he was going to do, where he was going to move to, what he was going to say.

Now, all of a sudden, he is not a baby any more. He is making those choices. He can choose, if he wants, to run backwards and forwards around our flat all day. He can choose to take out the animals from his Noah’s Ark or his little figures and line them all up, making them ‘say’ clever and insightful things. He can choose to copy what we say –  we’re not big on swearing but we have to watch every word we say. He chooses to walk in a straight line, a wiggly line, dance, run, fall over.

He knows what to do. When did that happen? When did he learn that if I say “Dinnertime” he has to go and knock on Daddy’s office door then climb onto his chair? When did he learn that to turn on the musical Christmas toys he pushes the switch on the back? How did he learn to operate the TV and DVD player more quickly than Daddy did? When did he realise that if we get the camera out it’s much more fun to smile adorably at the camera then turn away at the last minute?

He talks to me. He says things like “I’ve got an idea, people” and “Alright, Mummy? Have a nice sleep?” I can’t believe that two months ago I was worried about his speech – he comes out with the most amazing things now. Yes, it’s not always an unmixed blessing. Like when we were in the shop and he pointed at an elderly gentleman with a white beard and said, very clearly, “Look, Mummy, Santa Claus!” But he can, and does, also say “I missed Mummy” after nursery, or “Love you”.

He has strops. Nothing all that bad (see my post The Challenge of Loving) but he definitely has strops. When he was a baby he had four basic states: cry, sleep, smile, neutral. Cries had variations, smiles had grades depending on the cause (Grade 1 for mildly amused, Grade 5 for Grandma etc), but they were essentially the same state. Now, Daniel has all the moods that I or Daddy have and suddenly we see ourselves reflected in him. We’re allowed to be moany and miserable after a sleepless night with him, but find it hard to deal with him being the same. That’s because we’re just not used to it – all of a sudden he has adult emotions and can express them and we need to catch up with him. But on the other side of that he has also developed a wonderful sense of the ridiculous, and his laughter at something that is just too silly is infectious.

He experiments. He only has our word for it that climbing onto the sofa and rolling off will hurt, so he gives it a go. He sees no reason not to take the roof off his toy garage and use the frame as a hula hoop. He’s pretty sure that a big car will go down his slide with a big crash, but what will a little car do? And he doesn’t know, not for definite, that he’ll get caught every time he tries to take a bauble off the Christmas tree. May as well keep having a go. The baby we had, it seems like only ten minutes ago, couldn’t have even imagined any of these possibilities.

Now, we loved our tiny baby so much. We could not imagine loving him more, he seemed so perfect in every way. I’m sure when his little sister is born in April we will go through the same emotions. But the thought that she could develop into the same sort of miniature human being as Daniel, with all that potential and excitement, but entirely different again, is mind-boggling. And I can’t wait.