Something really curious has happened to me over the last
year, and like a lot of incremental changes, I'm not quite sure when it
happened, only that it has.
On Sunday we went to an incredible street festival in the
centre of town and, as befits the law of averages, one of the three children was
on the verge of melting down on a rolling basis throughout the day.
First to go was Alfie who, on discovering that his sister
had eaten all the dumplings while he had been off watching a batucada band,
flipped both his lid, and the remaining dumplings clean out of my hands.
While soy sauce dripped off my nose and pooled in my bra, I
took a deep breath and refocused on what needed to happen.
“Alfie” I said gently, getting down to his level “look
around you. This is my favourite top, and those were your sister’s dumplings. I
know you feel sad, but now we feel sad too.”
And then we hugged, and he said sorry to me and to his
sisters.
And then I said sorry because now he had soy sauce all over
him too.
Throughout this little scene, I’m pretty sure – no scratch
that, I KNOW – that there were people around us looking on in disgust. I could
hear them, I could see them, and I could feel the waves of disapproval at my
parenting approach.
You know how much I cared?
About as much as I care who wins the current series of the
latest must watch “reality show”, which is to say, not even the slightest bit:
It is actually impossible to quantify the lack of fucks I was able to give at
that point, numbers do not go down that low. Minus fucks only extend so far,
and I was way off the end of that scale.
Later on, Miss Olive reached the end of her day which, because
she is only 2, was about 4 hours before the rest of the family reached the end
of their days. I don’t think it is an
over exaggeration to say that there was a hella ton of woes, with a generous
side helping of doom expressed attached to the situation.
We were in a makeshift bar garden, where extremely cheerful
adults were in the process of enjoying some extremely alcoholic drinks and some
extremely pleasant music. None of them had planned to add an extremely loud
toddler tantrum into the mix.
I wanted to share how I reacted to that one too, because for
some reason, one of the other adults who was there with us grabbed my camera
and took a photo:
This is what it looks like to finally get my parenting
priorities right.
I was shocked when I downloaded my photos and found this;
shocked enough to want to mark this as something important, both in my life and
the children’s.
Right here, is me giving all of myself to my children, and
none of myself to the judging of others. Right here is me being 200% present
for the people who need me. Right here is me being able to do that without the
knot of nausea I used to feel when my children “kicked off” in public.
I have no idea when it happened, I just know that it has.
That photo is just everything. Beautiful moment. - Carmen
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