They say the way people parent can be a reaction against their own upbringing. Now, I am very thankful that I have MUCH in my childhood to appreciate and emulate, but I do recognise one area where this rings true for me: I like to encourage the chaos.
Growing up as an only child to a full-time working single parent, the house was, well, quiet. I read a lot. My girlhood fantasies were based around Malory Towers and St Claire’s: of friends to chat to and play games with and have adventures with after school hours. For me, going to university was really living the Enid Blyton dream: I was at last surrounded by peers to talk to at any hour. No hockey, but definitely some midnight feasts in the shared kitchens.
So in true reactionary style I was pretty determined that our boys would have the sort of childhood where there are always friends around. As tots, we’d go to all the playgroups, and we met weekly as a gang of church mums and pre-schoolers, noisy and messy. Now the boys are at school, I love to arrange a playdate and encourage their burgeoning friendships, and nothing is more fun than collecting some extra children and feeling like the Pied Piper bringing them all back to our house to run around yelling (although we’ve slightly scuppered this by moving out of school catchment, so now it all takes a bit more organising). I love a raucous home group dinner, where all the children get food everywhere then disappear off to play (or, sometimes, destroy the house – we’ve had incredibly generous homegroup leaders). For a spell, on Sunday afternoons we had to clean and set up for our Monday morning toddler group, and my three plus another three children would race around the empty church chortling, so that what should have felt like a chore was actually the joyous pinnacle of our weekend. One of my favourite photos on display is of me arriving at a Friday night kids’ club with eight sodden children, all dripping wet after walking there in an actual full-on thunderstorm. Another is of seven young boys having ‘band practice’ in the living room, with all the plastic toy instruments scattered over the floor, although I'm pretty glad there's no audio. I want the boys to know they can always have friends around, and tell them so.
So the first lockdown felt quite quiet. There’s three of them, and they can be pretty loud individually, so not miserably quiet like the only children who didn’t get to interact with a peer for months. But quiet as in I couldn’t suggest we had a bunch of friends around.
But I actually think they quite liked it.
I’m an extrovert married to an introvert; I know I have to balance my desire for socialising against my husband’s need to quietly recharge. And I have to remind myself over and over that I’m also an extrovert parenting an introvert.
To put this in perspective, this weekend we had a family round for lunch, and one of my boys locked himself in the bathroom with a book and a duvet because he just wanted to be by himself and read – we only found him when too many people needed the loo at once and started hammering on the bathroom door. The irony is not lost on me, the pair of us longing for each other’s idea of a perfect childhood.
And so whilst I want to get vicarious pleasure from the boys' interactions with their friends, I really need to stop the pendulum swinging reaction and embrace the good in the quiet, and show a bit more respect for the needs of the boys for their downtime. The middle way is always the best, right?
Besides, I’m still recovering from the stress of the double sleepover this weekend, but that’s a story for another time…
More on mis-matched marriages: https://sarahhadfi.wixsite.com/website/post/on-mis-matches
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