A mistress of spin

This parenting is a funny old thing. I'm consistently in awe (or rather more accurately slightly scared) of those uber Mummys who have everything under control. You know them, they have whisked up a freshly baked cake, done the ironing and not shouted at their children once that day. The sort of Mummy I'll never be. Well, I can do a cake but the ironing and not shouting thing is well beyond me.

I have however, come to a huge realisation which I feel is going to significantly affect the way I feel about the uber Mummy. Finally, I have realised that it is all about the presentation.

Let me give you an example of a day spent in the Brits household last week to illustrate what I mean.

Up at 7, I took the boys to nursery before settling down to a few hours work at home. Around about 12, I walked over to nursery to pick them up and chatted to the Bosnian Mummys at the nursery gates as the boys played in the playground. On our walk back home we made the most of the snow with snowballs and decided we would make a snow man later. After lunch we had a bit of 'quiet time' as Adam practiced some writing and Luke did some drawing and I prepared a marinade for their supper. Time then to take the dog for a walk in the park. We were out for about 90 minutes or so, the boys returning red cheeked and worn out from all the running about. Decided that we should bake some banana bread together before the boys sloped off to play pirates in the playroom as I cooked dinner. Dave came back from work just as they were finishing supper and he took them upstairs for a bit of a play, father son time type thing, a bath and they finished off the day all clean, tidy, watching a bit of TV in their pyjamas, sipping their milk. Quick story and they were all tucked up and fast asleep.

That's quite an uber Mummy sort of day isn't it? Everything is there: exercise and outdoor time, quiet time, individual play, some form of creativity, play with other children in the morning, cooking from scratch, good bedtime routine. All peaches and cream then in the Brit household.

But although we did indeed do all of the things above, the reality of the day was far more like this

Luke got up at 5.30am. I got into bed with him to try and keep him in bed until 7. It was a long 90 minutes, during which I was regularly battered over the head with a toy car and had to remove his fingers from my nose on more than one occasion. Once everyone was up, the battle to get everyone dressed for nursery commenced. Adam is supposed to be dressing himself now. He was more interested in running around like a looney trying to irritate his brother. First episode of shouting from me. Finally get them out of the door and towards nursery. Phew.

Come home and attempt to work. Faff around, read some blogs, realise that I've wasted the entire morning and have achieved nothing. My own fault, but irritating none the less, feel cross with myself. Walk over to nursery to pick them up, muttering positive mantras about how I will not shout today and be a better mother and generally less grumpy. Let the boys play for a bit in the little playground the nursery has. Within five minutes chaos has erupted, the boys are snatching each other's toys, trying to hit each other and crying. I attempt to withdraw gracefully, but they do not cooperate about putting on fleeces, coats, hats, boots and the other paraphernalia required to go outside in a Bosnian winter. Finally get out of the nursery, feel that my positive mantras have bitten the dust after a mere 5 minutes.

The walk home is slow, agonisingly, mind bendingly slow. Every pile of snow must be examined. Snowballs are thrown. Faces are hit. Tears are shed. Refusal to hold Mummys hand as we near the big road that must be crossed. They start getting silly, run around screaming. Second shouting episode from me. Tempers are lost and not just mine either.

Finally get the boys back home. Feed them lunch. Get them to sit quietly at the table as I try to make the marinade for dinner. Luke insists on using felt tip pens as missiles. Is really pleased when he remembers if he fires them at the wall when they don't have a cap on, they leave a mark. I stop that activity sharpish and he continues dumping all the pens onto the ground. Adam in the meantime is doing his writing nicely, right up until the point that Luke starts scribbling on his book. General fight. I stick them out of the kitchen, tell them to read a book or something, and finish up as fast as I can.

Head to the park having had yet another battle getting them ready to go out. We appear to be on a go slow by the boys. It takes us about 45 minutes to walk less than 100m. More snowballs thrown, more faces hit, more tears shed. The dog, bored senseless by the snail pace of the group takes off. Is last seen heading to the boundary of the park. I grab the boys and drag them along as we go to try and find her. Surely that isn't her? Breaking into someones house? Oh it is. Leave the boys with instructions to 'STAY THERE', and go and haul her out, apologising with everything I have to the old woman who is rightfully pretty cross at having a great big damp retriever piling into her front room. The boys are LOVING this. They start shouting 'bloody dog', obviously just learnt from me. I thank my lucky stars I was relatively refined with my language, it could have been a lot worse.

I drag everyone home. Am fed up. There are more snowballs, more tears. Everyone cold and wet and pretty miserable. Decide baking is the way forward. Get everything ready, the boys are fighting over who is going to play with Thomas. Leave them to it, rationalise this is all part of them learning how to negotiate. Eventually they come in. We pour out the ingredients. A wooden spoon is waved, a large amount of sticky mess hits the wall. As I pour the ingredients I realise that it doesn't look quite right. Realise too late that one of my little angels has switched the weighing thing from grams to lbs. What I weigh out to be 100g is actually 1.00 lbs which is not the same at all. This has been switched halfway through the process. I have no idea what is right and what isn't. Decide to lob a bit more of what I thought looked a little less than usual in. Stick the goo into the oven.

Too late, I remember that I need the oven to make their dinner. Look at my marinade. Stick it in the fridge for another day. Look in the fridge to see what else we have. Result, I can cobble together another dinner, but it is not one that Adam, a fussy eater to say the least, will eat without a fight. Wonder if I'm up for the fight. Decide that he doesn't have a choice we haven't got anything else to eat. I cook the dinner, they play (pretty nicely, bless them). Dinner is served. Anticipated fight begins and goes on for a while. I forget to take the banana bread out. The sticky goo is now burnt sticky goo. They have it for pudding anyway.

Just as they are finishing, Dave comes home. We all shout 'DADDY!' with relief. I hiss at him that I've had enough, he has to take them up for a bath RIGHT NOW. He gives me a look that says 'but they are being such angels'. I scowl, stick my hackles up and start growling. Besides, I still have to clean up the sticky goo mess.

Do the washing up in peace and quiet and listen to Radio 4. Feel a lot less stressed. Sounds like they are all having a wonderful time upstairs. Head up to join in stories. Realise that a tornado has hit. Every single bed has been stripped and the sheets are draped all over the cupboards. The question 'what are you doing???!!!' was met with a simple 'we're making camps'. I growl a bit more about the sense of doing this right before bedtime and remake all the beds. Then, at last, after what seems like the longest afternoon on earth, they are in bed and entering the land of nod.

Downstairs for a large glass of wine. And possibly another large glass of wine. And a reflection that this uber Mummy thing is probably all in the way that you present the activities. Spin it right and I too could look competent. So now, when I'm confronted with someone talking about all the amazing things that they do with their children all day everyday, I remember that from the outside, my days could look like that too. More importantly, I've realised that their days are probably very like mine in reality. Somehow that makes me feel a lot better.

Purgatory

I now have my answer for the question that all teenagers hurl at their parents at some point 'What did you ever do for me anyway?'

All last week Adam's nursery has foregone normal morning nursery activities and headed down to the ice rink that opens every winter in Tuzla's central park, Slana Banja. I wasn't sure how he would take to it, he's not a big into making a fool of himself, falling over or doing things that he doesn't already know how to do. Ice Skating ticks all of these boxes, I was not expecting a success. To my enormous surprise he loved it. Adored it. Couldn't wait to get back onto the rink. He harrassed, harangued and battered his beaten down mother over the head until I agreed that we could go en famille at the weekend.

So en famille we did. Outdoor gear on, skates on, a relatively small amount of money parted with (a massive 3KM (£1ish) per person) and we were off. Well, sort of off. More gripping onto the side of the rink in sheer terror (me) as I try to support Luke who is jumping up and down shouting 'wheeeee wheeeee' and then 'faster Mummy faster!' as Dave and Adam disappear gliding gracefully over the ice. Then we swap children, Adam grabs my hand and pulls me straight off balance.

It led to 20minutes of sheer purgatory for me. Holding up Luke who was clearly having the most wonderful time, as we tottered around, it was all I could do to pray I wasn't going to fall down squashing a small child and slicing off his fingers in the process. That position, the slightly hunched over incredibly uncomfortable one known to all mothers, is a killer on the old, not too good at the best of times, back. The cold toes, the crippling boots, the aching muscles, good Lord I hated every minute. The boys adored it, can't wait to do it again. Obviously, we will go again. But I will remember this, and when they ask me what did I ever do for them in that teenage-ery huffing pouting fashion, I'll be able to say - I took you ice skating.

**@%%&&!

One of my least favourite things about some Bosnian parents is their propensity to think that teaching their children to swear is funny. Now, I'm no angel on the swearing front, I try to contain my expletives to 'oh blast' or 'ffffffffiddle dee dee!' and similar, but occasionally the ability to stop my mouth moving before the words come out goes missing. I do try hard not to swear in front of my children as I do not think children swearing is in the slightest way funny, cute or amusing.

Most of the time the Bosnian children swearing doesn't really impact me. I mean I can swear a bit in Bosnian, but most of the insults just form a part of the series of sounds that I don't understand. But when Adam comes back from nursery and suddenly yells at Luke 'eat my pooo-see', I suddenly have a problem on my hands.

Luckily for me (and much like Nappy Valley Girl's boys) he is in a real toilet humour phase so has developed this particular insult to be 'eat my poo'. I'm less fussed about this, it is something he could have come up with on his own and as we have discovered that the only way to get him to eat Spag Bol is to tell him that it is made up of worms covered with worm poo, I can see why he is thinking the way he is. I've had a few conversations with him about not saying nasty things to other people, but keen to not draw attention to this particular phrase I'm ignoring it completely and hoping it will soon be forgotten.

I am interested to know though what others have done to stop their children from swearing, and also from any Bosnians who might be able to clarify whether I'm right in thinking that some people think it is funny to teach children to swear and whether they also like to teach them to swear in English.

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And a late shout out for people wanting to check the latest British Mummy Bloggers Carnival - it went up last week over at A Mother's Ramblings, if you haven't already been over there, then skip over to check out the stories from the parenting front line.

Super Nanny lessons

As the parent of any toddler knows, there are a few golden rules that you (try to) follow.

The first is that if you make a threat then you must be able to carry it out. So, when you say to your adorable offspring in their least adorable state 'if you do that again then we won't be going to the playground' you must be able to not go to the playground if they continue to spit yogurt drink all over their brother. This punishment can often be as much a punishment for the parent as it is for the child, to not go to the playground will obviously entail a screaming tantruming child who wants to go out, is now corralled at home with a parent who now has to deal with the little angel and has to find something else to do to fill the afternoon. The key here is obviously to find a better punishment, but I'm drifting off point.

If you don't carry out your threat you lose all legitimacy and, in the words of the great Potty Mummy you are toast. The kids have you were they want you. They don't need to listen to what you say, they know you don't mean it.

So, us lowly mums have a lesson for the International Community present in Bosnia. When you say to the Bosnian Politicians, you are all very very naughty and you must do what I say or else, you need to have an 'or else' or the Bosnian politicians will consider that you, too, are toast. Or at least irrelevant and will laugh at you when you get all cross and huffy. Trust me, there is nothing worse than being laughed at when you are cross and huffy.

It isn't surprising then that the role of the International Community here is being questioned, with quite a few people pushing to close OHR. Without teeth, without the ability to do the 'or else' (or even have an idea of what the 'or else' will be) it doesn't appear to have a whole lot of relevency.

But, the political situation here is still ever so tense. The situation has not improved with yesterday's decision to allow Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro visa free travel in the EU, but not Bosnia or Albania. As the Bosnian Croats mainly have Croatian passports (and visa free travel) and the Bosnian Serbs can legally obtain Serbian passports (and therefore are about to get visa free travel), the only group of people this is affecting is the Bosniaks (also known as Bosnian Muslims). There is a concern that isolating Europe's Islamic population in this way will lead to increased tension in the region (as detailed by the European Stability Initiatives report here). Some people here are questioning why it is that the victims of war crimes, such as Srebrenica, are to be denied visa free travel, while the perpetrators, by stint of their passports, will be able to travel freely (see the Balkan Insight article, but a few people I've spoken here have said the same thing). It should also be said that Serbia did meet the requirements laid out by the EU for visa free travel, and Bosnia has yet to do so, although the difference between the two countries is very slight indeed.

So, with an already tense political situation, decisions being made that will only make it even more so, it is important to think through what exactly an international presence here in Bosnia is designed to do. OHR (the international community organisation here in Bosnia) thinks of itself as stabilizers for kids learning to use a bicycle. Others say having the stabilizers stops the kids from learning how to balance. Either way, as all parents can tell you, if you want respect you must be prepared to be unpopular and carry through clearly defined threats. Otherwise you become an irrelevancy. In the decision of having an international community presence or not, the choice of having an irrelevent one is the least attractive of all.

The Idle Parent

I was idly reading the Times website the other day (trying to ignore the chaos going on behind me) and came across a book review for a book called The Idle Parent by Tom Hodgkinson. I haven't actually managed to get my hands on a copy to actually read the book yet, a copy is awaiting my return to the UK, but the review struck a chord.

Essentially, he is advocating allowing children to have more time and space to themselves to create their own play. He thinks that many parents spend too much time standing over their children in adult organised activities, ensuring that things are done just so, and that many of these activities are too educationally orientated. I was reminded of a conversation I had last year with another member of the Mothers Union as we watched other mothers being very engaged with their children in the playground whilst we gossiped and our children were last seen investigating bugs in the hedge. We confidently agreed that we had made a decision to parent our children in this way, to allow them space to explore and create for themselves, but then we secretly whispered to each other that maybe it wasn't so much a conscious decision but shhh .. maybe... just maybe.. we might actually just be a bit lazy.

Fast forward a year and I find myself in a culture where this type of parenting is the norm. The Bosnian kids are afforded a remarkable amount of freedom in comparison to British ones. They play outside, the boys on bikes and with footballs, the girls walking around arm in arm whispering and giggling. All ages mix together, they all know each other and they are, on the whole, beautifully behaved. Exuberant sometimes, loud often, they engage with each other, taking the resonsibility to look out for the younger ones and without fail respect the adults. It seems to me that this mixing of ages and backgrounds leads to a real development of a social awareness that can be lacking in British children who seldom have the opportunity to engage with youngsters outside of their own age range.

So, now that spring is arriving (at least the days are getting longer even if there is still snow on the ground), I'm looking forward to watching the Bosnian children enjoying themselves. I'm not sure that I am quite prepared to let my two head off on their own, they are only 2 and 3 after all, but I am looking forward to possibly reading a book on the porch whilst they create havoc in the garden and not feeling guilty that I ought to be organising something.

making your life easier

I'm a huge fan of making my life easier. Granted that as a mother of two toddlers it is never going to be a long leisurely coffee whilst reading the papers kind of easier, but even so there are things that can be done to promote a more harmonious, less stressful existence. All toys that require a battery or make a noise are discretely 'lost' for example, as are any toys that repeat a ditty over and over again. I buy 2 of most things, always in the same colour which may not actively promote sharing but does save me from the ridiculous battles over who is going to drink out of the red beaker.

Given the mantra above, why oh why did I take such leave of my senses today? It was foolish, it was stupid, it was such a basic, fundamental error of such catastrophic proportions that I'm still shuddering to think of it. This could take me years to get over. For some reason, a complete personality transplant must have come over me and I voluntarily gave the boys some water pistols.

I don't need to describe the scenes that followed. Best a pretty flowered veil is drawn over them and soothing music played. But if you are imagining a moment with 2 toddlers scarpering in different directions screeching with excitement followed by a screaming banshee howling "water pistols are for outside" then you are not too far from the truth.