Tears and rage

Today has not exactly been a nadir of parenting, but it certainly hasn't been a zenith. I would certainly place it in the lower half of my parenting orbit. Any day that features me yelling at my son to walk home on his own because I've had enough, while he sobs that he will never, ever like me ever again can't be all good.

Let me take you back to how we reached this point...

It's summer. It's brutally hot (for a country that doesn't design people, or buildings, or life, to cope with heat). The fair has arrived in the village. LittleBear has seen the fair and is desperate to go. We*, however, are spending the weekend at GrannyBear's house. But, we drive home on Sunday morning, so that we can spend some of the weekend with BigBear. This handily means that we can also go to the fair on Sunday afternoon. Hooray.

Have I mentioned that it was hot?

And that I'd already spent a couple of hours in the car on the Motorway From Hell?

Nonetheless, to the fair we went. And it all started swimmingly. We met the friends we were due to meet. We loaded our respective boys into giant inflatable balls and let them roll around in a pond. We sent them down a huge helter-skelter a few times. But then... then LittleBear spotted Items Of Great Joy. The various dart-throwing, ball-tossing, air-gun-shooting stalls were festooned with row upon row of enormous cuddly tigers and leopards. There is nothing that brings more joy to my boy than large cuddly predators. And there was nothing he wanted more than a chance to win said large cuddly predators.

I explained to him that the games were all designed to look easy but to actually be really hard. And then I let him try to throw hoops over a block. And of course, the block is only fractionally smaller than the hoop, so even with perfect aim, you require a huge dose of luck to win anything. Unsurprisingly, LittleBear had neither perfect aim, nor a huge dose of luck.

I refused to engage in firing guns at anything.

Repeatedly.

Despite the proximity of giant cuddly felines to the air-gun range.

I allowed LittleBear to attempt to throw baseballs into milk churns. Milk churns the mouths of which are only fractionally larger than the balls, and whose edge is shaped in such a way that the ball always bounces away. Almost as though they're designed to be impossible to win. Once again, and still unsurprisingly, LittleBear had neither perfect aim, nor a huge dose of luck.

For a while I distracted him with a go on the bouncy castle.

Then I refused to engage in firing guns at anything again.

And then I conceded to attempting to win a tiger on his behalf by throwing darts at a dartboard. Thanks to a misspent youth, I used to be relatively proficient at darts, but naturally, the game is rigged against the player. The dart board is mounted somewhat higher than is customary, and the winning requirement is to get four darts each scoring higher than ten (from four throws). Being relatively proficient was in fact a disadvantage in this case, as I came painfully close to succeeding by reaching the required score with three of my four throws. And the trouble with "painfully close" is that it merely makes a small boy think that next time his mother could actually win.

Then I refused to engage in firing guns at anything again.

And LittleBear refused to consider going on any further rides, or even eating ice-cream.

And we both began to inch towards tears. LittleBear got there first. And being a foolish woman, rather than quitting before things got worse, I attempted to appease the weeping child by having another go at the game of darts. In fact, in total I had another three games of darts, as I agreed to two games, then hit the bullseye in one game, thus winning myself another turn. I still didn't win a tiger though.

Not winning a tiger appears to be almost the worst thing that has ever happened to LittleBear. He stood and sobbed and wailed, and insisted that he would never go home, but would stay where he was forever. So I picked him up and carried him home, all the while telling him to stop crying and listen to me.

By now, I should have learnt the utter futility of attempting to reason with a sobbing child. He was not ready, willing or able to listen to reason. So telling him that I understood that it wasn't fair, and telling him that there were other sources of cuddly toys did not penetrate. It turns out that carrying three and a half stone of recalcitrant, sobbing child in thirty-degree heat is hard work, and renders a slightly hot, tired, tetchy mother into a raging beast from the bowels of hell. Which is why I then plonked him down on the pavement and yelled at him that he could walk home on his own because I had had enough. I may also have called him a foul child. And I think the phrase "abominable behaviour" cropped up. And my episode of hyperbole received the dramatic response it deserved: "if I walk home on my own, I will get killed." At least my road-safety lectures have sunk in I suppose.

I can't quite recall how we got from shouting at each other to stomping along the path again. But stomp we did. With more mutterings and dire imprecations from both of us. I'm pretty certain LittleBear is never going to play with me again. And that he doesn't like me any more. So I informed him sternly that in the next patch of shade we were going to stop and sit down and cuddle until we were friends again. Because nothing says "I love you" quite like being ordered to have a cuddle.

But once we were in the shade, and we were sitting leaning against a fence, and my boy was snuggled up on my lap, and he'd stopped crying, and my eyes were only leaking a tiny bit, we managed to make our peace. I explained to him how fairs work and that it's a job for the people who run them, and that they have to make money, so they make their games look as lovely, and as tempting and as winnable as possible, just to make us really, really, really believe we might win a huge cuddly tiger. But hardly anybody ever does, and really, if we want a huge cuddly tiger, we would do better to choose one and buy one as a birthday present. We should just go to the fair to go on the rides and eat ice-cream, but we should never, ever believe we'll win anything.

And my precious baby boy understood, and he believed me, and we both said sorry for being mean to each other, and we cuddled some more, just because we could. And my heart broke a little bit, because I remembered my own childhood sense of being cheated by the games at the fair. And my heart broke a little bit more because I hate to introduce my little boy to the cynical realities of life so soon. And my heart broke another little bit, because I don't want to be the mother who keeps apologising for being mean and bad-tempered. I know that admitting when I'm wrong and saying sorry is a good thing to do when I do make mistakes, but I would be a better mother if I didn't reach that point in the first place.

I am left with several conclusions from today:

(1) LittleBear would like a giant cuddly tiger for his birthday.

(2) I need to take a Mental Health Day to bring a halt my current cycle of bad-temper and lack of patience.

(3) I need to find a more permanent answer than (2) to my tendency to lose my temper and say deeply unkind things to my sensitive little child before "sorry, I shouldn't have said that" ceases to be enough to undo the damage that I'm doing.



* "We" in this case is me and LittleBear only, as LittleBear's school had a teacher training day on Friday, but BigBear's place of work did not. Therefore LittleBear and I took Friday off and pootled down to spend Friday and Saturday with GrannyBear.