things children say Archives - Circles in the SandCircles in the Sand

Son1 peered at a picture of a typewriter the other day. “What’s that?” he asked, tilting his head to see it from a different angle, screwing his eyes up a bit … “it doesn’t look like a MacBook.”

In fact, barely a day goes past when my children don’t remind me that lots of the things I grew up with amount to ancient history in their eyes. This weekend was a prime example – another reminder that time is like a rubber band, shooting us out into the unknown.

A leap of the imagination: ‘Yes, you had to plod over there and turn a dial!”

Saturday morning is homework morning in our household and definitely not a highlight of the week. If there’s one time I’d love to go running off into the desert, far, far away from the sounds of my son protesting loudly and scraping his chair back as he disappears on yet another unexplained errand, it’s Saturday morning.

This weekend, Son1 had to research three inventions. I was thinking toasters, lightbulbs, the telephone. I started telling him about Alexander Bell. Turned out he was thinking TVs, iPads and the X-Box.

We settled on TVs, helicopters and cars, and he set about finding out three facts for each.

For TVs, he learnt that images used to be broadcast in black and white (quick aside: remember how the picture on old TV sets used to shrink to a dot before turning off?). Warming to the theme, I told him that, when I was a baby, my own mother watched the moon landings on a small monochrome screen.

“Wow!” he exclaimed, rabbit-eyed in wonder. “Black and white!” (Never mind that they got to the moon and back with as much computing power as you’d find in a mobile phone.)

The next fact he found out was that remote controls became available in the 1980s, heralding a whole new lifestyle of motionless.

He hesitated, collecting his thoughts in the sponge-like part of the brain with which children soak up information. “But how, mummy,” he said, scratching his head, “did you change channels before remote controls?”

“Well,” I replied, my facial muscles twitching, “how do you think we did it?”

“Did you have …” There’s a pause … “buttons on the TV?”

“Yes! We had to get up … imagine THAT!”

I long ago gave up comparing myself to other parents. There was just no point.

When the boys came along, I quickly had to develop the attitude: So what if Felicity’s mum is thin, has perfect hair, perfect arms, kicks ass in the PTA and can control her children in public? I learnt to thank my lucky stars that I’d had time to brush my teeth that morning.

Day 10: Spa day for elf. What next?!

Experts say it’s human nature to compare ourselves – to size ourselves up against other mums who are prettier, fitter and better at juggling it all. Comparing can be a learned behaviour or a result of unrealistic expectations we see in the media – either way, it’s definitely not good for us.

As long as the kids are healthy, happy, safe and taken care of, you’re doing a great job as a parent and, anyway, who knows what Felicity’s mum’s life is really like.

My children, however, are unbelievably quick to go down the comparison rabbit hole. It’s something you’re never told about being a mum, that – day in, day out – you’ll get to hear why you’re such a mean mummy and what ‘everyone else’ is up to. Some examples from the past few days:

“But all the children on the bus have iPads!”

“Everyone else put their Christmas tree up weeks ago.”

“Drummond has Goldfish in his lunchbox.”

“Fritz is getting an Xbox for Christmas!”

“Will you come on the school trip? You’ve never been on a school trip Mum. Horace’s mum’s coming.”

“I want to wear a red shirt with a Christmas tree on for the sing-a-long. Everyone else has a tree on their top.”

Referring to a school project we did together, “Our volcano was boring Mum! All the other volcanoes actually exploded.” (Lord knows how)

And now it’s December, you can bet you’ll get to see exactly where everyone’s Elf on the Shelf is for the next couple of weeks – the mischievous little tinker!

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A Christmas Parody – Spoilt (Brilliant remake! Follow link, and press ‘Click to play’ at the top if it doesn’t start automatically)