Pixie is turning six soon, and I haven’t written about parenting for nearly half his life now. But now I am, and here is my confession: I am a five-plus parent.
Five-year-old Pixie is the sweetest, smartest kid in town, sporting the cutest nose. So delightful is he that I can even keep a sense of humour about the whining, the negotiations, the criticism:
“Mommy, I do not like how you do stuff. I am not impressed at all.”
I love our Saturday morning dates: bubble tea, lunch, hours of reading at the library. I listen to Pixie babble on about his friends, his dreams, the origin of the Universe, and most days I post a Pixie-quote on Facebook:
“Twenty-seven is a cube… so twenty-eight is a cube with a nose!”
My friends can only benefit from such insight.
This is how I thought parenting would be, back when I wanted many kids, but the first five years didn’t quite deliver. Sure, there were cute moments, and there was love, and cuddles. But there is a difference between love and enjoyment. Little pockets of fun were overshadowed by the relentless slog of mundane tasks, the soul-destroying sleep deprivation early on, and later, scary episodes of rage.
According to my social conditioning, being a five-plus parent is a-ok if you’re a dad. Dads get interested when the kids are old enough to play soccer, the wisdom goes, and, until then, the kids mostly need Mommy anyway. Moms are made to take care of babies and little children: it’s part of our biology, nothing fulfils us more. Utter nonsense, of course, but social conditioning is hard to shake, and thus it was uncomfortable to find myself a five-plus parent. Especially so, as I didn’t know it for the first five years: I thought I was just… not great at it. Meanwhile, Pink is an absolute champion Daddy-for-all-ages with the patience of a saint. His calm presence was a life-saver, but the contrast did not escape me.
See, before I was a mom, I loved babies and toddlers. I held my friends’ infants, inhaled the milky scent of their heads. I played with their two-year-olds, made silly faces, turned them upside down, and when they asked me to do it again… and again… and again, I felt loved. As it turns out, when you’re their mom, they want you to do those silly things tens, hundreds, and thousands of times, until you’re dead inside, or you throw out your back.
In my entire adult life before Pixie was born, I had been angry six times: five times with Husband (my ex) when he showed up to family events late, and once with Pink when he criticised the cleanliness of my car.
With pre-school Pixie, it took a daily Herculean effort to tamper my anger. Rage would come bubbling to the surface by 8:45am, when Pixie took off the clothes we’d wrestled him into, or turned himself into a spinning tornado in order to evade sunscreen. It felt like I was losing my very sense of identity: this angry person was nothing like me.
Usually, I suppressed it ok. “Come on, Pixie-bug, we need to get to day-care,” I’d smile through tears of despair. “Come on, little berry, one more block to go” – I’d plead through gritted teeth – “we can look at that fascinating fence on the way home. Come on. Come on.”
But some – five or so – times I yelled. Some – many – times I grabbed his wrist and pulled him down the street, kicking and screaming. Some – many – times I cried. Some – a few – times I hissy-whispered “You need to stop right now, or this will end badly.”
One of those incidents marked the beginning of our Saturday dates. At barely five years old, Pixie experienced social anxiety for the first time: all of a sudden my outgoing child claimed to fear new kids. School drop-offs and the activities he had loved became battles, and I was convinced – wrongly, I think – that he was doing it to test me.
One meltdown at his Saturday class finally broke me. I somehow dragged Pixie home, narrowly avoiding publicly losing it myself, only to discover that Pink was out shopping: no easy exit for me. “You need to stay away from me, do not come near me” – I hissed at Pixie. I locked myself in the bedroom, and when I came out half an hour later, he was lurking near the door, that rare sad-little-mouse look on his face, and whispered “I’m sorry, mom.”
We sat down and made a list of what we could do to avoid this happening again. I had meant to parent without bribes or punishments, but this time, my resolve drained, I offered: “Join your class with no fuss, and we can do together whatever you want after.” “Can it be bubble tea?” – he asked, with a slight but devious smile. “Sure. It can be bubble tea.” – I groaned. Great, I thought, sugar and caffeine for compliance.
I told my therapist this story the following week: the meltdown, the rage, that feeling of being chained to a chair in a burning room. How I was bribing Pixie with a caffeinated drink, of all things.
“The helplessness and anger are powerful feelings, so they stick in your mind.” – she said – “But your resolution was amazing! Not many kids Pixie’s age would apologise at all. You talked through what went wrong, when most people want to forget and move on. You brainstormed ideas, you found a solution, and now you’re both happy. You’re not bribing him with sugar, you’re forging traditions, and when he’s grown up, he might have fond memories of these bubble tea dates.”
And I know I will. I will have many sweet memories of his sixth year: of bubble teas and trips downtown, walking hand in hand, sharing mushroom toasties, of receiving letters with original spelling, of baking projects and art projects, of Pixie reading me a bedtime story. Of those crazy ideas he comes up with at night, though I know he does it to keep me there. I’ll even have fond memories of lockdown and home-schooling.
And, sometimes, I think that when he’s older I will miss this time. I would not have thought that before.
What is/was an age you enjoyed parenting? Share in the comments if you’d like!