The rules I said I would follow — and why I failed

Press, 3 July 1979, Page 12

The rules I said I would follow — and why I failed

By

DEBORAH MOGGACH

London Before having children, I made myself a list of rules and regulations. It was based on the things I saw other women doing wrong. Untested, the list remained smugly intact until I actually had babies. What surprises me now is not just the disintegration of these ideals but the speed of their collapse. At moments, I remember those vows, once so firm, once so terribly naive. I would never bribe the babies with sweets. Wedged behind the bookshelves, I have a heap of confectionery with which I get them to do something eight times quicker and

more cheerfully than they

would have done otherwise. I would never feebly give in when they whined or demanded. Not realising that it takes 10 times longer to argue, and how seldom one has 10 times longer to do anything when the telephone’s ringing and the broccoli’s boiling over and one’s visitor has got to an interesting stage in her emotional confessions.

I would never press a spoon against their closed lips and say: “I made this specially for you,” thus burdening the child with guilt and inadequacy. Little did I know, then, about the price of fresh steak or the passionate; obsessive need to push in that mouthful when all they have eaten since yesterday are those sweets.

I would never steer them into sexist stereotypes. Not realising how efficiently they would do this themselves — the boy shooting everything in sight, the girl quietly tucking up her teddies.

I would not give them

vulgar, uncreative, expensive toys full of batteries. Not realising that, if I didn’t, everyone else would. Or that they would much prefer those to my tasteful wooden things. I would not shout at them or slap them. It is too painful, and perhaps too familiar, for me to explain how things have changed in this respect. I would never park them in front of the TV. Not realising, then, the blessed relief of such immobilisation and also how very much better is most children’s TV than its adult equivalent. How, in fact, I would join them, thus negating the point of this, which was to get the

vacuuming done alone and without them slowly and kindly showing me how to do it first. I would never boast about them to other people. In fact, so anxious am I to avoid this, that I go to the other extreme, denigrating my own child, and on the walk home apologising to that fair, oblivious head in the pushchair below. 1 would always encourage artistic efforts. Not realising that these would be carried out, with wonderful freedom of expression, upon walls, clothes and newly-pur-chased hard-back novels, rather than upon the specially-bought drawing book.

I would never vaguely tot up shopping bills while my child is telling me, at some length and in some detail, about his day at school. Likewise, I would never be ignorant, or preoccupied with the rattle in the washing machine, when he asks earnest questions about death and electricity and why fishes don’t have blood. Well, why don’t fishes have blood? I would never tell my home-coming husband the things they’d broken until he had a drink in his hand. Desire to communicate with an adult over* comes timing and tact. I would never use the nannyish “we” — “we didn’t eat up all our spaghetti rings, did we?” I have done this only once or twice, but cannot guarantee its disappearance. Likewise, I would never call dogs, doggies, and rabbits, bunnies. I have done this on many Occasions, sometimes when addressing adults. I would never get so boring, exhausted and babyfied that I could not

drop everything and go out to the cinema. I do go. I just sleep through the film.

I would never let my child intercept incoming phons calls, lispingly repeating: “I’m Thomas, I’m free and free-quarters,” while my caller, supposedly charmed by this, taps his fingers in Dumfries or Dusseldorf. I would never use the children in marital warfare. “Let’s just ask Daddy if he could possibly manage to put down that glass for a minute and tear his eyes from the TV, and from working out an explanation for last night’s behaviour, and ask him if he could possibly read his own little son a story.” I do. But subtler. I would not, when unsuitable things are being said, mouth them over the children’s heads in laborious French. I didn't know that everything is unsuitable for loud childish repetition at a later date. I would not keep the garden too adult and inviolate. Little knowing the anguish of being sweetly handed the one peony, stalkless, when it took four years to get it to bloom. There are bound to be many more. There is doubtless some critical acquaintance, as yet childless, who will inform me of any additions to this list. I will just wait for them to have children themselves. — O.F.N.S. Copyright.