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Giving up sugar for Lent

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I may have made a mistake. A big one. I gave up sugar for Lent.

Not all sugar, of course – there are sugars in all kinds of food. But I’ve given up foods to which sugar is added, and I’m advising anybody who reads this cry for help – don’t. Don’t do what I did.

But why sugar? I hear you ask. Why not something easy, like chocolate? Are you a masochist?

Yes. And resoundingly no.

I’m a chocoholic. I buy a 200g chocolate bar with the intention of making it last two days at least, and within 20 minutes it’s gone. And living close to the shops, who always have special deals on their chocolate, I can get through a fair few bars in a week. And I know that’s bad, particularly since chocolate doesn’t agree with me. Heart problems, diabetes, high cholesterol, obesity – my chocolate addiction is going to shorten my life. That’s why last year, I thought it would be a good idea to give up chocolate for Lent.

But here’s the rub – because I stopped eating chocolate, I doubled down on sweets, biscuits, cakes, ice-cream and doughnuts. If you’re going to sacrifice chocolate, you have to do it for your health, and if you’re just going to binge on sugar as a replacement, what’s the point?

So I decided this year to nix sugar altogether. Surely I’d feel better, healthier, more alive?

I feel like I’m going to die. It’s been thirteen days. The first week I had cravings, sure, like an addict in need of a fix, but I ate a lot of potatoes and fruit and wondered why I hadn’t done this sooner.

The second week has been hell. I have no energy. I fall asleep at the drop of a hat. I’m not just irritable, I’m angry. My joints ache. My back hurts. My eyes flicker at the sides. I’ve got a constant headache. I’m dizzy and nauseous. I have earache and a sore throat. My belly feels heavy and tender. I can hear my heart in my ears, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. I can’t take a deep breath or I cough. My teeth are now chattering, even though I’m wearing a T-shirt, shirt, hoodie, dressing gown, woolly hat, fluffy slippers, and I’m wrapped in a blanket.

Hmm. Actually I think I might have flu.

[Next day]

Okay, so I just spent all last night shivering and sweating, drifting in and out of consciousness, my mind racing (I wrote an entire novel in my head), and woke up feeling a little better, albeit as grimy as a cinema floor and weak as a  newborn lamb. Yes, this might have been a 24-hour fly bug.

But I stand by what I said – giving up sugar has kicked me in the nuts and knocked me for six. Apparently, you’re not supposed to give up all at once – like any addictive drug, you’re meant to wean yourself off it. But I hope that I’m now past the worst of it, and will start to feel better from now on.

But one thing I have to point out is the weight loss, which might surprise you. When I joined Slimming World a few years ago, I lost 9lbs the first week, 4.5 lbs the second, and 35lbs over 12 weeks.

So how much weight have I lost from giving up sugar for two weeks? 10lbs? 5lbs? 1lb?

Not one solitary ounce.

Hardly seems worth it, does it?

But how did her baby get into her tummy?

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Ah. We have reached a developmental threshold. I thought we’d hit it before Christmas when my daughter said, ‘You know I was in mummy’s tummy? Well how did I get out?’ but that was only the mechanics of birth (and she didn’t believe me that mummy pushed her out her noo-noo). No, this question – the creation of life and the sexual dimension it implies – is altogether trickier, deeper, and represents a significant step outside of ‘that’s the way things are’ to ‘why are things that way?’ Yikes.

I must admit, I fudged the answer. I was alone with her in the car at the time, and I figured something like this ought to be discussed with her mother first so we can decide the best time, best way, and all that. To be honest, I thought I wouldn’t have to deal with the concept of procreation for a few more years at least, so I wasn’t ready, and a garbled response about eggs and seeds probably isn’t the best way to introduce a three-year-old to the mysteries of the adult world.

My mind racing, I considered implying that birds and bees had something to do with it; storks, cabbage patches, magic; even the age-old ‘when a mummy and daddy love each other very much…’; but given that bees are dying, storks are terrifying, and one of her friends has two mummies, it’s no longer that simple.

I turned it on its head and asked her how she thought they got in there.

‘I think mummy swallows them,’ she said, and we left it at that.

Phew! Dodged a bullet.

I was taught about sex at the age of four or five – penises, vaginas, sperm and eggs. While I’m not sure about the appropriate lower age, there is definitely an age where you should already be clued in – I remember everybody making fun of a ten-year-old at my school because he thought he came out of his mother’s butt. Sucked to be that guy – pooped into the world.

There’s a danger to leaving it too late, too. When I was on a bus travelling through Alabama twenty years ago, I remember seeing a massive billboard that said: ‘Talk to your children about SEX, or SOMEONE ELSE WILL!’ You definitely don’t want them learning from porn and thinking, like today’s eleven-year-olds, that that’s how people actually do it. And, of course, the consequences of a lack of sex education have been devastatingly explored in fiction, from Stephen King’s Carrie to Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach. Message received and understood.

But there’s a way to do it, and I know that showing embarrassment or squeamishness can send out the wrong message and lead to problems later down the line. I met a girl at university who said, ‘I’m bisexual, but I’m terrified of penises, so I’ve only ever been with girls and I don’t think I’ll ever have sex with a man, so behaviourally I’m a lesbian.’ (My response to this statement was, ‘Nice to meet you, I’m Gillan, what’s your name?’). I don’t want that kind of confusion for my girls.

And I certainly don’t want them to think sex or masturbation or specific body parts are ‘dirty’ or ‘naughty’ or ‘shameful’ either. I want them to be body confident, with a healthy sexuality free from the hang-ups that I, an awkward, sexually-inexperienced autistic bloke might pass on to them.

So I started researching this topic online (very carefully – I don’t want to be on a watch list!), and I discovered I’m a lot more old-fashioned and out-of-touch than I realised.

Today’s Parent, for example, suggests teaching a child of 0 to 2 the words penis, vagina, vulva, clitoris, bum and nipple, meaning I missed that window. It also suggest explaining to them when and where it’s appropriate to explore their bodies – gently and in the privacy of their bedrooms, apparently – which I must confess I thought was a conversation for much, much, much later on.

For the 2 to 5 age range – where we’re at now – it suggests opening up about consent, explaining it’s not appropriate for others to ask to see or touch their genitals, and not to keep secrets about this, which is definitely good advice but, God, how do you have that conversation without implying the world’s full of sexual predators? Also, now’s the time to mention sperm and egg, perhaps leaving the gory details for when they’re older.

All of this seems alien to me. Far too young, I keep thinking, let them be children a little longer before you strip them of their innocence. But other sites, like Family Education, all seem to agree on this basic framework – the proper names for genitals and where and when it’s appropriate to touch yourself somewhere between 0 and 3, the egg and sperm speech and stranger danger around 3 to 5, and the more explicit details about 6 to 8.

I’ve been living under the erroneous belief that I could sit them down in about five years, have a one-off Q&A session, then avoid the issue until their first date when they’re sixteen, with a couple of ‘women’s issues’ interventions along the way. Instead, you need to mention sex throughout their upbringing, stressing issues of consent and context, in order to create a sexually healthy adult.

I guess I agreed to all this when I became a father, and next time she asks I’ll be better prepared. Sometimes, I think it would be better if a stork delivered us fully-formed to our parents. You certainly wouldn’t have to worry about stretch marks and post-partum incontinence!

How to age 5 years in 3 minutes

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The three scariest things that can happen to a childless man:

  1. Looking in the mirror and seeing your father’s face staring back at you.
  2. Hearing the mechanic suck in his breath through his teeth when you ask how much it’ll cost.
  3. Your girlfriend turning to you and saying, “I know we’ve never talked about having children, but I’ve got some news…’

The three scariest things that can happen to a parent:

  1. Answering the door to a stranger who says, “Hello, I’m from Child Services.”
  2.  Discovering a rash that looks strangely like those meningitis pictures you keep Googling.
  3. When your child stops breathing.

So this afternoon I was driving along with my wife and youngest daughter in the car when suddenly 17-month-old Rosie’s breathing started to sound a bit raspy, like there was something lodged in her throat and she was struggling to breathe. I looked round and she was staring vacantly off to one side.

‘Rosie?’ I said.

No response.

‘Can you check on her?’ I asked my wife.

She turned round in her seat and said, with increasing panic, ‘Rosie? Rosie? Rosie!’

I looked round again and Rosie was still staring off to the side, eyes still blank, but now her lips were blue, her face was violet, and she looked like a porcelain doll.

‘I’m pulling in!’ I shouted, spun the wheel and stopped the car on someone’s driveway. Leaping out, I scattered the contents of the door pocket all across the road, rushed round the back of the car, ripped open Rosie’s door and dragged her from the seat.

She had this glazed look in her eyes and she was trying to breathe but there was nothing but this horrible gurgling rattle, and she was totally unresponsive.

I turned her upside down, lay her over my forearm and slapped her hard between the shoulder blades, whereupon two old ladies, thinking I was assaulting her, asked if she was okay.

I checked her and she wasn’t, so I shook her, turned her over, slapped her again a few times. When I turned her back the right way she was still struggling to breathe, but there was a bit more life in her eyes.

Cuddling her and bouncing her up and down, gradually the colour returned to her lips and she started breathing, if not normally then at least no longer sounding like she was dying. She didn’t react to me, just stared away and kept yawning and closing her eyes, everything sluggish and drained, her eyelids pink and lurid.

Luckily we were only a few minutes from the local surgery, so I rushed her there and they put me straight in to see a doctor. She was so sleepy, she didn’t react to the thermometer in her ear or the stick in her mouth, but she did start to cry when the doctor listened to her chest.

The long and the short of it, she has a fever but her chest sounds clear and her throat isn’t swollen. The doctor thinks it’s one of three things:

  1. A fit, though with no other symptoms or a repeat performance, it’s difficult to say any more at this time.
  2. She choked on a foreign body or even her own saliva.
  3. She is ill, and sometimes children hold their breath  when they’re feeling rotten, even to the point of turning blue.

Reassured, I took her home and she has been asleep on me the last ninety minutes while I listen to her breathing. But oh my gosh, if you’ve ever known fear before becoming a parent, it’s a thousand times worse after. It was probably three minutes between seeing her lips were blue and the colour returning to them, but those three minutes have kicked the living crap out of me.

I only hope it is a one-off.

The Greatest Spoonman

Gillan Drew1 Comment

I am 39 years old, give or take six months. That means I’ve been alive around 14,235 days not accounting for leap years. I’m good at some things, less so at others, but one thing I can say without any exaggeration or false modesty: I’m damned good at using a spoon.

Some people look at me and think I was just born with certain genetic advantages, but I wasn’t. My skill with a spoon does not come naturally but has been honed over a lifetime of practice and hard work. If we scratch out the first two years of my life (which are a little vague in my memory), let’s suppose for the next four years, I used a spoon an average of four times a day, or a total of 5,840 times. If you use anything that many times, you become an expert. You have to put in the effort to get the results.

Unfortunately, my dedication to spoons slackened off after that as life got in the way. After starting school, up until eleven, I probably used a spoon twice a day – once for my cereal in the morning and once for pudding at teatime. Although I wasn’t really focusing on my spoon-wielding skills, I still managed to get another 4,380 uses in my logbook. Quite good for the average person, but not enough if you want your spooning to take you to the Olympics.

Then at twelve I started to take things more seriously. Like a quintessential Englishman, I started drinking tea to help focus my performances. For five years, seven spoons a day, that’s another 12,775 times.

At seventeen, shortly after taking silver at the National Spooning Championships, I realised I would have to add coffee to my daily regimen if I ever wanted gold. Eight to ten cups a day, plus cereal for breakfast and yoghurt for pudding, say, twelve spoons a day for 23 years, and you’re looking at 100,740.

Total times I’ve used a spoon in my life (give or take a couple of thousand): 123,735.

That is how I became what I am today. All my plaudits and successes in spoon usage have come from 39 years of single-minded pursuit of excellence. I am, without a doubt and by any objective measure, a giant of spoon-wielding brilliance.

But apparently, I’m using my spoon wrong. I’ve been using it wrong all my life. Luckily, my three-year-old was able to put me right over breakfast this morning. How lucky I am to have such an expert in my home who is able to correct years of bad technique.

Her lectures on how to properly use toilet paper, the best way of making coffee, and how I should shave my face have also been greatly appreciated and improved my life no end.

This will take me to the next level, so look out world! If I was unstoppable before, with the help of my three-year-old’s wisdom and expertise, I will soon conquer this puny planet. All hail your new emperor.

9/11 – the Truth

Gillan Drew4 Comments

I had a row with someone today over who was behind the September 11th attacks. I told her I would love to have been a fly on the wall of the Oval Office when the idea was pitched.

‘Mr President, sir, you asked me to find a justification for invading Iraq to get our hands on their oil. I’ve consulted with the CIA, and we’ve come up with a plan for a false flag operation that’ll give you all the reason you need.’

‘Then let’s hear it.’

‘We rig a remote-controlled plane to crash into the World Trade Center and blame it on a bunch of Palestinian terrorists controlled by a Saudi mastermind backed by Pakistanis and living in Afghanistan.’

‘And then we can invade Iraq?’

‘Actually, no, that’s not enough of a casus belli. We have to crash a second remote-controlled jet into the other tower.’

‘And then we can invade Iraq?’

‘Actually, no, crashing two planes into the World Trade Center won’t make people support a war.’

‘It won’t?’

‘No, we need the towers to come down completely.’

‘How do we do that?’

‘We rig them with explosives in the middle of a busy, bustling city, without any of the 20,000 people who work in the building noticing anything. Then after the planes hit, we carry out a controlled demolition even though we know there’ll be a thousand cameras pointing at the building from every angle, allowing people to examine it frame by frame for any evidence of a conspiracy.’

‘And then we can invade Iraq?’

‘Actually, no, that’s still not enough reason to go to war. We have to fire a cruise missile into the Pentagon and say it was a plane.’

‘Why not just fly another remote-controlled plane into it?’

‘Because.’

‘I see. And then we can invade Iraq?’

‘Actually, no. We need to crash a jet in Pennsylvania and make it look as though the passengers rose up and tried to take back control from the terrorists. We’ll do that by faking phone calls to their family members and employing actors.’

‘And then we can invade Iraq?’

‘No, then we can invade Afghanistan.’

‘Oh. So when can we invade Iraq?’

‘We wait two years and then make up some crap about WMDs we know they don’t have.’

‘Ah. So how are you going to pull it off?’

‘Sir?’

‘Well, when we invade and the public discovers there are no WMDs, we’re going to look pretty silly. All we need is to plant one chemical warhead on a Scud launcher, and then we can point at it and say, “See? WMDs.'”‘

‘Sorry, sir. We can’t do that. It’s too complicated.’

‘What? You’re telling me we can carry out a false flag operation in full view of the public using remote-controlled planes, cruise missiles, fake phone calls, actors and demolition charges, but we can’t plant a single Scud launcher in the vastness of the Iraqi desert?’

‘That’s correct, sir. It’s very dusty out there.’

‘Okay. Sounds like a great plan. Let’s do it.’

The problem with conspiracy theories is that people take a single ‘fact’ that doesn’t seem to fit, and use this to undermine every other fact, working backwards to locate the perpetrators. I think that if you work forwards, from the conspiracy’s planning stage, it’s pretty easy to see whether it makes sense or not.

To paraphrase a quote attributed to GK Chesterton, it’s okay to have an open mind, just don’t open it so far that your brain falls out.

A Three-Year-Old’s Heartbreak

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As the father to two girls, and two gorgeous ones at that (sure, I’m biased, but it’s a fact), I figured there’d be some heartbreak in my daughters’ futures…way, way, way in their futures, when we have flying cars and holodecks, and have managed to merge man and machine into perfect beings fully trained to deal with the ups and downs of human relationships.

[Sigh]

My three-year-old daughter was a little quiet when she came back from her playdate this afternoon. It was with a boy who calls her his ‘lady’, while she calls him ‘my man.’ She often tells me she’s going to marry him, although to be fair, she also says she wants to marry ‘everyone in the whole wide world’, so that’s not exactly an exclusive club.

So I asked her what was wrong, and she said he’d told her he didn’t want to be her man anymore and she was no longer his lady. He has another lady, and he’s her man.

Oh. My. God.

With quivering lip and big fat tears spilling from her eyes, she said, ‘I want to be his lady. I loved being his lady. Why doesn’t he want me to be his lady?’

She sobbed her little heart out in my arms, and I think it broke my heart as much as hers. ‘I just want to be his lady. Why can’t I be his lady?’

It would be cute if not for the fact that rejection hurts no matter how old you are. It’s one of the hardest lessons to learn – that no matter how much you might like someone, they might not like you back, or worse, prefer somebody else. I told her it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with her, and it’s nothing that she’s done – it’s just something that happens sometimes. People’s feelings change, and there’ll be plenty more boys to come who’ll be glad to call her their lady.

I felt a bit useless, really. I guess all you can do is cuddle her, tell her you love her and always will. And hope you’re better prepared to deal with it next time.

In honesty, I always thought if a guy broke my daughter’s heart, I’d break his kneecaps. Never thought he’d be a three-year-old, though…

Confronting abusive parents

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When I was a teenager, I’d often notice kids being shouted at by their parents, belittled in public, sworn at, smacked, nagged, grabbed and abused, and it never failed to ruin my whole day – partly because of my sympathy for the poor tyke, and partly because of my failure to do anything about it. I would roast myself for my cowardice, relive what I had witnessed over and over, wondering what I could, or should, have done.

These ruminations always ended the same way – with the reassurance that though I was currently unable to intervene, when I was older, bigger, more confident in myself, and packing both the muscles and bank balance equal to my ego, I’d never let a transgression go unpunished.

Trouble is, I never got much bigger. Nor did I develop the muscles, bank balance or confidence that would enable me to face down bad behaviour. In fact, following several breakdowns and a diagnosis of autism, I have an almost pathological aversion to confrontation, something I’ve covered in depth in Takers and the Took: Asperger’s and Confrontation. So when I say my evening out last night, the first without the kids for a year, was horribly ruined, you’ll understand where I’m coming from.

As we entered an all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurant, out burst a man with a shaved head, tattoos, tattered clothes and a scarred face, carrying a crying seven-year-old boy by the arm. He slammed this poor kid down on a low wall, shook him roughly, shouted and swore into his face and then dragged him back inside and threw him down into a chair. At the table, the mother, dolled up to the nines with bleach-blonde hair, black eye-liner and a top showing off her cleavage, said to the kid, ‘What you crying for?’ whereupon the man thrust his finger into the boy’s face and hissed, ‘He’s being a right [expletive deleted].’

All the while, the kid hid beneath his hoodie while his many brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles acted as though this was nothing out of the ordinary. And, judging by the speed with which this kid seemed to get over it and start mucking around with the others, perhaps he’s used to it. But it shocked the hell out of me.

I’ve always admired those maverick characters like Martin Riggs from Lethal Weapon and John McClane from Die Hard, the kind who if he saw something like that would step up and make them regret ever lifting a finger to their kid. Unfortunately, those people don’t exist outside the pages of fiction, or if they do, I’ve never met any.

So I sat there trying to enjoy my meal, watching this kid and his father, bathing in my own cowardice. I tried to look at it from all angles – maybe the kid was being a shit, maybe his dad was at the end of his tether, maybe they were out for a birthday and the kid was ruining it yet again and his dad just lost it. I know what that’s like – I planned this really special surprise day out for all of us on Boxing Day at Monkey World, only to have my three-year-old daughter bitch and moan the whole way round about how she’d rather be at the playpark and how monkeys are boring and how she wanted to go home, until I shouted at her and said she was ruining my enjoyment of the day, which made her cry. Who am I to judge another father’s parenting style? And what right do I have to stick my nose in where it’s not welcome? Am I really that arrogant and presumptuous to think that my way is best?

That was a good way to get me off the hook, but really it was making excuses for my inaction, because this dad’s behaviour was more than the normal, run-of-the-mill fed up parent stuff – it was uncomfortable to watch and it crossed a line. True, he didn’t assault the boy – not in a way that would stand up in court – but the way he mocked, manhandled and humiliated that kid in public just wasn’t right.

But what could I do? Go up to a table full of burly builder-type blokes and say to them, ‘Good day, sirs, I beg your pardon for interrupting your meal, but I thoroughly disapprove of the way you treat your child.’ I’d be lucky to get told to mind my own effing business. And would having my face rearranged really improve things for the boy? Knowing the way these things work, blood being thicker than water, and all, he’d probably have cheered his dad on.

I thought of interacting with the boy when he got up to replenish his plate, asking if he was okay and offering some reassurance, but I decided that was an even better way to get beaten up. And then I started thinking about the times that I’ve shouted at my kids, or grabbed them and dragged them to the naughty step, the times I’ve threatened to take away their toys if they don’t stop misbehaving, or simply snapped at them because I’m tired or unwell or overwhelmed, and I wondered: am I like that guy? Am I getting so upset because I recognise in him a trace of what exists in me? Is he what I could become if I don’t constantly keep myself in check? And is that how I appear to my kids – a hulking, angry monster with a shaved head and tattoos?

So, as you’ve probably already figured out, I did nothing. Nothing but watch them, excoriate myself for my faintheartedness, and then dwell on it all of last night and all day into this evening. The world’s children are not my responsibility, I tell myself. I do not possess the skills or authority to act in such a situation. Anything I did would probably have made things worse. In short, I’m a gutless, spineless, powerless coward.

My on!y consolation is that when it comes to my own kids, I’m able to overcome my natural aversion to confrontation. I learned this a couple of months ago when I discovered a family member had disciplined my child in a manner of which I did not approve, a person set in their ways who has always intimidated me. I’ve always clung to the belief that as a parent, your instincts take over and enable you to be a freaking tiger when you need to be, but it doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t make you any less afraid or any less alone, and nor do you look inside and find a strength you never knew you had. The truth is, you simply don’t have a choice – right is right, wrong is wrong, and as a parent, when you see a wrong being done your child, you have no option but to confront it, no matter how scary it is.

And so it was, legs shaking, palms sweating, heart beating out of my chest and my stomach doing cartwheels, every fibre of my being telling me to run away and hide, that I drove round this person’s house and told them in no uncertain terms never again to discipline my child in that way. I had psyched myself up for a fight, and you know what? They absolutely crumbled.

I guess that’s what matters – knowing that when push comes to shove, I can look after my kids and keep them safe.

I just wish someone could do the same for that kid.

My devious threenager

Gillan Drew2 Comments

Normally it’s pretty easy to know what to do as a parent – they’re good, you praise them, they’re naughty, you punish them. This is just as true with new behaviours as old, because you generally expect the ways they behave, either as a natural part of child development or an extension of your own personality. They start to bite? You know how to deal with that. They hit you? You hit them right back (joking!).

However, my three-year-old’s recent behaviour has thrown me through a loop, because it’s so unexpected I have no idea how I feel about it and, consequently, no idea how to treat it. It’s just so naughty yet so gosh-darned smart I can’t help but admire it, and as it’s the first truly individual expression of her own personality, I don’t really want to squash it.

For at least a year now, my daughter has not been allowed a dummy, so imagine my surprise when I checked on her in the middle of the night to discover her asleep with a dummy in her mouth, only to have that dummy disappear by morning. This happened two or three nights in a row – no dummy at bedtime, no dummy in the morning, but a dummy in the middle of the night – so I casually asked her about it over breakfast.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘That’s my secret dummy.’

‘Your secret dummy?’ I asked.

She nodded. ‘I keep it in a secret place.’

‘You know you’re not allowed dummies, right?’

‘I know, but it’s my secret dummy,’ she said, ‘and I only use it when I need to.’

Well, what the hell can you say to that? She’s not allowed a dummy, but the fact that she has a secret life that goes on unobserved by her parents, an independent little three-year-old world that’s entirely hers, is crazily advanced and individualistic, and I’d feel like a real meanie taking that away from her.

Also, I have no idea where she hides it!

This strange, devious streak infuses much of her behaviour. If I tell her she has to eat her dinner before she can have pudding, she’ll dutifully clear her plate. We’ll have a great evening, and then after I’ve put her to bed, I’ll start to tidy and discover her dinner hidden under a cushion or on a shelf. I’ve also caught her slipping food onto her sister’s plate, since my youngest – aka The Hoover – will scoff it down before anyone notices.

She’s also cunning with her excuses. Not when she blames her sixteen-month-old sister for things, or says she has her sister’s permission, or that her sister, who can’t talk yet, told her to – because that’s pretty easy to see-through. But some of her excuses are so, well, plausible, I sometimes wonder who’s the one being unreasonable.

Last night, for example, I caught her drawing on the walls with a set of coloured lip  salves she got for Christmas. Of course, I hit the freaking roof. But her excuse? On an episode of the TV programme Bing, they paint a rainbow on Sula’s wall to make the room pretty, and she thought she’d make it pretty for us as a nice surprise. She knows she’s not allowed to draw on the walls with pens or pencils or crayons, which is why she did it with coloured lip balm. And doesn’t it look nice?

Oh. Well, when you put it like that, it doesn’t seem quite so unreasonable. In fact, punishing you for it is what seems unreasonable. So, like, don’t do it again, okay?

And that’s happening every day at the moment. I look at my daughter and think, Aren’t I supposed to be telling you off right now? I’m not even sure myself. Maybe that’s a good thing.

Or maybe it means she’s winning.

My Daddy-Obsessed Daughter Rosie

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My daughter is killing me.

I don’t mean that figuratively. I’m pretty sure that each day that passes, she’s shaving a bit off my life expectancy. I was going to reach a hundred. I’m down to eighty-nine. Keep this up, and I won’t be seeing fifty. Sometimes I think I’ll be lucky to see tomorrow.

Allow me to explain.

Over the past year, while I’ve repeatedly mentioned my three-year-old daughter Izzie on this blog, I’ve rarely referred to her sixteen-month-old sister Rosie. This has not been a deliberate decision, but come about as a result of the fact that, as Izzie continues to break new ground and present me with new challenges as a father, she gives me new things to write about. Rosie, on the other hand, as the second child, walks in her older sister’s footsteps as far as growing up goes, and as such gives me less new subject matter to work with.

As in the world of blogging, so in the world itself. My daughter is in the unfortunate position of being younger sister to the shining star that is my Izzie. While Rosie is no less delightful, no less adorable, no less loveable and intelligent and playful and lovely, she has been cursed to be born two years after her sister arrived. Had Rosie arrived first, I have no doubt she would be the world’s darling, but, through no fault of her own, she did not, and the consequence is to not only follow in her sister’s footsteps, but to be in her shadow.

Rosie is my forgotten sweetheart. It breaks my heart to see her so neglected by the very people who ought to be the most attentive. The family loved Izzie as she was the first daughter, grandchild, niece, whatever. They organised one day a week they’d look after her; two evenings a week they’d cook for her; booked her into classes; got memberships so they could visit zoos and soft play centres and adventure parks with her. When Rosie came along, these things were already in place, and they couldn’t possibly look after two children at once, so they simply stuck with the one. Meaning they were already so invested in Izzie they didn’t have the room or the inclination to integrate Rosie into their lives.

The long and the short of it is that for the past year, Rosie has mostly stayed at home with her daddy while Izzie has been gallivanting about the countryside with the extended family. Our household has become two separate teams – mummy going out with Izzie, and daddy staying at home with Rosie. This might be okay in families whose division of labour within the home is roughly equal, but since I do the lion’s share of the childcare – I get them up in the morning, get them breakfast, lunch and dinner, change all the nappies, wipe all the bottoms, do all the baths and put them both to bed every night – it means that while Izzie gets attention from both of us, Rosie only has me. And this has a significant effect on our relationship.

For a long time, Rosie has been a daddy’s girl. If I left the room she started to grizzle. If she felt unsure, unsafe, it was daddy to whom she fled. I thought it was rather cute, at first.

Then it started to concern me. Izzie would come and give me a hug, and Rosie would scream and try to pull her off me. Sibling rivalry, they said. Perfectly normal, they said.

About a month ago, I was lying on the sofa and my wife came over, got on her knees and placed her head on my chest. In a flash, Rosie had my wife’s hair entwined around her fingers and was dragging her away from me. And then, mission accomplished, she climbed up onto my chest and sat there like the king of the castle. Mine, she was almost saying. He’s mine.

Ouch. You can imagine what that does to a mother’s self-esteem.

Worse comes at night. She will only fall asleep with daddy, which means when I try to walk away, she morphs into a snarling, spitting, screaming creature that I barely recognise as human. I’m seriously waiting for her head to rotate 360-degrees as she projectile vomits pea soup. I’ve even found two sixes on her scalp – one more and we’ll know her true name (joking! But she does have an unusual birthmark on the back of her head…).

It’s a horrible life I seem to have carved out for myself. I advised in a previous post that you shouldn’t get into a place where your child will only fall asleep on you, but I unfortunately didn’t follow my own advice.

It’s my own fault. With the first baby, I went upstairs with her every night, rocked her in my arms, sang her to sleep or else read her a chapter of a book. With the second, I didn’t have the energy. I’d put the first to bed and, instead of rocking the second for hours, I figured it’d be easier just to lie on the sofa with her till she fell asleep naturally.

Big mistake.

The plan for the new year is to distance myself from my youngest. It sounds mean, sure, but she needs a far wider base of support than I can give her – especially if she wants me around in future years. Because, as much as I love her, I wish my little Rosie didn’t love me quite so much!

How to get a baby to sleep

Gillan Drew1 Comment

When people ask me how I am these days, I tend to answer the same way. I point at my fourteen-month-old and say, ‘For the past two months, this one has been staying up till at least midnight every night, often till two or three in the morning, and I have no idea how to get her to sleep. All she does is scream and scream. I’ve not had a single night off in over a year and I’m physically and emotionally wrecked.’

I figured that response was fine, since it was true. However, since I can hear like a bat, I’ve started noticing people talking about me in other rooms – family and friends and whatnot – saying how I’m always moaning, I’m never happy, I’m always going on about how tired I am, etc., etc. Yes, I have become ‘that guy’. Sucks to be me.

But it’s a real problem nonetheless. She’s too young to be disciplined, threatened, bribed or reasoned with; too old to cry herself to sleep because she can stand up – and special as she is, stand-sleeping is beyond her.

Since I’m clearly not allowed to be honest, and my family, friends and whatnot don’t have the insight to realise my moaning is a cry for help, I thought I would offer the pearls of my wisdom to other parents who find themselves in a similar position: stuck with a screaming child that won’t sleep, and clinging to the end of their rope by a single breaking fingernail.

Here are the tactics and the techniques I’ve tried, considered and/or been recommended to get my daughter to sleep. Use them wisely and with a pinch of salt.

1. Don’t let her nap during the day.

Upsides: It makes her tired.

Downsides: By ‘tired’ I mean ‘cranky’. You get no down time during the day, and now she’s too irritable to sleep.

Overall verdict: Counterintuitively, kids need to be less tired to sleep, so a baby who has regular naps and is well rested goes to bed easier than one who is exhausted. The more you know.

2. Move her bedtime back a couple of hours.

Upsides: You defer the problem till later.

Downsides: You defer the problem till later.

Overall verdict: You still have to face the horrors of bedtime, only now your kid is even more tired and irritable

3. Let her stay up till she goes to sleep naturally.

Upsides: You don’t have to do anything.

Downsides: Where the hell is my evening?

Overall verdict: Who’s the parent here anyway?

4. Give her a bath.

Upsides: It’s fun!

Downsides: It’s too much fun. She’s more awake when she gets out than when she got in.

Overall verdict: A great way to kill an hour. Not a great way to get her to sleep.

5. Leave her to ‘cry it out’.

Upsides: None.

Downsides: It wakes up the rest of the household and makes you want to die. After ten minutes, she’s choking and hyperventilating and it then takes you thirty minutes to calm her down, which makes it counterproductive anyway.

Overall verdict: Might work with earplugs and sociopaths, but painful for all concerned.

6. Shout and scream right back.

Upsides: It feels good.

Downsides: It doesn’t help get her to sleep.

Overall verdict: The only people you should be shouting at are reality TV stars and politicians. Or when they’re both.

7. Take her for a drive.

Upsides: You get to see interesting places, people and wildlife, and avoid watching teleshopping.

Downsides: When you get home after an hour speeding around the countryside, she’s more awake than you are.

Overall verdict: Save your petrol money, pay for a nanny.

8. Take her for a walk.

On these mean streets? In the dark? You must be joking.

9. Give her Calpol.

Upsides: When she’s ill, it soothes her enough to sleep.

Downsides: Unless she’s ill, why are you giving your kid painkillers, you psycho? It’s not a freaking sedative!

Overall verdict: If you think drugging your kids to make your life easier is acceptable, you’re at the top of a slippery slope that leads to sprinkling benzos on their breakfast cereal and fixing their ouchies with ketamine.

10. Spike her evening milk with rum/gin/whisky.

Upsides: Your elderly relatives will respect you for following their advice.

Downsides: Are you freaking kidding me?

Overall verdict: If you think drugging your kids to make your life easier is acceptable…

11. Cuddle her on the sofa.

Upsides: It’s nice, she goes to sleep, and you get to catch up on a box set..

Downsides: It is physically impossible to get her from the sofa to her cot without her waking up and starting to scream.

Overall verdict: It’s great for killing time on the long evenings when she just won’t settle, but you’re simply deferring the problem till later. And worse, now she’s slept for a few minutes, she uses it as a springboard to propel her past midnight and into the early hours. Depends how much you want to catch up on Game of Thrones, I suppose.

12. Rock her in your arms.

Upsides: Really effective and gives you biceps like Dwayne Johnson.

Downsides: Cramp, boredom, and you’re still left with the problem of transferring her into the cot.

Overall verdict: Can work if she’s really tired, but if she’s not, get ready for her eyes to pop open and her lungs to fill during the transition.

13. Sing to her.

Upsides: You get to practice your aria with an uncritical listener.

Downsides: Pretty hard to get the right pitch and intonation when someone’s screaming at you.

Overall verdict: It can work, but you’d better keep singing because the second you stop, she’s going to give you feedback, and you probably won’t like what you hear.

14. Read to her.

Upsides: You get to do something interesting and she gets to work on her grammar.

Downsides: You have to have the light on. And even if she does fall asleep, you face the awkward prospect of having to get up and creep across the creaky floorboards without waking her up.

Overall verdict: quite good, but it can take a long, long, LONG time.

15. Stay in the room with her.

Upsides: You get to sit there and completely ignore her. You have the power!

Downsides: If she’s anything like my kid, she starts off quiet, then starts talking, then starts shouting, crying, screaming, choking, hyperventilating and then dying, until you have to sort her out. End result: she wins.

Overall verdict: She wins.

16. Bring her into your bed for the start of the night.

Upsides: She goes to sleep happily and easily.

Downsides: You still have to transfer her back to the cot, and since she’s been so happy and comfortable, it makes her doubly angry when she wakes up mid-transition and even less likely to settle.

Overall verdict: It’s better to avoid the aggro.

17. Bring her into your bed for the whole night.

Upsides: The easiest technique of all.

Downsides: Where do I begin? You have the same bedtime as a baby; you’re going to get kicked in the nuts and punched in the neck half of the night; babies are a real passion-killer; you’re paranoid you’re going to roll over and squash her.

Overall verdict: Don’t. Do. It. Once you’ve started, how and when do you stop? It might seem like the easy option in the short term, but do you really want your ten-year-old still sharing a bed with you because she never learnt to sleep by herself? Jesus, cut the apron strings.

18. Give her a relaxing massage.

Upsides: A great way to bond with your child.

Downsides: She giggles the entire time like it’s the funniest thing ever, which isn’t relaxing at all.

Overall verdict: If laughter makes you sleepy, go right ahead. If you’re normal, might be best to skip this one.

19. Give her a slap.

Upsides: I’m not even going there.

Downsides: If you want her to stop screaming, slapping her probably won’t achieve that. Well, I guess it depends how hard you slap…

Overall verdict: Not an effective tool for bedtime, or daytime, or any time, actually, unless you like the look of prison.

20. Knock yourself unconscious.

Upsides: You sleep.

Downsides: She doesn’t.

Overall verdict: Doesn’t solve the problem.

21. Put her on her back in the cot, slip your arm through the slats, place your hand on her chest and pin her to the mattress.

Upsides: You’re in the room with her; you’re in physical contact with her; she can hold onto your hand; she’s reassured that she’s not been left alone; she’s lying down and can’t stand up; when she whines you can rock her gently; you can sing to her at the same time; and eventually when she goes to sleep, you don’t have to transfer her because she’s already asleep in her cot. Job done!

Downsides: This can take up to forty-five minutes; depending on the size of your forearms and the gap between the bars, your arm will probably ache after three; once she’s asleep you’re faced with slowly removing your hand from her chest without waking her and you still have to get out of the room; and if she isn’t tired after all, you’ve just wasted three-quarters of an hour.

Overall verdict: It works. It’s time-consuming and labour intensive, but my God, it works. Most of the time. And it’s the only way I’ve figured out to get her to sleep these days. You might as well try it – what have you got to lose?