Skip to main content

Hats off to full time mothers

It's only been a few weeks and already I am haggard and exhausted. As I type a small child is literally hanging off my arm and shouting a progressively violent array of threats at me... oh, and now has resorted to pinching. The other one is wailing in the garden while an assortment of cousins alternately taunt, bellow, scream and holler. They're just being children, but frankly, normal childlike behaviour could try the patience of a saint.

Some important questions:

1. Why do all children suffer from selective deafness? Unless they hear the word "sweets" mentioned of course, which could be a whisper uttered 10m away but somehow always registers...
2. At what age exactly does the show-off gene come into play?
3. Why do all children act as if they are future City workers-in-training - where the bullies always rise to the top and those who shout loudest end up ruling the world?
4. Why do children misunderstand the meaning of the word NO? Is this really universally recognised as the opening gambit for protracted negotiations?
5. Why do children always bellow even louder than usual when you're on the phone (or indeed doing anything that obviously doesn't include them)
6. Why do children fail to see the need to a) flush the loo b) pick up their toys c) wipe up spilt milk or other fluids d) say thank-you without being fixed by the parental baselisk glare

Think I'm looking forward to going back to work...

Comments

Anonymous said…
Could it be .....because they are children! They need to be socialised. Good luck YLM.
Kate B. said…
Anon, I think you may be on to something there. And thanks for the good luck, think I need it!
sarah said…
the selective deafness is maddening!

your #3 gave me a Lord of the Flies flashback. eek.

Popular posts from this blog

Apologies for being incommunicado this week and hope none of you out there are too distraught not to be receiving the usual almost-daily MotV missives. The reason for the silence is that I'm up to my neck, metaphorically-speaking, in research papers for my first grad course assessment. This experience has made me realise how rigorously un-academic I am in my thinking. It has also illuminated how reliant I am on red wine in order to get through endless evenings typing furiously on my laptop, not to mention the fueling of increasingly colorful curses that I feel obliged to aim at the University's online library system which consistently refuses to spit out any of the journals I'm desperate for (I refuse to believe this is 100% due to my technical incompetence...) Oh well, if this is the price one has to pay in order to realize a long-cherished dream then it's not all that bad... No one ever said a mid-life career change would be easy. Wish me luck!

Environment

Being an expat, a favorite topic of conversation is 'where I/you want to go next?' or 'When do you plan to go home?' It's a good question. I'm not sure I want to stay in Dubai for ever, but I'm also not sure about how long I want to be here for or where else I would like to live. For almost the first time ever, I have no fixed plans apart from keeping my eyes and mind open to interesting opportunities. And as to going 'home', I have no idea where that is. Constantly moving around as a child left me with the feeling that 'home' is wherever I am right now, so in effect 'home' could be anywhere. The longest I've ever lived in one fixed place was 18 years in London, on and off, but that doesn't feel like 'home' either - I love going back to see family and friends, and it's a great place to shop, but that's about it. I have a great love for California, which is where my extended family is from (and where most of the