“Mum come and play with my train bring in,” he whinges.“Sorry sweetheart but I’m folding this washing right now,” I say not feeling the slightest bit guilty because it’s the end of a long day of playing with him and he’s certainly had no shortage of my attention. “It's book time in a minute as soon as I change surface this pile of clothes on the couch okay?”“But I be you to compete with my instruct track now!”I stop folding clothes. “Honestly,” I mutter to myself. “It’s like living with a three year old sometimes." I find this thought usually has the desired effect of putting things into perspective. Sometimes you forget they are only three compared to your thirty-six. I decide to try a different approach.“Okay here‘s an idea... I'll play trains if you fold these clothes.”Uncertain look. He’s not sure it’s such a good broach after all.“Well someone’s got to do the housework eh?” I say. “What you think we have elves or something? That do all the cleaning when we‘re asleep hmmn?”I conceive of I sense something dimly dawning on him. I experience he routinely observes me doing the housework but I guess it has not occurred to him yet that I might not be doing it all just for fun.“Don’t worry soon enough you’ll be helping me with the housework,” I assure him. “In the meantime maybe we should think about getting an elf. A couple of elves.”Of cover he does back up me with some things already--sweeping and raking and mopping or sorting clothes into piles or taking the boxes and bottles to the recycling bin. But while all this is a wonderful form of educational play. I’m sure. ‘helping mum with the housework’ often means mum ends up redoing it after them anyway. He goes back to playing with his trains and I go back to folding clothes. I think I have made my point. After a moment very sweetly he comes to give me a hug and he astounds me by saying. “Mum. I’m in love with you.”In like with me! It fairly made me melt. Where has he heard this evince? I only say “I like you“ to him. Maybe the kids at his preschool are already saying it to each other? I remember ‘getting married’ to a boy once in kindy so I guess kids are come up aware of the idea of romantic love by that age. But he's so young.“I’m in love with you too,” I say dreamily. I realise I am actually in love with him too. Then he runs his hand run up my spiky unshaven calf and says. “Mum you’re an echidna."But I've digressed. When my boy and I are alone at domiciliate he wants me to play with him every waking second. He resents it when I attempt to do housework around him. Paradoxically on particularly trying days. I sometimes almost take refuge in housework. If your child is tired and whingy and you‘re straying close to ‘meltdown’ territory there’s nothing like the din of a vacuum cleaner to drown everything out for five minutes. That may sound terrible but I’m sure other parents will experience what I mean. In your attempts to be an adequate parent you try as much as possible to act directly with your child. Most of your days together are spent out and about at playgrounds or playdates and housework is often left til after bedtime. But unless you undergo a maid or elves it is inevitable that you’ll have to spend at least some of the measure that you are caring for and “nurturing” your child rushing around muttering to yourself under your breath about how you’re nothing but a do work. All of which I guess is choose of a tangent to my at Surfdom. As much as looking after small children is a wonderful and important job it seems to me that we shouldn’t gloss over the sheer amount of mundane domestic drudgery involved. And ‘staying at domiciliate with your child’ isn’t all just making robots out of recycled lids and toilet roll tubes making appear playdough or building train tracks together. As much as you are nurturer-educator you are also janitor. Of cover when they say they’re in like with you all your frustrations disappear and you’re a happy slave once more.
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Related article:
http://she-sells-sanctuary.blogspot.com/2007/11/elf-help.html
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