In Praise of Good Behaviour

I am awash with parenting books at the moment.  None of which are making the blindest bit of difference, I should point out, other than rendering me more confused and exhausted than I already was.  Which is saying something.

First up is Divas and Dictators (by Charlie Taylor)  which is great, and promises to give me well behaved children, but THERE’S SO MUCH IN IT, I’m really not sure where to begin.  Do we do one behaviour-changing tactic, or all or them? Why isn’t there a chapter titled: “What to do if your child is FOUL at home but remarkably sweet when you are not around”?  But I tried to get into the spirit of it, and so got all crafty and creative at the weekend and made this:

What do you mean, “what is it?” -  it’s a Good Behaviour Snake, OBVIOUSLY.  (And as you can see, with every sticker he earns, we get to drink a bottle of wine – we LOVE the GBS). As instructed by the book I involved the Boy, asking him what little treats he wanted along the way, to encourage him on what I assumed would otherwise be a verrrrrry slow rise up to the Snake’s head.  It quickly became obvious that I needed to rail-road all of his suggestions – a HUGE car! A GUN to kill foxes! - and inserted ones I might actually get around to providing;  however, I did concede power on the big reward. 

“I want a dinosaur!” 

“And a dinosaur you shall have, my ferocious little fellow. Let go of my leg.”

“A BIG dinosaur!” 

“All-righty.”

“A BIG dinosaur with buttons that go ROOOOARGH when you press them!”

“Um, ok...” (surely the Natural History Museum will have one of those?)

“A BIG dinosaur with buttons that go ROOOOARGH when you press them AND A SPACE SHIP and he climbs in the spaceship and says ROOOOARGH and FLIES TO SPACE and EATS THE MOON!”

Fuck.

He is absolutely dead set on this – it was the first thing he mentioned this morning - so if anyone has any idea where I might find one please let me know.

Initially the GBS was intended to improve his behaviour towards the Girl.  I have a horror of him bullying her, and tend to overreact at any non-gentle interaction between them, so figured that maybe a GBS might be able to help.  Plus D&Ds counsels against using a sticker chart for general good behaviour – it needs to be specific. 

The Man however doesn’t think that he’s particularly bad in his behaviour to the Girl, and there are other areas we need to focus on.  So we colour-coded Mr Snake and now have three categories of behaviour, for his three worst habits:  Shouting, screaming, throwing and generally being angry (he now must use his Big Boy voice to communicate);  throwing food, wandering away from the table mid-eating, and refusing to feed himself (“Sit nicely at table”, which includes not throwing food and must feed himself); and being nice to the Girl. 

This is where things have started to go a bit Pete Tong.  We either give him a sticker every time he manifests any good behaviour in these categories – in which case we’ll both be pissed by lunchtime and I need to find a moon-eating space-travelling T-Rex today – or we hand out three stickers once a day upon contemplation of the day’s behaviour.  Which isn’t exactly the instant reward that a 3-yr-old needs.  As a result, three days in, both the Boy and I are bored of the GBS, the Boy wants his dinosaur NOW, and actually I’m tempted just to get him one (wherever it might be), because if I have to listen to “I caaaaaaaaaaaaaan’t waaaaaaaaaaaaaaait” one more time, I’ll be taping him to the wall and covering his shouty gob with wine stickers. 

And this is why I’m such a crap parent - because I’m totally unable to do anything properly, don’t follow things through, and fall at the first hurdle. 

If only we lived in Paris!  Yes, I too am reading French Children Don’t Throw Food by Pamela Druckerman, which is a bit of a media darling at the moment.  At the risk of isolating myself from every other commentator, while it’s well-written and clearly alot of work went into it, I’m finding it a bit of a drag really.  I was all into it for the first few chapters, but now it just reads like a litany of everything I’m doing wrong.  (Although in my defence, we were – and still are – pretty French when it comes to their sleep (for which read: if they cry at night we mutter OhFuckOff and roll over) and as a result their behaviour between 730pm and 745am is pretty exemplary.  It’s just the other 12 hours that we continuously cock up.) I can’t help feeling that it’s too late to start introducing most of the concepts laid out in it to the Boy, although I’ll admit that really, I just can’t be arsed.  And reading about how brilliant the Parisians are is starting to piss me off.

I started The Idle Parent, by Tom Hodgkinson, and while I can see the merits in his arguments, I get all eye-rolley and spluttery when I imagine the carnage that would result if I was to let my kids basically do what they wanted.

And so my final hope for toddler salvation is the eminently wise and utterly brilliant Win the Whining War & other Skirmishes, by Cynthia Whitman (which seems to be unavailable in the UK, so I had to order a second-hand copy from the US, and waited for what felt like months. Where did I hear about it?  Well funny you should ask;  a complete stranger approached me in the park when the Boy was having a... moment (a very very LOUD moment) and recommended it.  Oh the shame. But thank you for your interjection, kind lady;  it’s not the easiest things to tell a stranger that they’re fucking up and I appreciate it.) This instructs me to ignore bad behaviour and praise-praise-praise good behaviour.  In this regards it’s very like Divas and Dictators, however actually tells you how to ignore.  (By contrast the famous Dr Green – author of Toddler Taming, and he of the tying his kids’ bedrooms shut fame – just says “Ignore Them” over and over again, which isn’t much help if they’re throttling their sibling / stealing a teenager’s skateboard / nicking packets of crisps off a shelf in a deli and spreading the contents all over the floor (all of which happened on Sunday afternoon).)

Anyway, all the experts are agreed that praising is the key to changing kids’ behaviour.  D&D says I have to give six – SIX! – pieces of praise for every one bit of criticism.  Which is a bit much, if you ask me.  How about two gentle words for every shouty one, and one of these, which so far has been a winning solution in our household:

Chocolate nut cookies*

You need:  (For a VAST amount of cookies)

• 125g softened butter
• 225g any type of sugar 
• 1 tsp vanilla extract, optional
• 1 egg
• 30g Cocoa (or more if you like it chocolatey)
• 175g plain or self-raising flour (if plain, add a couple of pinches of baking soda or powder)
• Two large bars of chocolate, any type, roughly chopped up into big chunks
• 150g nuts (or whatever sized bag you have), any type, roughly chopped 

Preheat the oven to 180C / gas 4.

Beat the butter, sugar and vanilla in a bowl until smooth, then beat in the egg.  

Stir in the flour and the cocoa, then add the chocolate and nuts.

If you have the time, stick the dough in the fridge for a while – at least an hour, preferably two. (Otherwise just go ahead and bake them.  Cooling them helps to stop them from spreading so much, so you get more chew and less crunch.)

Scoop up a tablespoon full and place on a baking tray lines with non-stick paper;  space the dough about an inch and a half apart.  

Cook in the oven for about 12 mins (maybe a bit more, depending on your oven). 

When they first come out of the oven they’ll still be soft, but they harden as they cool.

If you are lucky enough not to have to hand them out as rewards or bribes, they’ll last for a few days in a biscuit tin.  

Serve while telling your children how great it is that they’re sitting at the table, you like very much how they’re not flicking milk at each other, and if they can please put their willy in their pants (him) and stop eating marbles (her), that would be great, thanks.


(*It used to say "adapted, barely, from Dan Lepard" but then I was told by people from Dan Lepard's website that the recipe was copyrighted, so I did what all cooks** do (even, I'd imagine, Mr Lepard himself) and I took the basis of the recipe and played around with it and changed it, and frankly, made it nicer. Just as well really I didn't do what I nearly did when the battery on my camera went, and pinch his picture...)


(**Not that I consider myself a cook, but you know what I mean.)

Head- Banging (and Wrecking)

The Boy is, quite literally, a head banger.  Once upon a time he’d go to bed, have a bit of a moan, then be asleep in a matter of minutes.  These days while the lights in his room go off by 715pm, those in his head are on and flashing for up to two hours more;  9pm regularly finds him still thrashing about, banging his head off the pillow, the mattress, the headboard – whatever is closest.  It didn’t use to bother me at all;  indeed, in my day I was known to require a certain amount of head-banging before I could fall asleep, so I just assumed it was hereditary.  But the Boy is taking it to new levels, with last night’s performance culminating in full body-slamming, moaning and groaning, sporadic snippets of conversation, and house-shaking bed-kicking.

I know this, because after half an hour of his theatrics last night, I snuck up to his room, crawled on all fours to the end of his cot, and surreptitiously watched while he thrashed and banged and hummed.  It was really quite something.  He didn’t seem to be annoyed or anxious, just a bit bored;  a few minutes banging with his legs, then he’d roll over, go up on all fours, and furiously wallop his head off the mattress.  Then flip back over again, arms over his head, and thud-thud-thud on the headboard. 

At one point he seemed to be slowing down at which point I made a critical mistake and started to back out.  The thumping stopped, and the only sound in his room was his shallow breath, and me struggling to stop myself from laughing.  Hours passed – well minutes, definitely - and when no movement resumed, I started to wonder if he’d just suddenly fallen asleep, and made to escape.  This was thwarted by the sight of his little blonde head peering over the end of the cot, a huge big grin on his face, eyes wide with excitement.  “Mummy!  Hiding!! Silly Mummy!!” he shrieked with glee, when I uncurled and looked at him.  Aw, bless.  Silly Mummy indeed - we were back to square one in the getting-to-sleep-early stakes.  And he now probably thinks that I’m the nutter, which is somewhat ironic, all things considered.

I consulted Dr Google, who bleakly told me that I’m possibly looking at a brain tumour, deep psychological problems, or various neurological disorders.  Or, more probably, a condition known as Rhythmic Movement Disorder.  Afflictees are generally under 4, and manifest symptoms such as head-banging, rocking, and thrashing about as they’re falling asleep.  Solutions are limited to patience (they generally grow out of it) or, in severe cases, drugs.  While I’m all in favour of sedation to block out the noise from the Boy’s room, I prefer it to be self administered;  thus it looks like we’re in for another couple of years of head-banging, and the Girl’s is just going to have to put up with having the fan on in her room (pointing down, to minimise bed-clothes / hair disturbances).

Speaking of disturbances, it transpires that our decision to date to keep the kids’ church attendance down to a minimum (of, to date, nil – you don’t get much more minimal than that) has been a wise one.  We were invited to a lovely christening yesterday morning, which we were told would be awash with babies and toddlers, so disruption would be abundant.  Well, disruption certainly was abundant, but alas mainly from the Boy.  He raced up and down the aisle like an antichrist (appropriately enough), before leading the toddler-charge in discovering the joys of the nativity manger – worryingly free-standing and perfectly sized to entice even the calmest of 2 year olds.  I meanwhile was feeling religious guilt down the back of the church (you can take the girl out of Catholic Ireland...) as I fed, and – gulp – changed the Girl.  (Who poos in the House of God? Twice??)

All the while, at centre stage the newly christened baby was giggling, cooing and laughing, every inch the perfect baby, and kids all around us sat by their parents, or knelt deferentially by the animal figures, petting and stroking.  The Man and I looked on enviously, as the Girl wriggled uncontrollably and chewed the order of service, and the Boy tried to drag the Virgin Mary out of the stable (through the window) and up the alter.  It’s little wonder really that we rarely leave the house.

Beset as I am by round-the-clock toddler antics, it’s hardly surprising that I’m counting the days to the end of drink-free January – 24 down, 8 to go - and turning for comfort to crunchy sweet things in the interim.  These are easy peasy (more so if you have a “food machine”, as the Boy calls it), taste of childhood, and impossible (for mummies and offspring) to stop eating.  Taken directly from this weekend’s Guardian, with nothing added, and nothing taken away*. 

Jam Thumbprint Biscuits

You Need (for about 12): 

• A shade under a block of butter (225g) (I know. Just don’t think about it.)
• 225g Castor Sugar
• Zest of a Lemon (or an Orange – which was my only deviation)
• 3 drops of vanilla extract
• 2 egg yolks
• 2 tbsp milk
• 280g plain flour, sifted with a pinch of salt
• About 3 tbsp of any type of jam

Preheat oven to 180/4/350

Beat the butter and sugar until fluffy in the food machine, then add the citrus zest and vanilla.

Add the egg yolks and milk, and beat again.

Remove from the food machine, and stir in half the flour, mixing well, then the other half.

Roll the dough into a ball, cover in clingfilm, and stick in the fridge while hang your 6-month-old in her bouncy thingy, peel-steam-puree-freeze a bag of sweet potatoes, start making soup for a toddler’s lunch, stop said toddler from turning his sister’s bouncy-thingy into a bungee-jump-thingy, remove traumatised baby from bouncy thingy, clear up, and try to eat a slice of toast before your toddler sees you. (30 mins)

Roll the chilled dough into balls the size of a golf ball, and put on greased / lined baking tray an inch apart. 

Invite your toddler to help you making a well in each ball with your thumb (be warned – this gets a bit messy) and fill this with jam (about half a teaspoon).  (This gets even messier).

Stick in the oven for about 15 mins, until they’re golden and looking crisp. 

Ideally, wait until fully cool before burning your tongue on tasting them

*Except, possibly, my appetite for lunch.