Back Street's Back ALL RIGHT!

And I if I haven't scared you off with that title...well done you!

It's been a long stretch of desert here, my friends, a loooong journey from Germany to our new house here on Wisteria Lane. And yes, I mean that with every nook of my mummified heart because my new friend has informed me the amount of swinging and wife swapping that goes on here is jaw-dropping. Funnily enough, everything she told me about the depraved activities my neighbours supposedly get up to I've heard and/or seen on bases for the past 12 years, so honestly, it doesn't shock me. Makes me sick, yeah, but shock? Nevah. Now I'm too old to gasp, "Oh, how horrid!" and daintily dab my moist brow with my hankie.

And funnily enough, when I rang up my dad the other night just for a chat and told him that apparently I'm on the Swinger Central Cul-De-Sac of Hitting Dat, he just chuckled and said, "Would you believe the same thing happened to your mom and me when we first moved into our area, back in 1972??"

"Yep," I told him. "I completely would."

(If you're interested and you're familiar with my home town, it seems that Pointer Ridge Drive was where it all went down, where a party didn't start until you dropped your keys in the bowl and downed a few martinis).



Nigel and Gloria here will be pleased to spend some quality time with you and will even offer you a cuppa afterward...

But that's not why I'm here today. I'm with you to talk about a kind of parent I recently spent time with in the states whose style has been niggling at me ever since. I've seen this sort before, in America, Germany, and England, so I'm sure it's not a European vs. American thing. It's just a way of going about things that nearly put me off having kids altogether...until I realised, via the sage words of my girl Kelly, that I could be any kind of parent I wanted to be, providing I didn't take my kids on pub crawls or ask them to cut my cocaine for me on the kitchen counter.

Kelly didn't actually say that last part, but it was definitely implied.

Let me tell you what went down.

A few months back, we hooked up with some friends at their house. They had kids close in age to ours, so it was a fun time for everyone. And it was in English, making it even better.

But the mum was one of those who stops EVERYTHING she's doing when her little one comes up and says, "Rrrayagar gamum?" in that delightful way that toddlers have of sounding like they're speaking Serbo-Croation but only parents can understand. I know because it's what Bea does, and it's really hard not to imitate her because we're meant to be using WORDS these days, not just babbling incoherently. It sounds like a cross between Fat Albert's Mush Mouth and Treelo from "Bear in the Big Blue House" with a lot a drool in between, and it baffles anyone who's never been around toddlers, sort of the child-rearing version of Code Talkers.

So I was sitting having a wonderfully grown-up conversation with her when her little one came up and threw a book in her mum's lap, said something in Toddler Speak, and the mum piped up in that high, false tone that so many moms use for speaking with their kids, "Do you want to read a book, honey? Is that it? Okay, that sounds like FUN! 'Chapter 1: Big Bird Gets Some Bad Ecstasy Pills...' " and off she went without so much as a, "Sorry, I'll be right back" or "This will just take a mo...you know how kids are..." And I was left sitting there on the carpet feeling like I'd been stood up and it was somehow my fault.

It wouldn't have been so bad except that it kept happening. We'd fall into another conversation, and Precious would stomp in, yell something out in a demanding sort of way, and off the mum would go to get her something to eat, play with one of those raucous toddler toys that chirp out a perky tune but manage to grind all adult conversation to a halt, tend to a shitty pair of knickers, or deal with some other gross thing that you encounter when it comes to little kids.


Chicken Dance Elmo...need I say more?

Now I'm on my second toddler, and I know their needs are immediate and their presentation lacking social graces. I also know that many, many times, it is indeed easier to give the kid a sippie cup of juice or a cookie straight away instead of trying to convince them that an organic apple that you got last week at the Farmer's Market during a Family Fun Day would be preferable because the resulting screamfest is far worse than the notion of a bit of sugar hitting their blood stream. As a very wise woman once told me ages ago, having children has nothing to do with raising them. It's all about crisis management and prevention. You make the call in the name of grown-up sanity because with kids, there are so few times you actually have that choice.

My mother was not the sort who did that. Naturally I remember myself as a sweet, respectful child who always waited her turn and never made my mother's life a miserable circular hell of torment. But I was a toddler, and I know how they are, and I'm certain I was the rule and not the exception. And I can honestly, 100% say that if I interrupted my mother as she was talking to another adult, I didn't get the sickly-sweet, "One moment, please, darling...Mummy's on the phone, then we'll play whatever you want." Knowing my mum (and knowing I was the youngest of three), it was probably more like, "For God's sake, can you just give me 10 minutes without you demanding something?? Are you bleeding? On fire? Missing teeth? Mortally wounded? No? Then pipe the heck down, and I'll get to you when I'm done here!"

Yet I have been in the company of so many mums who have the approach toward their kids that they're on-call constantly, like a Mummy Help Desk that never closes. That whatever their child needs (or thinks they need) must be dealt with immediately and fully...not so they can get back to being an adult and continue the lovely conversation they'd been having with you but because it's their Duty As A Mum to be their kid's Everything. In short, they've gone onto AutoPilot and forgotten how to act like an adult. Even if you actually speak to them in the two annual minutes they've detached themselves from their sprogs and are carved out from the herd, they still speak in that Mummy Voice and use Mummy Phrases with you, like "That's SUPER!" or "Oh, AWESOME for you!" or even, "You did SUCH a good job on that, sweetie!" followed by an enthusiastically executed Thumbs Up.

I've seen parents eat 1/100th of their now-cold meals in restaurants because they're so busy dealing with their kid's demand that the ketchup be in zig zags on every single french fry, that the drink is "too cold for my teef, mommy...go get another one", or even worse, seeing the child dip their fingers onto what's on everyone else's plate "just to have a taste" after dumping their own food on the floor accidentally/on purpose in a fit of pique because the hamburger was "too brown".

Such mums want every moment to be special, treasured, and memorable, so that their child, looking back across 30 years, can say, "Wow, my mom really did make my pancakes into the shape of little boats every morning then set them sail on a river of syrup with magic orange slice islands. I remember that trip to Farmer Adam's place where I got hold chickens and milk cows. It was awesome..." never knowing that Mumsy spent the whole time sneezing in the chicken shed because of her feather allergy or wiping cow shit off her little darling's shoes with a travel-sized pack of Kleenex. All that mattered was that Juniour had a fantastic time, and that's the whole idea, isn't it? That you cut back yourself so there's more room for the children?

Children raised this way will only remember what their mums did for them but will have not an inkling about who they were. And that's the part where I refuse to cede. I spent years establishing my sense of self after having it torn away from me countless times, and when I see these Mums emptying themselves into their children, I want to take them by the shoulders, shake them, and scream, "At the end of the day, where are YOU? You are not created out of MegaBlocks and toddler finger foods and toilet seats. You used to be a woman and an adult. Where did you go?!"

This pouring of oneself into a child is what turns these toddlers into little tyrants, and the parents stay shockingly oblivious about it the whole time. I can chalk a lot of this up to lack of sleep (and you non-kid folks really need to understand that months of broken/little sleep really will twist your brain around and make you do/say things you never thought you would), but I can't chalk up letting a toddler rule the roost like that to anything but an unrealistic style of child-rearing that will leave you feeling absolutely drained of your adulthood and sense of self and wind up slightly resentful at the end of the day, if you're awake enough even to feel that.


Wait for it...wait for it...


With the rise of Attachment Parenting and the popularity of having one's baby in a sling around one's body all day, every day, my view isn't exactly the most welcomed. I don't co-sleep because in my mind, there must be boundaries between Them and Us. I like my Adult Time, and I make sure my kids know how much I need it. Yes, I will take care of you every day and make sure you're fed, dressed, rested, happy, and contented. But I will not yield every single moment of my existence to you because it's not how the game is played, and truly, you wouldn't to be around me if I became that blank-eyed of a person.

In my mind, kids need to learn hard and early that adults are in charge, and that's how it goes down. And if you are the sort who sees your children on equal status to adults in families, then I'm sorry, you are not going to have much fun in my house if you bring your darling to play because I don't obey the commands of an over-indulged child with an inflated sense of self-importance. I'm not talking merely a case of bad manners. I'm referring to children who have been treated as adults since the moment they became aware of their existence and are used to being a part of every single decision that happens in a family.

I don't get called by my first name by anyone younger than me, particularly if they still shit their own trousers. And I don't care if my kids get pissed at me because they don't get their way every single time or if I tell them to wait a bit before I get their brekkie if I'm right in the middle of something. To me, it's a valuable life lesson to realise that things don't happen RIGHT NOW just because you ask for them or because you're cute as a button or a little kid...and it's one I don't see being taught often enough.

Besides, if you really believe that your little dumpling is an equal member of the family, tell him to go out and get a job and start pulling his own weight around the house. You can't get your ass wiped AND have veto power at the same time.