I’m carrying my child like a football. All twenty months of her is tucked up under my armpit, mashed above my hip line, elbow locking her in, so I can grasp each of her wrists and propel her through water. “Paddle, paddle, paddle,” I grimly chortle, trying to add a sense of oh, this is so fun! to the experience. Except it isn’t. We both know it.
We started swimming lessons a term ago. She loved it. One of her favourite activities is to sit on the edge and fall in towards me, a splashing hug of a game. She knows I will catch her and delight spreads from her eyes to her smile each time. As the term went on, we parents - mostly mums, but there is an occasional dad, were encouraged to ease our class of little babies and toddlers into underwater activities. Games that were played head above the water line now had an extension activity. My task was to propel her like a baby dolphin diving in and through that wet-place-that-has-no-air before popping her out for a cheery congratulations. She’s no fool. She hated it. And I could tell from the way she’d turn her face away in disgust where she thought I could stick my all my ‘good girl’ affirmations. Last week, my little one balked at most of the activities. This week, she didn’t even want to play at all. Her teacher looked at me. I looked at her. Then she said something that made me want to hug her. This is not verbatim but it was something along these lines: Many parents are focused on achieving the most advanced skill in the quickest time. But dependence and trust in the water, with the caregivers, and with the teachers, needs to come first, before the kids can become autonomous. This message resonated with me beyond this moment in the water. I heard it echo in memories of the kids at the park on the weekend, pushing and climbing their way up a difficult rope ladder. I had to help my eldest make the final pull to the top. I asked her, Do you want to climb back down or do you want mummy to help you? With her consent I reached up my arm to give her the push she needed. Other kids chose to work their way carefully back down the rungs - not ready - or able, to fling themselves up on their own. Others scurried up so fast and with so much confidence they looked ready for that Ninja Warrior show. I heard the message of dependence and trust echo in memories of the classroom and my work in teaching. For the rest of the swimming lesson, I worked with my little one, showing her I understood her fears and respected her choice to reject the push towards advanced underwater skills. Once she realised I wasn’t going to push her under, I felt her muscles, tightly immobile in tension, relax again. She giggled and laughed as we played above the water. She was able to look at her teacher and interact with her instead of seeing her as a threat. Sometimes we forget that children are individuals with their own ways of navigating the world. Sometimes we are encouraged to forget that they each develop at their own pace and in their own way. A sense of safety in place, a sense of trust in caregivers and teachers, a sense of agency - that their will and needs and hopes and fears will be respected - matter. International Women's Day came, went, & I spent a lot of it scrubbing faecal matter off of children, out of clothes, from under my fingernails. We are three months into 2017. Five weeks (or is it six?) into the school term. I think that's pretty good travelling for our family when it comes to health. But just as I was stretching my writing muscles and celebrating the absolute joy of four consecutive child-free days a week a gastro/tummy bug caught the kids.
For the first few days I was in disbelief. I honestly didn't think it was sickness. Just a meal that didn't sit right in little tummies. But now it's been five days and I have a laundry sink of washing soaking in bleach, and then I received the awkward phone call that my kid puked on the school playground this morning. So now it's coming from both ends. There's more washing. And I have a cherub with me and one across the road with grandma. Joy. I totally get that this is life. In fact, this is life with or without kids. Germs are inevitable. But it frustrates me to end that our society is not responsive to the life-cycle of children and their years (YEARS!) of dependency. I have been working my arse off to be the primary parent - the one who scrubs the poo, who stops my work when the kids need someone to care for them when they are too sick for childcare. This is a decision that was made because I chose to pursue the personal goal of further study, making me the adult in the family living the more flexible life. In the back of my mind I hear those who admonish women for stepping out of the workforce. 'A man is not a plan.' I know. I get that. I've watched too many women, my own mother included, struggle when they are the ones who shoulder the weight of financially supporting themselves and their family when a relationship breaks down. But can't a FAMILY be a plan? Can't we reshape our norms a little to give more space and acknowledgement to the DECADE it can take for those gorgeous bundles of joy to become independent beings who may still want a cuddle but no longer need it as a matter of survival. Can't we reshape our understanding of labour to acknowledge that my work in the home is just as economically valuable as my husband's work out of it? I love my research work. I love my parenting work. Both research and parenting operate within rapidly changing environments requiring flexibility, ingenuity, frugality and goddamn persistence. They both bring much joy. Feeling like motherhood is something that has to be accomplished as soon as possible so I can return to the workforce and become an economically viable member of society brings me absolutely no joy at all. |