Do you know, it is now possible, once you have put your own screaming toddlers to bed, to spend an entire evening watching other people’s screaming toddlers on TV? So yesterday, I got in from an exhausting day helping out with 60 kids on a school trip; battled with tears and tantrums from my own two between 5 and 7; and eventually tucked the little darlings up – washed, scrubbed and sweet smelling - only to rush downstairs to switch the telly on to catch the latest instalment of House of Tiny Tearaways!
At one stage I even had it in stereo – whilst Tiny Tearaway number 1 was shouting and swearing at the long-suffering Dr Tanya on BBC3, my own Tiny Tearaway Poppy was yelling blue murder from the bedroom because she’d managed to get her arms twisted out of her pyjama top and caught through the neck opening. Then it’s on to Little Angels for more tantrums, screaming and struggling parents, and I was starting to wonder what it was about me that made me expose myself to this 24-7…
Partly I want to watch it in case I learn some fantastic parenting trick that I haven’t already picked up from a previous episode. Unlikely, as the problem always seems to come down to one of three things – over-anxious parents, obsessively clean parents or fighting parents. As I am on prozac I can clinically no longer be over-anxious, my body chemicals prohibit it. I am the most non-obsessive person to the point of obsession when it comes to housework and washing the kids hands, so count me out on that one too. And Bill and I were only commenting the other evening that we haven’t had a good row for ages – so we can’t fall foul to that one either. So I have to keep watching in the hope of cause number 4 being identified, so I can learn where we’re going wrong…
Partly I watch it because there is something morbidly satisfying in watching other people’s children behave worse than your own. Let’s face it, these poor people wouldn’t be on the programme unless things had reached breaking point, so these are usually kids with pretty spectacular behaviour patterns. So Bill and I can sit there, whilst our own children are silently tucked up in bed, thinking that we are very lucky with our little angelic girls after all - forgetting what the reality is like when they're awake. So I have to keep watching to give me those feel-good moments…
And I think partly I watch it because I just love kids. Good ones, naughty ones, troubled ones, happy ones. They’re all pretty cute when it comes down to it (especially when they’re at the end of a remote control that can switch them off!). I had the most wonderful experience yesterday on this school trip. There’s a lovely little boy in Lily’s class called Jack (well, there are two actually, it being a popular name at the moment, but the other one isn’t quite so cute!). And yesterday, after an enjoyable half hour of shoving four and five year olds up a mock-Victorian chimney in the Museum of Childhood, I was walking back to the rest of the group with little Jack, when he looked up at me with big round eyes and said ‘I like you, Mrs May’.
And it just struck me that the world would be such an easier place to live in if we all operated with the openness and honesty of children. I’m sure I’m not alone in having met people occasionally in a shop, or at a railway station, or in the mother and baby room in Mothercare, got into a conversation with them, and thought – hey, we’d get on, I’d like you for a friend. But because we are adults it would be too embarrassing to say – 'do you fancy swapping numbers and getting together again?' – it might be misconstrued. So we end the conversation with a cheerful goodbye and never see the person again, thinking what a great friendship-that-never-was has just been lost. Now if we were 5 years old we could just turn round to each other and say ‘I like you’ and a chance meeting will instantly be transformed into easy friendship.
And what about being honest and open with those friends we do have? Lily thinks nothing of sitting in front of her pals on the toilet doing a poo while they discuss their fear of non-existent monsters. Whereas I recently discovered that at the time I was having my meltdown, two of my closest friends were also going through emotionally rough patches, and yet only two of us had admitted this. So a great opportunity for support in numbers was lost. At the same time Lynette was at breaking point on Desperate Housewives, thinking she was a failure as a mum, until her friends admitted to her that they had also been in her situation. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this, guys?’ pleaded a desperate Lynette.
But no, we’re too reserved and proper for that sort of openness with our emotions. Instead we lock ourselves away in our houses and watch an ever expanding array of television programmes exposing other people under the spotlight to highlight their weaknesses and problems in front of the nation - perhaps secretly hoping that within their sad and sorry tales we’ll find the secret key to unlocking our own frustrations without having to admit them to anyone.
The next one to hit our screens sounds particularly frightening. Pregnancy, birth and early parenting in a goldfish bowl. As if it isn’t a stressful enough time already without the added pressure of several million viewers! What can possibly drive people to want to take part in this one? The child isn’t even born yet, so how can it be a problem? But if they start their family life in such an artificial environment, chances are they’ll end up on Tiny Tearaways a few years down the line trying to undo the damage to their relationships that the first programme caused. And I guess by the time they’re grown up, they’ll be so used to having their lives exposed to the public, that Big Brother will be the next obvious career move. And eventually we’ll have the first televised shag on Big Brother that results in a baby, and the whole thing can be self-regenerating…No need to leave ‘the house’…
I wonder why our television screens are so saturated with these programmes at the moment?
Oops. I’m ranting. Time to sign off!
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