Kicking my heels

My children go off on their school residentials tomorrow morning.

When we first came to Bangkok I had one child in primary and one child in secondary so their residential dates didn’t match up; I had to bide my time, listening to the other mums kicking up their heels over five days freedom. Two years I waited ‘til Daughter got into secondary.

In secondary the idea behind residentials – as well as all to develop teamwork, leadership, personal and social skills blah blah blah – is to clear out the school while the GCSE and IB mock exams are taken. I waited and waited and then I got my chance: that’s when I went on the wonderful Andaman Discoveries trip (see November 2007.) The second year I wanted mountains. I looked at a map; and discounted places I’d been, locations I planned to go to with family and arranged it all. Geography was never one of my gifts: Khorat turned out to be the flattest of flat plains. Not a mountain in sight. Not only that but there was a junior school residential inhabiting my hotel. Not my children but still, pah.

The following year was last year; Daughter went off and Son stayed behind to take mock GCSEs. Next year Daughter will do GCSE mocks and Son will take IB.

This year is my last chance.

In about an hour I will leave for the airport. I’m getting a flight to KL – Kuala Lumpur. Doesn’t that sound exotic? I’m dreaming of gin and tonics in a black and white world…. *sound of scratched record as I come to my senses* I’m not. I’m dreaming of coming back with my manuscript all in the right order. I will not worry about the prose. I will only worry that everything happens in the RIGHT ORDER.

I will not worry about the prose. I will not worry about the prose. RIGHT ORDER, RIGHT order, prose not worry …. Right order….

Trademark

I am going to make a 'Mother Audio Recording.' I think it might make my fortune. I am going to hook up speakers to all the rooms here in our apartment at The Towers and I shall carry a remote control unit in my pocket.

On the remote control unit I will be able to select whichever answer is required to a variety of questions. They might include, but will not be exclusive to the following questions:

• Why do we have to do homework the minute we get home?


• Why do we have to do homework? – It’s the weekend.


• Can we have ‘Friends’ on while we eat dinner?


• Why must I do French homework when there isn’t any set by my teacher?


• Can’t I pack my school bags in the morning?
  

I think pressing buttons will be so much less effort than saying it all again and again and again and again…

PS I have fitted the Mother Audio Recording (trademark) with sighs and tuts for authenticity. There will of course be a range of volumes, from gentle and nurturing to full blown lost-it-shriek.

The mighty jungle

Just when you think you’re getting a handle on this parenting lark, someone throws a curve ball at you. It starts really early too. You bring this tiny bundle home from the hospital and all hell breaks loose as you try to learn everything you need. Just as you get the hang of it, baby starts crawling; then walking; then discovering its own will and verbalising it. It seems to me to be one long phase after another.

When we came to Bangkok Son was 11 and about to move to secondary school. At the end of the summer we moved he would’ve been taking himself off on the bus to the local town. Therefore both children were being carefully trained for some months to go short distances alone. This was fine. There was something sort of timely about it: Son wishing to stretch wings and mother, biting her nails to stumps, watching him out the window as he made his way into the village and finally disappeared from view. Mother: totally relaxed at growing Son’s desire for some independence … tearing hair from roots until he reappeared in sight from the village, hopefully clutching pint of milk/loaf of bread…

However, the ‘allow the children some independence’ programme came screeching and skidding to a halt on moving to Bangkok in summer 2005. Mother, in her new territory and not having the lie of the land, kept her cubs close. Cubs, used to a certain level of freedom, were most unhappy at this change of pace; they growled and lashed their claws.

Three years along it’s possible to say with the arrival of mobile phones in the children’s lives and a sense of balance and knowledge of the city for me, that things have reached normality again. And so it continues. We allow, in incremental steps, a little bit more freedom most times that it is requested. I consider this my job as a parent. They will leave home (whether that’s in Asia or Europe) and I want them to be independent, confident, well balanced young people.

They are both showing every sign of being so. Just yesterday Daughter achieved a First …school bus to sky train and travelling on her own to our stop, where she alights and walks home: an incremental step for most, but for a 12 year old and her mother, a giant leap. I don’t want to sound smug (I think I do) but my nails are no more, and I keep looking out the window to spot my cub even though it’s an hour too early to expect her.

And then today, another curveball: a demo at Government House may spill over into other parts of Bangkok, and it is advised to ‘exercise caution’ when being out in the streets. I spent the morning rearranging her travelling timetable and contacting school to try to inform her of it.

Blimey, it’s a jungle out there.

Too many parentheses

Well, they’ve gone.

I had a little look at the map on my blog this morning to see whereabouts they might be. I reckon they’ll be flying over Europe – hope they wave.

They land at 6am ish UK time. For the next nearly three weeks I think I will be doing a lot of translating clock times in my head, imagining what they’re doing.

For one weak and self indulgent second I thought about them all alone up there (oh how the imagination works… do go and look at this post!) And then, I realised that for all the ferocity of a mother protecting her young, I am not superwoman, and I’d be pretty much buggered myself in an aeroplane doing something unpredictable.

So now, I’ve pulled myself together and started thinking about showering, packing, PICKING UP MY BLACKBERRY (HURRAH … Who? My children are …where?)

Then, then, the excitement of today (apart from being footloose and fancy free with my Blackberry to play with, and getting ready for Skyros (HURRAH)) I’m going with a group from the British Women’s Group to sing Christmas carols at a Bangkok Hospital (this is something I did last year, and I’m sorry but drinking sherry, eating mince pies and singing carols in the sweltering heat of Bangkok doesn’t do anything to persuade me it’s December the something. BUT, it’s lots of fun – I love to sing (the same stanza over and over, and probably badly, mostly, but tough. It’s MY singing and it’s good for my mental health!)).

If you’re very (un)lucky I may see if I can make the technology work to upload some of our ‘singing.’

(When I’m over-excited I use too many brackets – it’s the digressions.)

Woo hoo: carols, BLACKBERRY, Skyros …Children are safe, happy and being looked after … I am a good mum.

PS. I LOVE blogging. I am so glad to be back (I never really went away: I lurked. I just didn’t post!)

Stampy footed fool thinks about maths

THANK YOU to everyone who left me lovely messages about my measly 500 words.

‘Tis true I was disappointed, BUT I also wrote my article (nearly finished) and my website report for meeting today.

I think it was more to do with maths:

disappointment + arguing children = opportunity to beat oneself up

Husband said I was a fool to publicise that yesterday was about writing. But I think he is wrong (I may be a fool, that’s true) but had I not said publically that I was writing today I would have managed 5 words. I persevered because I had to report back which meant that I managed to write 495 more words.

I do worry that my posting yesterday has precipitated many visits to opticians all over the UK. Sorry.

I am off to my meeting now. I will sit on my hands and I will tape up my mouth with elephant tape so I do not volunteer for anything…