Behavioural tactics

We’ve been back a few days and are still plagued by horrendous jet lag which is creating terrible bad tempers all around and also a strange sense of unreality and disconnectedness with our daily lives at home. This may partly be because the phrase ‘daily life’ usually means when the sun is up in the sky and people are normally about their business and can be interacted with, but in our case, currently, the day begins around 2.45am and by 7am when Husband wakes up and stumbles out of the bedroom, One is already rubbing his eyes and wanting to go down for his nap and Four is whining for candy canes, chocolate or indeed any kind of sugar and, when denied, sobs pitifully and proclaims that it isn’t really her day or in fact her Christmas at all, she’ll never, ever get any sweets as long as she lives because I’m so incredibly mean. 

Once again I offer some proper food and am rudely refused (for the eighty ninth time since 3.01am) and by this point, instead of explaining again in a calm, rational voice that we don’t eat candy for breakfast, or have sweets every day, I just snap at her to STOP BLOODY WHINGEING or I’m going to phone Santa and tell him to bring that lump of coal for the ungrateful little whiner at number 15.

She’s developed a defence to this, however, and says to me, tearfully,

 “I will just BURN it then and kick you in the legs” before throwing herself on the sofa and bursting into howls of self pity and injustice.

 

Then I feel like a real cow. 

She’s only Four, and even at my age, I frequently spend large parts of my day thinking about chocolate. The real bummer for her is that I’ve got all the access and all the power.

I’m not really going to phone Santa, honest.

 

I have to say that one of my hopes for Africa was to introduce Four to the concept of poverty. I wanted her somehow to understand that not everybody has the luxury of leaving food untouched, multiple toys that don’t get played with, comfortable homes with running water and reliable plumbing.  Maybe this was too much for a little one to get her head around but while we were there she was genuinely shocked and saddened to see the shanty town settlements of tin shacks that we passed on our travels. She was horrified to learn that whole families lived in one room with no running water and barely enough to eat, that they couldn’t go to the doctor when they were sick because there was no money and that babies would die of illnesses that she had had shots to prevent (the same ones she was given a lollipop for enduring).

She had great plans, touchingly, for helping these people including going there and sharing her toys and clothes and her dinner. However I do note that this did not have any impact on  making her actually eat her food ( I just don’t like African chicken, milk, corn, cheese, whatever) and also did not cross over into any kind of gratitude on her part for the things she did have or was given while we were there. In fact there were a few occasions when I was downright embarrassed and shocked by her rudeness when given a gift by doting relatives that had never met her before. Things like:

“I thought it was going to be better than that” 

“I didn’t really WANT that!” 

I gave her pretty short shrift for those responses and explicit instructions on how to receive gifts in future, but had also, to wonder what it was – my parenting? The culture we live in? Both? –  that has created a child (and she’s a lot better than quite a few I know) that behaves so differently from me and the kids of my generation (I sound uncomfortably old and crotchety here. Well, I suppose I am rather old and definitely uncomfortable currently..) who did not dare to behave like that.  Funnily enough, in the circles Husband and I move in here in California,  I am considered to be old-fashionedly strict and a rather tough disciplinarian, but watching Four and One cavort in South Africa, gleefully catching (and in some cases eating) bugs during dinner and failing to sit still, keep voices down, listen attentively, or use any kind of cutlery effectively, I was keenly aware of how much less disciplined they were than their SA counterparts who sat quietly at table, respectfully listened to their parents, ate everything on their plates and did as they were told.

I may have mentioned before that my own mother (who is South African) is a well respected psychologist with a thriving practice in Johannesburg, and her MA thesis was on motherhood, so after spending a pleasant but tiring meal at a garden center restaurant where she, the nanny, and I had all taken turns running after One in an effort to prevent him drowning himself in the ornamental pond during lunch, I asked her how South African parents manged to get their children to behave so well, as mine seemed to be so wild and unruly in comparison.

 

 “They’re horrible to them” she said airily.

 

Well, at least I know that now we’re home I’m on the right track.