I was visiting a friend, and her two year old son was there. Billie had been given a slice of bread which she placed on the table. Unfortunately, the little boy ate the piece of bread before Bill could stop him. Billie wailed and wailed. No problem, you’d think, offer her another piece of bread. But of course this was no good; Billie wanted the bit that the boy had eaten. Hence the following exchange.

Me: “But this bread is the same”

Bill: “I want my bread that Jack ate”

“Well, this bit is better”

“I want my bit”

“Look I’ve cut the crusts off this bit, the bit Jack ate had crusts”

“I want you to cut the crusts off the bit Jack ate, I want my bit”

“Sweetheart you can’t have that bit, Jack has eaten it”

“I want it”

“I can’t very well make him sick and get your bread back”

“I want the bit he ate, that was my bit, I want it – Waaaaaaaaaaaaagh!”

And so on. Adult logic does not figure in the world of a three year old, nor, in my experience, does it in the worlds of the four or five year old. My life is riddled with demands a Renaissance Pope would be proud of, so wild and impossible to satisfy are they. You get to school and Olly decides he wanted Daddy to pick him up and yells all the way home. It’s raining and they cry cos they want it to be sunny, it’s sunny and they yell cos they wanted to play in the rain etc etc.

And if it’s not ridiculous requests, then it’s stipulations so particular and specific that they make a J-Lo rider seem reasonable. Billie wants her blue blanket, not her old blue blanket mind, but her new blue blanket and she must be able to reach the pink silky label, and her pillow has to be tilted just right, not too high, not too low. Not only that, but she must have all three of her mice, Stuart, Henry and Oliva. Woe betide you if any of them are lost. (She has three identical Beanie mice because she found where I had stashed two spare mice as back up’s in case she ever lost her beloved Stuart Mouse. I haven’t bothered to buy any more replacements in case she finds them too and I have to call in Rentokill to keep the population down.)

And Olly is just as bad, he must have his Lion mug (though last week it was a Dolphin cup) and it’ll be waaaaaaaaaagh all the way until you give it to him. He must have either his Jack in the Box pillowcase or his Cat pillowcase on his pillow (God forbid they should both be in the wash) and the corners of the pillow must stick out so that he can twiddle them while he lies there. He likes his toast “damp”, which means you have to butter the toast as soon as it comes out of the toaster so that the butter sinks right in making it nice and soft. He has the crusts cut off and cut in half, not in quarters. Billie meanwhile likes a rice cake on the hour every hour, which she will have three bites of and then discard. Mind you, don’t make the mistake of getting it out of the packet for her, this is one of her many “do it myself” tasks. This means she has to climb up to the cupboard, take the rice cake packet out remove the top one, dump that (I guess in case it’s stale, who knows?) and climb down again leaving cupboard door packet on counter and chair shoved up against work unit.She has milk in a bottle, but juice in a cup, she has a cup of tea at the weekend, from an espresso mug that she has claimed as her own.

Her independence is such that if you do anything that she has stipulated as “do it myself” she will calmly and very bloody slowly undo it and do it again. This applies to all dressing, putting on of shoes and getting into her car seat particularly. I have known her, when placed in her car seat, to climb right out of the car and go back to the front door, and of course you’ve always placed her in there when you are in the worst of hurries and she is all that stands between you and a hasty exit.

My friends all agree that Rod and my back are a match made in heaven, and yet I continue to serve my crazy masters. I shut my ears to entreaties to ignore my children, and when eyebrows are raised at my concessions to their “illogical” behaviour I satisfy myself that it is us, not the children who have got it wrong. I prefer to think of children as pre-rational rather than irrational, they have not yet got to the point where they have internalized all the constraints that adult life places upon them, therefore they are naturally frustrated when they cannot turn back time, speed life up, sustain an experience they enjoy or immediately rid themselves of one they do not.

I also believe that we don’t give enough weight to the attachments that children form to items or issues that seem inconsequential to us – the colour of a beaker, which chair they sit in, the clothes they wear, a toy they must have before we leave the house, or a ritual they must perform before they climb the stairs to bed. I often hear people say with bemusement that their child wants, at the tender age of three, to choose their own clothes or food. Of course they do!! And though I know that as parents we have to steer an even course through mealtimes and bedtimes and school and play, I think we can accommodate a bit of choice from the small ones as well, after all there’s room for a little crazy in all our lives.

Me and Olly are having lunch

Me: “Olly, please can you not wipe your hands all down your t-shirt”

Oliver removes a sock and wipes his hands and face with that instead.

Juliet Jones lives in domestic chaos with husband Steve, son Oliver (aged 4) and daughters Billie (aged 3) and Rosa (aged nearly three weeks!) in Hertfordshire.

... go back