Bad Dad

Another relentless month, in which many things have conspired to make me feel like a lousy dad.

-

"We're taking C to the doctor today, F, she has to have some injections. You'll get to play in the waiting room if you like."

"Can Bunbun come?"

"Yes, if you want."

"Will the doctor kill Bunbun and cut holes in her?"

What? What the? Will the who do what and cut which in the why, now? Where has that come from? What desperate horror have I inadvertently exposed my daughter to, that she thinks the doctor is going to prosect her rabbit?

F has asked this in the most deadpan, apparently unconcerned way imaginable, along the lines of 'can I have ice cream on the way home'. As flabber ghasts explosively through my head, I'm also of course trying not to react in any way that might make this nightmarish question get worse. Lids must be kept upon.

"No, I shouldn't think so. Why do you ask?"

"I'm going to leave Bunbun at home."

And that's all she says. I'm left to stew, disturbed.

- 

"See you on Monday night!" I say cheerily, tucking myself up on the sofa. C still doesn't usually sleep through. Movement in our bedroom triggers screaming, as though we're raising a faulty burglar alarm. Because I'm getting up early in the morning to fly the UK, I'm kipping on the couch so that I won't be leaving V with an angry baby.

Except that of course I am. For three days. So I can gallivant around Brighton and Milton Keynes, working and playing and catching up with friends for a few days.

That's not the part that makes me feel like a bad parent, the leaving for a few days for mostly frivolous reasons. (And work! I am going to work too! A film job!) The part that makes me seethe with guilt is the part where I'm looking forward to it so goddam much it hurts. Two nights where I might get a full night's sleep. Three days where I won't have to pretend to be Anna from Frozen and do the awful American teen accent that F insists on me attempting.

One precious precious weekend away from my family, and I'm so happy I could just poop. What a wretched louse.

-

C wants to walk. C can actually walk, she's got all the relevant tools for the job. Strength, balance, coordination. Feet. It's just that it's much easier to do if there's a parent holding your hands.

In the spirit of tough parenting, I have plonked her in the middle of the living room floor, surrounded by her favourite toys and as many soft edges as I can create with throw rugs and pillows, and left her there. I'm trying to block out the caterwauling she's doing, shrill little screams that quickly turn to furious sobs. I'm hoping against hope that she's going to get impatient and just get up, pull herself up on a table edge and get to it. I know she can.

Part of this is because I have to work, trying to finish a redraft of some medical writing stuff that needs to be done by tomorrow morning. No more than two meters away, C roars her fury at me.

The spirit of tough parenting is a stupid spirit, I decide. And I can do the writing by staying up late tonight. Save draft, get up, coo benignly - stop dead, because the cartoon about animatronic aeroplanes that she likes has just come on and now she's perfectly fine.

Is it bad to deliberately neglect her (okay, not neglect, that's daft to claim - I'm right next to her, and if anything was actually wrong I'd be falling over myself to put it right) in order to 'help' her to improve her motor skills? Is it bad to try and work when I'm supposed to be taking care of her? On a scale of bad to bad, where exactly do I lie in all this?

-

"What are you doing, F?"

Mealtimes with F still take around an hour. You have to retell Frozen between mouthful one and mouthful two, you have to settle a tantrum about, er, well, nothing, you have to sit pleading for about half that time trying to get her to just finish whatever you served now that it's a congealed, fermenting crag of brownish glue. It's agony. I resent having to spend my time like this. Genuine, heartfelt resentment, of the kind that turns into tumours in later life.

I do it on average twice a day without the slightest hesitation because, well, I guess I just like tumours or something.

Today, F is eating having spaghetti bol. She's got a great big mouthful of it, most of which is still dangling. Swinging her head from side to side in slow, mournful sweeps, she's lashing her plate with the pasta and groaning fiercely. Why did I think I could raise children? She's three and a half, surely she should be able to eat normally by now?

"F! Come on! What do you think you're doing!" I snap, close to a tantrum myself after fifty minutes of this.

"I'm being Cthulhu," she explains patiently, almost a little hurt, and points to the rest of the food with her fork. "I'm devouring all these people."

Okay, I'll let us both off for now.