Temperama

Happy Birthday, Fifthborn

That's him in the pale blue T-shirt. He's nine years old today (and unless something very strange happens in the night he will still be nine years old tomorrow). Actually, he's been a bit of a hero. On Friday he was hot and queasy and didn't go to school. Yesterday, he seemed recovered but he was sick first thing this morning then sick again on the way to ten-pin bowling with his sisters and his friends and sick on the way back too. Otherwise he was absolutely fine. I suppose this shows a talent for rising to the occasion, though if that rather large slice of Happy Feet Birthday cake he ate a couple of hours ago stays down I'll be more than little surprised.

Primary School Homework

Amen to this:

"Years 5 & 6 I have discovered to my chagrin are, to paraphrase Cap'n Jack in Torchwood, where it all changes. From no homework we suddenly leap to homework three times a week and punitive measures if it is not completed. The kids get three lifelines a year, and lose one each time they forget to do their homework. When they've lost them all they get a detention. Last year, no. 1 lost one for not bringing in some silver foil for a science project. And get this. It WASN'T her fault. I was busy sorting out packed lunches, she asked me to get her some foil (which sits on top of a cupboard she can't reach), I said, yes, yes, in a minute, and promptly forgot, Spouse was taking them to school and rushed them out of the door, so she forgot her blasted tin foil, and lost a life in the process. As the Yanks say, go figure."

Compared with this my younger kids are lucky: they get, at most, occasional pieces of work sent home from school and it is usually interesting, worthwhile and a variation on what they've been doing in the classroom. I simply do not understand the logic of requiring young children to do what is effectively overtime - as though a six-and-a-half hour day isn't enough for ten year olds. More craziness detailed here.

Worrying Sixthborn

Seeking reassurance that my divinely bonkers youngest is entirely normal, I visited a child development site which lists the social and emotional characteristics of a typical four year-old. They include.

+ Changes the rules of a games as she goes along. Check.

+ Likes to talk and carries on elaborate conversations. Check.

+ Has difficulty separating make-believe from reality. Check, bit like her dad.

+ Lies sometimes to protect self and friends, but doesn't truly understand the concept of lying - imagination often gets in the way. Check.

+ Likes to shock others by using "forbidden" words. Check, occasionally.

+ Expresses anger verbally rather than physically. Check.

+ Throws tantrums over minor frustrations. Check, like her dad, again.

+ Loves to tell jokes that may not make any sense at all to adults. Check.

+ Can feel intense anger and frustration. Check.

+ Has vivid imagination and sometimes imaginary playmates. Check.

+ Enjoys dramatic play and role playing. Check.

But there's one other thing: a fretful interest in death. Sample dialogue:

"Daddy?"

"Yes."

"What will happen if you die?"

"Mummy will look after you. And the other children."

"But Daddy..."

"Yes."

"If you die who will tell me in the mornings if it's a school day?"

It's good to know she'll miss me when I'm gone.

Don't Let This Happen To You

My first conversation of the day was with Fifthborn. Here's how it went.

"Daddy?"

"Just a minute."

"Daddy?"

"I'm asleep."

"Daddy?"

"Yes. What?"

"Before Mount Everest was discovered, what was the highest mountain on Earth?"

"Don't know."

"Mount Everest. It just hadn't been discovered."

"Oh. Very clever."

"Daddy."

"What?"

"If two's company and three's a crowd, what's four and five?"

"I don't know."

"Nine. Daddy?"

(Yawns) "Go on, then."

"How many times can you subtract five from twenty-five?"

"Five."

"No. Once. After that, you're subtracting it from twenty."

"That's cheating."

"If you had only one match and you entered a room and found an oil burner, a kerosene lamp and a wood-burning stove, which would you light first?"

"I dunno. The wood?"

"No, Daddy. The match."

"Didn't I tell you I was asleep?"

This is what will happen to you if you buy a child of yours the Children's Miscellany, Volume One. You have been warned.

Cheaper By The Half Dozen

My children, Sheila and me bringing love and happiness to a confined space yesterday.

Dad's Life: Star Tendency

Fourthborn, Dolores, aged eleven, has trouble settling to sleep and becomes tense in her shoulders and neck. A friend takes her children to a cranial osteopath and suggested we did the same. Yesterday, Dolores and I rode the bus to her second appointment, the first I’d accompanied her to. The clinic’s interior is very hushed, very soft, very mauve. Many of the children who go there are babies, adding to its appeal for Ms D. Her therapist is a young French woman, the consultant, a bike-riding fortysomething who I suspect to be Richard E. Grant.

In the treatment room Dolores lay down on a scrubbed wooden table with comfy padding and a cosy flannelette sheet. There was much solicitous questioning, massaging of shoulders and head. Ms D related the events of her week to that point along with details of her current ailments, a rich source of conversation at all times. It had been a punishing few days, especially Wednesday, she explained. First, she’d sung at the Year 6 Christmas concert then videoed her brother in the Year 4 one because neither parent could be there. Later, dressed in a Santa suit, she’d compered the school Christmas show and, after that, graced the school Christmas disco dressed in silver lame: all this despite having a cold and a temperature which had, as I was requested to confirm, been at its worst on Tuesday night.

Ms D disgorged this epic tale while the femme therapist demonstrated her delicate touch and punctuated her patient’s seamless monologue with small Gallic noises showing, as appropriate, deep appreciation or concern and the consultant wreathed her with his actorly beam. After we left we had a bacon sandwich in a nearby café and got the bus back home. Not until our journey was almost complete did Ms D fall quiet. I put an arm around her and had to wake her when we got to Clapton Pond. The plan was to stop very quickly by the house so she could pick up the Christmas cards she’d written to friends and take them into school with her to distribute. But she never got that far. After quickly checking my emails I found her fast asleep in bed and she remained that way for the next three hours. Such is the life of a star.

Dad's Life: Christmas Survives

The way some people go on, you’d think Christmas had been banned in Britain, especially in neighbourhoods like mine where “ethnic” people are everywhere (“ethnic”, of course, is now established as the current, squeamish code word for “not white”). Well, I looked for evidence of this cultural purging at my four-year-old Orla’s assembly yesterday. The nursery class gathered at the front of the main school hall dressed as shepherds, angels and other characters from the Bible. Their teacher, the Muslim woman who generously dispensed Ramadan chocolate at the end of October, guided her young charges through a classic nativity play, complete with Joseph, Mary, moulded plastic baby Jesus, cardboard sheep and makeshift stable. The same scene was depicted in a large artwork mounted on one of the walls. No sign of Christmas being banned at all.

Of course, ultra-purists might have quibbled about the presence on another wall – the one behind the stable, actually – of a foil-and-glue depiction of a Hanukkah menorot but otherwise their urge to rail against the supposed erosion of Britain’s Christian traditions by the multiculturalism of “politically correct”-liberals-who-hate-their-own-country, blah-de-blah, would have gone wholly unfulfilled. And later in the day their frustrations could only have been compounded by the sight of my eleven-year-old, Dolores, and the rest of the school choir belting out Hark The Herald Angels Sing! about four feet away from where an extremely chatty veiled Muslim mum had just finished selling jam tarts at ten pence a go from a stall at the annual mayhem know as the school Christmas Fair.

At home in the evening, as we all talked over the day, Sheila asked Dolores what she thought the word multiculturalism means. “Understanding each other and working together,” Dolores replied, eyeing a plate of lamb chops covetously. I’m so glad my kids are growing up round here.

Dad's Life: Daughter Of The Sorrows

Here are my three youngest in the kitchen on Friday just before leaving for school (the red rig-outs were in honour of World Aids Day.) The tallest is Dolores, a suitable name for her in many ways. It means "sorrows" and refers to the Virgin Mary - "Mary of the sorrows" - though that's not why it was chosen: Sheila liked it because it was kind of Catholic and popular in Ireland and we both liked it because it has a lovely sound. Don't go thinking that Dolores is a right old misery: she's mostly bright and sunny and quite the comedienne, especially when in the company of friends.

Yet though she isn't, on the whole, a sorrowful soul, sorrow does attract her powerfully. When she was small and on her own she often sang to herself, and every song was a free-form lament. Ever since becoming a competent reader she's been beguiled by Jacqueline Wilson's tragi-comic tales. When her maternal grandfather died, she couldn't talk enough about how sad she was feeling, how sad everyone must be feeling and hoping there really was a Heaven. Last week she told me all about these soliders in World War I who carried poison in their pockets so if they were captured and tortured by the enemy, they could kill themselves rather than give secrets away. Could I imagine how terrible that would be? The day before that she'd asked me which would be the worst, to be deaf or to be blind. If I had to, which one would I choose?

Just lately, I've been impatient with Dolores. She can be volatile, and I've not been in the mood. Over the past few days, though, it has emerged that she's been anxious about something: nothing massive, just something that has been making her sad (she won't mind my telling you this, by the way). Sheila's been brilliant about it. I have not: I've failed to make allowances, failed to detach myself, failed to remember that I'm a grown-up and she a child. Dolores's capacity for feeling and sensing sorrow can fuel anxiety in her, which, in turn, can make her turbulent. Yet it is also a quality that makes her empathetic, generous and humane. Her dad would do well to remember this in future.

Sixthborn: A Milestone

My youngest, Orla, the four year-old, firmly refuses to feel the cold. December approaches and she's still going to school in her gingham summer frock. OK, she has a long-sleeved T-shirt underneath but it would take a wrestling hold to get a jumper on her and this morning she refused to put tights on too. It became clear that the only way out of this would be to take some into school and persuade her to put them on later. The plan, though, would have to be hatched secretly. From the kitchen Sheila, occupied with cleaning Orla's teeth, called to me using spelling-out code.

"Daddy, would you fetch me a pair of t-i-g-h-t-ses?"

Orla intervened before I even had time to agree.

"I don't want tights!" she snapped, impatiently.

I suppose the use of "pair of" gave us away. But it still feels like a landmark. From now on we'll have to trick her some other way.

Dad's Life: Santa, Are You There?

This is the Christmas present list of my fifthborn, Conall, aged eight, which he typed and arranged on the page all by himself. Click on it to appreciate the detail. As you may see from the "Key" Conall provides in the bottom right-hand corner, the items in bold are things "really, really, really wanted," those underlined, "really, really wanted", those in italic, just "really wanted" and the rest he simply, well, wants. What could be clearer than that? I'm sure Santa will be grateful to my son for making his life so much easier...