The Bad Parenting Chronicles: Episode 3

I may have mentioned previously that Thomas has a tendency to be a tad dramatic. I am fully aware he has inherited this from me. (I am not completely ashamed to admit that I have drafted in my finely tuned brain a plan of action should anyone break into our house at night when Rob is away on business. I almost had to use it once when I was awoken in the night by what I thought was a burglar jingling keys but was actually a bee rattling around inside our living room lampshade repeatedly.) The weather has been unusually blustery lately and we have a telegraph pole at the end of our drive, this pole is huge! A wooden pole tens of metres high holding up telephone cables for us and our neighbours. When you look at the top of the pole on a windy day it is blowing around somewhat but is so obviously safely rooted in the ground. I was getting the kids into the car one morning and it attracted the attention of Thomas who was a bit concerned by it moving slightly in the wind. I reassured him and off we went wherever we were going.

That evening when Rob got home from work he stayed in the car for a while finishing up a phone call in peace, the boys kept looking out to see if he was coming in yet. It was still windy and Thomas noticed the telegraph pole swaying slightly in the wind again. Full panic set in that it was going to fall down crushing his daddy in the process. Now when I say he became hysterical attempting to save his dad from an untimely death I am not being in the least bit dramatic. His adrenaline clearly kicked in because he managed to shrug me off easily and I couldn't pull him off the door that he'd managed to unlock and open amid screams of frenzy.

Rob came in and attempted to rationalise that the pole was going nowhere but Thomas remained unconvinced. We had repeated outbursts of hysteria and concern that the pole would either knock our house down or hit daddy (apparently he had little concern for either mine or Eli's welfare) until he fell asleep cuddling Rob. We were certain the episodes were fatigue induced so let him rest a little. Rob tried to lay him on his bed but he woke up and expressed his concerns that we were in danger (at this point I was slightly anxious that maybe he had some visionary gift and we were in actual danger and so had to go peek at the pole for myself to make sure it wasn't endangering us!) he decided he would be most safe if he laid in bed and whimpered on and off. (After all that is the best course of action in any crisis, he certainly had his drama head on.) We hoped he'd sleep it off and it'd all be forgotten the next day. Little kids are resilient like that, thankfully. (Counting my lucky stars that he slept through our earthquake at 1am that night!)

But not so! Rob tried a new approach of taking him outside to push the pole with Daddy to show that it was too sturdy to be pushed over so it wasn't gonna just fall over. This would work for an hour or so then we'd have to repeat the process. It was a particularly lazy day for me so I had to go out several times in my PJ's to push the pole to assure my child of our safety.

The next day Thomas had playgroup and because Sunday is Mother's day they had several Mother crafts on offer for the kids to try. One was a cookie which they stuck a big pink icing star on and put it in an envelope to give to their mum's. Obviously Thomas couldn't resist the lure of the deliciously decorated cookie and failed to give it to it's intended recipient and proceeded to eat it in the car on the way home. When we pulled onto the drive he gave me his cookie, I made the assumption that he'd had enough of the super sickly icing. As I got out of the car and went to the other side to open the door for the boys I tossed it in the bin. As I opened his car door hysteria had set in again, he needed to give the pole a good shove to check on the safety of our home and family. When he was sufficiently convinced enough to stop crying he asked for his cookie back. Turns out he didn't give it to me to throw away he gave it to me for safekeeping while he monitored the safety of us all. I had to explain his beloved cookie was now in the bin. What followed was a devastation worse than if both our house and daddy had got squashed. He was so upset and I felt so guilty I half considered rescuing the half eaten cookie from the bin. What kind of a parent throws away their son's cookie while he attempts to establish if his loved ones are in total and mortal danger?

Well, in my defense if he'd given me the cookie as I anticipated in the first place the whole incident could have been avoided.