End of term: end of days

I forgot Ava’s carrot sticks for her end of term party yesterday and it’s symptomatic of a wider malaise. As term draws to a close this sticky summer, and the rote of end of term events gets ticked off, I feel I’m slipping in my duties.

I didn’t make parent’s evening either – instead, I showed my face at my work’s summer party, for reasons of diplomacy. On Jonah’s school report, it noted that he rarely brings PE kit – although to be fair, he loses it when I do.

I have been swamped, and the kids are coasting.

With Jonah it’s hard not to coast as a parent. He’s so belligerent and bloody minded, it can be difficult enough to persuade him into the park for an ice cream, let alone to join a sports team or learn an instrument. I am happy, since his collar bone cracked, that they’ve got him in code club, at school although technically he is ‘in the wrong year’. But the playground is increasingly stressful for him, and he finds the coding suits his sense of increasingly rigid fun, and at least, when all is said and done, he might get a career out of it.

He’s running ahead of himself at maths too. He got the best marks not only in the year above but the year above that, so for all his lack of balance, I know he’ll do alright at something.

The long holidays loom, and it’s hard to make plans. Holiday camps are too complicated for Jonah, and he’s resistant to’activities’: his childminders are largely under his thumb, or perhaps they’ve just worked out that its pointless to argue with him. So with wall to wall computer games beckoning, I am concerned that I am just not quite parenting well enough.

They’ve got a new manny. A right bloke, he’s a relaxed chap, with a little paunch and girlish chuckle. Jonah likes him – they play Wii together and Ava, who LOVES men, adores him, though she barely gets a look in with the Wii. They’ll be alright, over the summer, although my alpha sensibilities may well have to be stifled.

But we’re moving at the end of the month – all being well, and that will at least give them a new outlook. Instead of the duplex with its carden [car park garden] we’ll have the pretty wilderness of Mile End Park, with its canal, pond, wild flowers and come September, blackberries.

Jonah spent Sunday collecting frogs there with his bezzie mate, and as I lay there, mild hangover pouring out of me, I relaxed a bit that they could concentrate for so long on such a simple, grubby, real life thing. So perhaps I’m worrying unnecessarily.

And with me earning less than £30.00 a day when I have a full day of childcare, these back to nature pursuits are perhaps better (cheaper) than all the ‘activities’ in the world. At nearly 8, Jonah’s pretty trustworthy, and I reckon I can let him out, as long as there are no roads to cross. He’s hardly gonna engage with strangers, although a bunch of rough kids, fishing at the pond on Sunday, who called me a hooker when I told them not to steal Jonah’s frogs, and then they tipped away his jam jar, is rather another matter. Jonah may have to learn not to fight back; that I won’t be there to fight his battles for him. Perhaps I should try and get him back in karate, although against a knife, he wouldn’t be all that much of a match.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s good for him to be able to roam in this approximation of countryside, for all there may be drunks on benches and kids dealing drugs on bikes. He probably won’t notice, and if his keeps to himself, he’ll be alright. Won’t he?

And Ava, always happy to tag along, she’ll be alright too. I won a summer holiday drama class which ordinarily, is heinously overpriced, so at least she’s ‘doing’ something over the summer that isn’t watching her brother play Pokemon. But with my income curtailed by 19 year old ‘staff’, it puts paid to any summer fun for me too. Which means fewer hangovers, so maybe it’ll end up being a virtuous circle after all.

And with a house to whitewash, there are plenty of ‘activities’ that I can involve the kids in that involve paintbrushes and the like, in lieu of a holiday. Now, surely that’s good enough parenting, right?