Dave the Dad 31 - Meet The Contemporaries
Tom's stroppiness is passing. Or mutating might be a better way of putting it. He still snatches, still hollers 'Mine!', still pushes us away if we threaten to pick up his plastic cow, still shakes his head as though we are poisoning him if we try to suggest eating something green. But, (and it is such a big but that I'm worried Eddie Murphy might want to make a film out of it) he at least does these things with a sense of humour. After snatching….he smiles. Alright, so it isn't a fabulous development but anyone who can empathise with Tom's tornado mood of our trip to Wales will instantly recognise an improvement. Now when he doesn't want to eat what we offer he will often try to eat something different. Now when he pushes us away he laughs. Too reminiscent of Alan Rickman in Die Hard it's true but Jane and I try to look past this and see the obvious humour contained within.
He'll have to try a bit harder soon as he will be surrounded by little Toms, all of whom will love their cows so desperately that nothing will get in the way of them brandishing them and pointing to their udders in fascination. This probably had something to do with one of our trips to Druscillas -who, despite several mentions in this column, have refused to shower me with free passes or Meercats. On The Farm section we played for what seemed several days around a life-size plastic cow with realistic udders that actually spurted warm, white water. Well, I assume it was water but I didn't actually risk a taste. To Tom it was simply amazing and he immediately found the obvious link to his mum, a link she has steadfastly tried to play down ever since. Having a sweet lad who runs around smiling is one thing; having a sweet lad who points to ladies' chests and shouts 'Bubbles!' is quite another and can be frowned upon. I know when I try.... but that's another story.
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So where are these other Toms coming from? The Nursery, that's where. We have decided that it's time to introduce him to the sharing, caring, under-your-breath-swearing environment of the nursery. At the moment it'll only be one morning but hopefully it will give him a bit of perspective. Certainly helped with me. I took him to the first two taster sessions and even I felt like an outsider. You know that scene in Toy Story when Buzz and Woody climb into the arcade game full of little aliens. Yep. At one point I looked into the eyes of a particularly interested girl of two who had followed me and Tom around for the whole hour repeating her name, and I swear she was close to saying 'Take me to your leader.' Tom was unnerved even and he thinks it's perfectly natural to walk up to a drain, stick his hand down it and shout 'Duck!' after an imaginary duck that lives in drains and bites little boy's hands. Don't know where he got that from.
Last time I left him alone for half an hour. He was fine, interacted well with the other kids, even eventually decided to feed himself some milk (we'll come back to that) and generally had a nice time. 'But he hasn't said anything,' Louise said when I returned. Ah. Now he is shy. In Wales he played on a bouncy castle with some older kids for nearly two hours and finally, when one little girl brought him back, she asked if he could speak. Apparently hadn't uttered a syllable in all that time. She had spent the entire time -when not bouncing, falling, crashing, leaping, shrieking, all of which he did majestically- trying to get him to say 'Dog'. An attempt that invariably ended with Tom smiling at her as though she was unhinged. Of course walking back to the chalet it was Dog this, Dog that, Dog the other. I worry that when he grows up his first ever memory will be of flying through the air with a girl named Dog. That'll right mess him up.
Still, he needs to see how kids his age act. I feel sometimes we spoil him a touch. Let's get back to the milk. He's gotten so used to either me or Jane offering him a drink that occasionally he just opens his mouth and we, like idiotic servants, feed him. What's the end result? Louise saying, 'Ah, so he can hold the milk himself' when I return and ask him to finish his carton. Apparently up until that moment he had decided that if a drink was to be had then someone else had better well bloody hold it to his lips.
I am trying to rectify the situation by being deliberately hard on him on Mondays. I push him back when he pushes me, I leave his drink on the side and I sometimes steal his cow and run around the house pointing at the udders. He actually rather enjoys it although Jane worries that I making him 'rough' when I pick him up, toss him in the air like a salad (one of the heavier variety) or push him over to tickle him mercilessly. Only real way to gauge is wait 40 years and see if he's in therapy. Probably replaying over and over again his first memory of a girl who leapt like a kangaroo, shrieked like a fox and whose name was Dog.
September 30 2007
Dave Fouracre aka "Dave the Dad" is a regular feature writer here at thebabywebsite.com.
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