Confessions of a Bad Mother (24 page)

Now, that’s multi-tasking. But back to television.

My mother, while not accusing me openly, is very fond of the phrase,
The Electronic Nanny
. She groups it with other supposedly down-market
maternal failings, such as smoking, bottle feeding and not talking to kids when
they are small. I’m not going to be drawn into a contest about who has
the more intellectual values, so let me just say that this is a bit rich,
coming from someone who has been known to watch
Shoestring
. She
brought us up on
loads
of telly, which is
particularly bad when you consider that when I was small, it only broadcast for
about five hours a day. In those days, nice kids only watched about eight
minutes. A week.

And no wonder: most of it was crap. There was
Watch
With
Mother
, with
Andy Pandy
on Tuesday,
Bill and Ben
on Wednesday
and so on, for about twenty incredibly bland minutes, and only really two
programmes for the five-plus age, which were
Jackanory
– not bad,
depending on the story – and
Blue Peter
. Thank God we were never
made to watch that. It was full of hearty types collecting milk bottle tops,
going on about ‘targets’ represented for some reason by giant
thermometers, and endlessly stroking animals – something both my parents
regarded as tedious and faintly suspect, like the Scouts. As we got older
though, the choice improved: we had
Dr Who
,
Star Trek, Lost in
Space
,
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
,
The Avengers
and
The Prisoner
, often as we ate supper. And – get this – the
TV was even
on the table
.

Now we have some very good television. Of course, that brings different
challenges. The children have been put in front of
The Simpsons
as soon
as they could sit up. But I’m not very keen on the word
‘butt’. However my attempts to try and weed it out of their
vocabulary fail completely.

‘Lawrence. Don’t say butt: say “bum”.’

‘OK, Bum-head!’

I’ve got no one to blame but myself, so it’s a relief to
know that as they get older, their peer group will become more significant. We
take a keen interest in Lawrence and Lydia’s classmates. As I’ve
said, we’re looking for charming and well-off children who’ll
invite them on lavish holidays. But also, when things go pear-shaped,
we’ll need someone to blame. When I was fourteen, the two poshest girls
in my class were arrested outside Lords cricket ground – in their
nighties – attempting to steal a
Members Only
sign with a pair of
wire-cutters. In the aftermath, the main thing both sets of parents were
concerned with was blaming the other girl. So your child’s best friend is
yours too. Possibly.

Lawrence has already fallen under the spell of one boy who he wanted to
impress by doing naughty things. At three, the scope of their naughtiness was
fairly limited. Splashing water on the cloakroom floor is something even
private schools don’t get
too
heated about. But two years on, the
horizons are widening fast. Lawrence is now very keen on another sinisterly
charismatic boy who has a talent for bringing out the worst in people, a bit
like some TV producers. When he comes round to play after school one day, I
think, as you do:
They’ve gone very
quiet …
Then I
get upstairs to find lists of expletives – including the c-word –
neatly written out and taped to the bedroom wall. Should I use Positive
Reinforcement? Say: ‘That’s
very
good writing, boys. Perhaps
a different list of words now?’ Or a more Andrea Dworkin-style response
comes to mind: ‘I feel abused by your use of a name for the female
genitalia to promote the wholesale degradation of women. This word makes me
feel violated.’

But though I’m not fond of the c-word, my primal fear is of the
reaction from other parents. I don’t want it there when one of
Lydia’s well-brought-up little friends comes round. They won’t even
recognize it, I shouldn’t think, but their mothers will shun me as the
Amish would have Kelly McGillis, had she slept with Harrison Ford in
Witness
. And while I’d risk a bit of shunning for a night with
Harrison, I’m not prepared to go under socially for the sake of a
word.

While I’m considering this, I voice my immediate concern:
‘What have I told you about Sellotape? You’ve bloody well gone and
taken the paint off the wall! Look!’

While taking it off I do mutter something about people finding the
c-word upsetting, and insist that next time they use Blu-Tack. It’s a bit
like under-age sex, I suppose: you don’t want them to be doing it at all,
but if they
are
doing it, could they at least use a condom?

Shortly after this, I see the boy who taught them the c-word ringing old
ladies’ doorbells and running away – something I and my friends did
a lot at that age. And the warm glow of satisfaction that comes from seeing a
child behave worse than mine makes everything in the world right again.

But the
status
, does not remain, as it were,
quo
. Rude
words, like the spores of GM crops, are in the air and drifting towards us. If
we want to keep our children pristine, we should have started off like the
family at my sister’s school, who allowed no outside influences
whatsoever, even to the point of birthday parties with no guests. But anyhow
their plan backfired: they mistook my mother’s erudite aura for mental
purity, and allowed them to mix with
us
.

So as we observe the intellectual contamination of our children, the
rather disconcerting reality becoming apparent is that
we
are the bad
influence. It takes a bit of getting used to. In fact, a touch of chemical
comfort is required. One night, quite pissed, I go up to their room to find out
what the loud thumping is. When I come in, they are bouncing on their beds,
shouting: ‘
Shit, pooh,
fucking hell!
’

It has a catchy kind of rhythm. I find myself joining in. Peter comes up
and joins in as well. We agree that it is the funniest thing we have ever
heard.

But of course we never hear it again, because I have –
accidentally – invoked Newton’s Third Law of Parenting, which is
that you have only to join in an activity for your children to reject it
immediately. Right: that’s the smoking issue solved. I may get lung
cancer, but it’ll be worth it.

Well, actually that’s not quite true. The real reason we
haven’t heard ‘
Shit, pooh, fucking hell!
’ again is
that they’ve found something else to frighten us with and this time I
really don’t have anyone else to blame. Just before Lydia’s sixth
birthday, two brothers the same age as her and Lawrence come round to play. I
suggest some music with their supper, and Lydia chooses Michael Jackson.

Now, I see no reason to deprive my kids of some great pop music, just
because of an artist’s preposterous, creepy, and quite probably sinister
personal life. But I am reckoning without their excellent memories. I mean, it
must be ages since they asked me why he’d been arrested, and I tried to
– well, answer honestly. But, my mind being full of vital matters such as
swimming kits and running out of ketchup, I don’t remember. So here is
the exchange I overhear during the meal:

LYDIA, putting on
Thriller
: ‘Michael Jackson got arrested.
But this was before he got arrested. (The junior equivalent of describing it as
Middle Period Michael Jackson.) He wasn’t a robber or
anything.’

FRIEND, aged seven: ‘What did he do?’

LYDIA, casually: ‘He slept in a child’s bed.’ Friend
looks baffled.

LAWRENCE, knowledgeably: ‘If the adult doesn’t know the
child, and sleeps in the child’s bed, that’s against the
law.’ Friend is even more baffled. Friend’s little brother, aged
five, is sitting over his shepherd’s pie with eyes like LPs. My son then
goes on to detail how to entrap an unfavourite adult.

‘Say there’s a grown-up you don’t like much. You just
invite them for a sleepover and when they’re in your bed you just call
the police! Can we have pudding now, Mummy?’

Some time has gone by since they’ve been to the dentist. They went
once, to a nice man called Dennis, ran round and round his surgery until the
nurse had to contain them, and got stickers. Then no reminders arrived, so I
left it. There’s a mother at school who’s a dentist, but just
knowing one doesn’t count. I think about it, open the address book to
‘Dentist’, and leave it for a few months. Eventually Lawrence
starts complaining of a pain on his upper left side. On the way to school I
notice a nearer dentist, in a sweet little house. We could save forty
minutes’ driving time. It’s private, but the charge for a check-up
isn’t too bad. I make an appointment. The receptionist is very nice. The
waiting room has a piano. A sign says:
Please feel free to play the piano.
I tell the children: ‘Stay away from that.’

The dentist puts Lawrence in the chair and tells Lydia where to stand.
Exactly where. Possibly she has had a bad experience with a child lunging
forward, tripping, and making her stab a patient with one of those sharp prongy
things. Or she could be one of those people who has to tell people where to
stand.

‘Stay there,’ I say to Lydia. She moves her foot. ‘No,
there
.’ The slightest movement might provoke this woman to do God
knows what.

‘So – you want me to do something about this
hole.’

‘Hole …?’

‘Two, actually, I’m afraid.’

‘
Two??
’ Play for time. What do politicians do? Talk
about something else. ‘The – er, well, of course I’ve –
Lydia! Stay still!’

‘I assume you’ve seen it while cleaning his
teeth?’

‘Er. Well … Lydia! Don’t move!’

‘You look shocked.’

‘Well, of course! It’s not as though he hasn’t been
brushing. He doesn’t even have that many sweets. They both do.
Don’t.
Lydia!
’

I am humiliated. My mother was obsessed with teeth. She grew up in
pre-war Glasgow where her dentist was an alcoholic and the diet was terrible;
many people had to wait for the NHS to be created so they could get their first
full set of teeth. She wouldn’t buy, or let us have, Coke, squash, fizzy
drinks, ice lollies or boiled sweets, because of the oral carnage she had
witnessed in her formative years. Now, my pristine son has got holes in him. I
can’t tell her. We’ll have to move, disappear into the Bad Mothers
Protection Programme.

‘And when we do the procedure, we find it’s much better if
you don’t stay.’

Hang on a minute …

‘We find the anxiety transmits itself to the child and generally
makes it worse.’ Anxiety? What anxiety? I’m not anxious, I’m
ashamed
. This is another test and I have failed.

‘Are you good at times tables, Lawrence?’ Lawrence looks
doubtful. He must be wondering, as I am, what the hell they have to do with
teeth. ‘We always do times tables when we do fillings. We have lots of
fun.’

He looks aghast. She invites him to get down, and I assume it is safe
for Lydia to move. As we reach the door, she says: ‘Oh, and make sure
your shoes are clean next time, will you?’

I’m too stunned to answer. We get out of there, and all I can hear
in my head is,
Your son has dirty shoes.
When I get him to school:
‘Bye-bye! See you at home time!’

Your son has dirty shoes.
In the supermarket: ‘Buy One, Get
One Free!’
Your son has dirty shoes.
In the car, listening to the
radio: ‘Come on, Minister, answer the question.’
Your son has
dirty shoes.
It’s like
King Midas and the
Ass’s
Ears
, in which the foolish king is punished by Apollo for judging his music
not to be the sweetest. The barber who sees the king’s deformity is
driven mad by the burden of his secret and shouts it into the grass. The grass
grows and the secret is whispered on the wind continuously – until the
whole world knows. Somehow, everything I’ve achieved as a mother feels
undermined by this slur. True, they’re not the cleanest children in the
world, but I am – in my own bumbling way – proud of them. I
can’t get over this – judgement.

At some point, my mother rings.

‘How are things?’

‘I took Lawrence to a scary dentist who said he had lots of holes
and had to do times tables and clean his shoes. I hardly give them any sweets.
They
do
brush their teeth, they really do! I’m sorry, I’m
sorry!’

‘Oh, dear! Well, I’m sure there’s another dentist he
can see.’

There is. There is Dennis. His practice is not in a sweet little house.
It is on a frightening main road flanked by Exhaust Centres and House Clearance
shops. There is no piano in the waiting room, only a man humming.

‘And when was his last visit?’

The receptionist makes me feel better: bleached blonde and motherly,
with a smoky voice that suggests a lot of nightlife in the past.

‘Um …’ I don’t mention our defection. ‘It
could have been a while.’

‘I’ll just check …’

I start tensing up. She’s going to judge me. No, come on! Claire
had a boyfriend who didn’t go for twelve years.

Maybe it’s not as long as I thought. Time flies when
you—

‘Here we are. Ooh, it’s been two years!’

Christ! No wonder he’s got two holes. His whole head’s
rotting away and it’s my fault.

‘We didn’t get a reminder. I hardly ever give them sweets.
He has been brushing.’

Dennis says: ‘We haven’t seen you for a while.’

‘We didn’t get a reminder.’

‘Well, let’s have a look.’

Lawrence squirms a bit.

‘Sit still, Lawrence, for God’s sake!’

That’s a good technique: take out your guilt about not taking them
to the dentist’s by snapping at them when you do get there.