Transcript

Clare: So, this is Julie Cohen, author of several books, and she’s kindly agreed to come along and talk to Free Your Parenting about her parenting experiences with her little boy. So, welcome, Julie.

Julie: Hi Clare. Thank you for interviewing me.

Clare: That’s OK, thank you for coming! So, first of all I just want to ask how many children you’ve got and how old they are.

Julie: I’ve got one son, and he’ll be five in December.

Clare: So has he just started school?

Julie: He just started school three weeks ago.

Clare: My third child will be five in December as well. So, my first big question is who or what has inpsired you the most as a parent.

Julie: Probably my friends, and I thought it was going to be my own mother, and my parents were great parents but whenever I asked my mother about something that happened when I was a child, she doesn’t remember it any more. I’m finding, actually now, too, I don’t remember things that happened last year so I don’t know why I expect her to remember things that happened over twenty years ago.

But it really is my friends and I had my child fairly late – I didn’t even want children ’til I was thirty – and I was always a bit frightened of being a parent and it was seeing my friends parent with such good grace and realising that they were still the same people after they had their children, and that they and their children had a good relationship together that made me realise that, hey, I want to do this too.

And then when my son was very small, my friends who had gone through it already, or who were going through it at the same time were really useful, because they would say things like ‘your baby is portable, you can go places with him. You don’t have to just stay at home and sit on the couch. You can go places and do things, and have experiences together, and that was really inspiring, especially when I had this little thing and I didn’t know what to do with it.

I also remember being told this as a teacher but also as a parent, that you don’t have to be perfect, you just have to be good enough. And that still is hugely liberating thought. I mean you can be perfect on your lucky days, according to your own ideas.

So my peers, really, were my inspiration.

Clare: Did you ever find yourself really disagreeing with the things they were saying?

Julie: Oh yeah! Because we’ve had this group of parents who get together once a week since our children were six weeks old, and it’s great and they’re hugely supportive, and we’re really supportive of each other, but we all have our different ideas of parenting. And one of the things that is interesting about being friends with other parents is that you can accept their different ideas of parenting without feeling that their different ideas are a criticism of you. Do you know what I mean?

Clare: I do, because that’s something that you often find, isn’t it? That sort of slight defensiveness.

Julie: Yeah, and competitiveness as well, and I think your real friends are not like that. So there are things that my friends do that I might not do myself, but if you respect somebody then you respect what they do. And they respect you back, if you’re lucky.

Clare: It’s great to find a group of friends like that. Can you tell me something that has been particularly challenging in your son’s life so far and how you managed it?

Julie: It’s still challenging! My husband travels for work for a great deal of time, and it’s also very unpredictable. My son was two weeks late being born, which meant that my husband had to go away for work when he was two or three weeks old. I don’t have any family in this country and I was suddenly alone with this baby, without a husband, without family, just with some friends around who were fantastic, but it continues to be the biggest issue in our lives – that he goes away and I’m effectively a single parent without any relatives all of the time. I’m a working parent as well, obviously, so having to balance everything around.

Our son is used to it, but he’s not used to it, if that makes sense? He knows it’s coming but every time it happens that my husband goes away from a long time, he can’t articulate these feelings because it’s normal that Daddy goes away, but he still feels sad and he acts up sometimes and there are things that we have to cope with. It’s a continuing challenge, almost every day. One of the nice things, though, on the flip side of that is that when my husband is at home, he’s at home and he can be a full time hands on parent in the times that he’s home – he doesn’t have to go out to work. That saves it really, because when he’s home, there’s special Daddy time, and that’s a time that they can really spend a lot of time together and get to know each other – sort of store up all that togetherness for when he goes away again. It’s hard.

Clare: Children often, like you say, they don’t know how to articulate those feelings and they come out in other ways, don’t they?

Julie: Yeah. I was writing on your blog – tantrums. I’ve noticed the pattern. My husband will walk out the door and say ‘Goodbye, I love you, I’ll see you in a few weeks,’ and he walks out, and my son will just go ‘yeah, bye!’. But then that afternoon it’ll just be the tantrums, and everything will be difficult, and he’ll want to revert back to being a baby. And even if you…well if you know it’s coming it’s easier to deal with, and if you know why it’s happening it’s easier to deal with but he can’t…of course, he’s not even five. He can’t say ‘I really miss Daddy, I wish he were here’ and understand that all his feelings are related to that.

Clare: Because he probably can’t even understand it in his head, why he’s feeling so stressed by it.

Julie: No, I mean, it took me months to understand it!

Clare: He’s really lucky to have someone who’s really honouring that though, and taking his big feelings seriously. I find that with my kids that I’ll be going ‘what’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with you?’ and then you go ‘Oh! That’s what it is?’.

Julie: It’s easier if you know what it is. But the thing is, it intersects with the times that it’s the most difficult for you. I’m feeling lonely, and I’m feeling alone and that I have a lot to do and I don’t have anybody to help me with the shopping or the washing up or the cooking or the anything. I still have to work and it’s all so stressful. And then he’s acting up. It’s hard for me to deal with. But it’s easier to deal with knowing that that’s what he’s going through.

Clare: And you can’t make it right either, you can’t fix it.

Also, out of all the things when he was a baby and a toddler that seemed – you know those things that just seemed like the most important thing in the world, the thing that you lose all your sleep over…

Julie: They all do!

Clare: …which one thing would you say was the biggest thing that you look back and think ‘that was just so not a big deal!’

Julie: All his friends are little girls, and all his little girl friends started toilet training so early, from the time they turned two, and sometimes even before that. They were all just toilet training, and he was so not interested. I was freaking out. I was thinking ‘Oh my God! He’s never going to learn! He’ll be using nappies for the rest of his life! All his little friends are toilet trained, why isn’t he even interested? What’s going on?’. And I completely dreaded the whole toilet training thing. I thought it was just terrifying. I was really hyped up about that, so I ended up just leaving it until he was absolutely ready, until he was nearly three. And everybody else was by far toilet trained and my kid was the only one running around in nappies, and I ‘m feeling like this completely inadequate mother, with Pampers everywhere.

But we left it and then he said that he wanted to, and then he did – just like that. I mean it took two weeks but it was completely painless. There were a couple of accidents and that was it, and he was just ready. And after it was finished, I thought ‘why was I so het up about that?’ I was so worried. I mean he’s not going to be in nappies when he goes to school, but for some reason that was a big obstacle in my head that everybody else had done it, he hadn’t done it yet. Was it because he was a boy? Was it my fault? Anyway, yeah – I’m glad that’s over!

Clare: I might have to write a post about potty-training actually! It’s definitely one of those things that if you do it too early it takes months, and if you do it at the right time it just is so quick.

Julie: I was just like, how am I going to know when the right time is? But in the end, he knew what time was the right time, and it was done!

Clare: And he told you! So could you give us one useful tip to parents of babies and toddlers who are right in the thick of it now, or about to be stepping into it.

Julie: I think what I said before about that you don’t have to be the perfect parent, you just have to be good enough is the thing that helps me through every day. Especially because, what children do, and I never knew this until I became a parent, children put you in the moment. They live in the now and adults don’t. We don’t live in the now at all, we’re always thinking about the future, thinking about the past, or thinking about what we have to do next. I say ‘adults’ – what I mean is ‘me’! I’m always thinking ‘what are we going to have for dinner? How am I going to get this book written? How am I going to get this done?’

But children are in the now, and I think if you’re worrying about being perfect…I know me, if I’m worrying about being perfect, I can’t just be, and that is one of the biggest gifts that my son has given to me is the gift of just being in the moment. Just sitting down on the floor and playing and not worrying about potty training or any of those things that you worry about to be the perfect parent. So that’s it.

Clare: That’s a really big thing, isn’t it – just being. When you watch children right in the moment, completely engrossed in something, and I often think, ‘I wish I could do that!’

Julie: I know. And it’s so unstructured as well. He’ll just start playing with one thing, and then go and play with another thing, and then go and play with another thing, and that’s absolutely fine. Whereas I’m thinking ‘OK, so we’re doing this, and then we’re…’ Especially – I’m a writer, right? So I’m thinking, with all his imagination, I’m thinking in terms of story structure, ‘ok, so then what do we do next? And then this is going to lead to a climax…’ and actually, no, he just wants to put the animals in the box and drive them around for a while.

Clare: So, don’t try to be perfect and learn from your children about being? Great! Well, thank you very much!