Hippy mother / stress and success

I picked Noah up at “camp” Friday. Camp is like school except

1) the kids whose parents want the summer off with them, teachers’ kids, kids with SAHPs, etc., don’t go;
2) Other kids come and go to experience it as a camp, which tends to raise the average age (5 and 6 yr olds off school, esp. the hours are 7:30 am – 6 pm if you need them to be);
3) there are themes each week – first week was shoe week and a trip to the shoe museum; last week was magnets and electricity; and
4) the whole structure is much much more relaxed. Which I like. I think some down time in the summer is good, and so although the Montessori works are available and the teachers are there, they also haul out the “after-school” lego, dress up, etc. toys and let the kids go to. And spend long afternoons in the shaded outdoor playground.

Still on Friday I was met at the door by one of Noah’s favourite teachers who blurted out as soon as I got in “Noah doesn’t watch movies?”

I laughed and said “oh was there a movie today?” Because, in fact, Noah has decided that movies are scary. Including The Poppins. He’ll watch select TV DVDs (whoever suggested the PMK DVDs, I adore ye) from shows he already knows. He’ll watch Lego Star Wars clips on YouTube (*cough* although really I blame my nephew). But anything that is “a movie” is verbotten. Which I vaguely explained, but Noah interrupted with:

“That movie scared me!”

So I said, “What did you do?” And he and his teacher explained together that he had told her right away that he was scared and so she took him in the other room and he (in his words) got to do his activities. Which is fine with me, all of it. If they want to show a G-rated movie on Friday afternoon in the summer, that’s fine with me, but if my son doesn’t want to watch it I don’t want him to have to be in the room.

(The other issue is Noah’s hearing; he watches everything on a sound level where I can hardly make it out, because his hearing is so sensitive. So a regular volume tv is really loud to him.)

There were some other parents there and there was suddenly a kind of lively discussion about our viewing habits, that little rush of parents wondering (I think) if I was judging them about their movies and Noah informed everyone that we only watch ONE show a day and I was sort of smoothing it over. Because although that’s true, that’s how we manage it (unless Noah is sick or we both have weekend crises at work in which case, bring on the endless loop!) I am not really an anti-tv evangelist. It’s just our preference.

So in the middle of this Noah pipes up again indignantly, “And mummy there was only CANDY for snack. You bring my snack toMORrow.” Because candy is not a snack and apparently the parent who brought snack on Friday brought… candy.

I gave up. Okay I AM the hippy mother who sends whole-grain muffins and organic cheese for snack. What can I do?

With almost three year olds you can hide nothing. Then I almost left with Noah in his indoor shoes and he said loudly in front of all the parents, “OH MY GOD, mummy!”

:-)

~~

However it wasn’t until I got home that the full significance of the whole movie episode hit me.

I was sort of pondering whether I do in fact care about the movie (and I had found out that it was a child’s High School Musical she had brought to share, which I have not seen but does not actually sound like a good choice). And spiralling down the guilt path that I LEAVE my child’s INNOCENT MIND to others and then he is forced to navigate his way through his tastes with other people who may or may not understand that he really does not like movies. (And who will then be so curious as to ask why not.)

But then I realized that my son was upset, he communicated it with the expectation that he would be listened to, he was, and his needs were met.

I don’t remember being 3, but I do remember the fall I was 4. My mother worked teaching part-time in the afternoons, and for the period between about 11 when she had to leave, and 1, when school started, I went to a neighbour’s house “for lunch,” although said neighbour wouldn’t feed my lunch and I brought my own. She had three boys who tormented me – pulling my skirt down, dumping dirt in my hair, slamming doors in my face and whatever else. I remember eating in a separate room with the shades down. I remember their father, a policeman, coming home and finding out “what they did” and beating them in front of me, although he never touched me.

It never occured to me, that I remember, to complain. Certainly I think my mother would have changed the arrangement if I had.