Hide and Seek

June 9, 2012 jofurniss

Contrary to what modern parenting books would have you believe, toddlers are not that bright. Alright, there are moments when their precocious smarts make an impression. Alpha Blondie has mastered the English language in two years, while after six summers in Switzerland I still speak German to about the level of a Dachshund. Four-year-old Curly Girlie has got around the problem of not being able to read by memorizing all her books off by heart, while just now I had to sit and stare at the back end of Wordpress for over six minutes until I remembered the word 'precocious'.

But even cutting them some slack for being on something of a steep learning curve, this photo proves that toddlers may appear sophisticated when really they're about as canny as a large flightless bird.

'Coming, ready or not...'

Toddler Tales

May 13, 2012 jofurniss

It’s all about the conflict. No, not raising toddlers. Raising toddlers is mostly about conflict, but writing fiction is all about the conflict. This is what I’m learning on the Masters that I’m currently studying. Every story involves conflict, every character has some kind of thwarted desire, and in every scene something needs to happen. When you spell it out like that, it sounds obvious in a paint-by-numbers kind of way, and yet, and yet... I’m still not retired on the earnings from my bestselling novels about wizards...

Of course, my four-year-old Curly Girlie knows literary theory already. It seems to be hard-wired in kids.

“Do you want a story?” she says, “I’ve got one about a giraffe, one about a digger and one about a monster,” like a shopkeeper taking stock. Or perhaps a travelling bard in Homeric times, calling out her wares: “Roll up, roll up, for yer stories: I got yer Odyssey, yer Aeneid and yer Illiad on special, just twenty drachma a verse”.

Then she trots out the goods. A story she told this week went like this:

One day, a monster chased a little mouse, who ran away into space and hid behind the planets. But the monster found him, so he came back to Earth and hid underground, with all the moles and the pipes. But the monster found him, so the mouse got fed up and said “raaah!” and the monster ran away into the forest. The End.

I Had a Dream

May 6, 2012 jofurniss

Apparently, deer go to sleep facing due north.As usual, I’m faffing about looking up arcane wisdom on the internet when I’m supposed to be blogging. This time, it’s bed orientation. Self-appointed experts blathering on about questionable eastern philosophies - I think I might have just overloaded Google, there are so many search results. Yesterday, I shoved our bed round 90 degrees because we’re planning a renovation and I thought it might be wise to check if I can sleep facing in that direction before I let some Germans with big hammers remove my supporting walls (none of that was a euphemism). It does mean that the bed is now freestanding in the middle of the room. I know centre-stage beds are fashionable in some quarters, but it feels a bit like lying on a sacrifical slab.

Tot School

February 19, 2012 jofurniss

A while ago, I read an article that claimed that when siblings are close together in age, the older one turns out stoopid because Mum was too busy feeding the baby to drill the toddler on its times tables. My kids are 18 months apart. Ouch - poor, doomed Curly Girlie. Naturally, and probably with an enormous amount of good reason, I poo-pooed this article.

Months and months later, though, it still niggles. My fevered little mind keeps poo-pooing my poo-poo.

Don’t get me wrong (if you say hello and I take a ride)

April 25, 2011 jofurniss

In the years since I’ve been an expat, I’ve grown used to being a conspicuous outsider, a source of amusement, a bit of a novelty. My first posting was Cameroon, West Africa, where I went everywhere to a chorus of “Eh! La Blanche!”, which translates as “hey, White Woman!”. Political correctness never caught on in Cameroon.

Then I was in Singapore, where I also stood out from the crowd, mostly by being a head taller than a lot of other women. And now here I am in Switzerland, Winterthur to be exact, where I blend in nicely. No-one gives me a second glance - I’m like a spy in their midst.

Until I open my mouth.

In my personal experience, the Swiss (especially my neighbours) are extremely welcoming, but naturally enough people always prick up their ears when they hear a foreign language being spoken in the vegetable section of Migros. My skin doesn’t single me out any more, but my mother tongue certainly does. In the past, I’ve been able to hide behind tight lips – just a smile of greeting and remembering to say ‘merci vielmals’ instead of ‘danke schön’. But then I had kids and was forced to break my silence.

Which brings me to today, Migros and a toddler having a tantrum over a pumpkin. There was a meltdown next to the papayas and a lot of negotiation, an ultimatum and, finally, a good telling off. So just the usual, really: kid screaming in public; frazzled mum taking deep ragged breaths; and members of said public looking irritated by all the noise.

Except that, for an English speaker in a Swiss German-speaking supermarket, it’s much worse because no-one has a clue what the angry, shrill woman is saying to the weeping, gulping child. Pretty soon, I had drawn a crowd of onlookers, mostly drawn from the white-haired demographic, who gathered around in a slightly menacing way, saying nothing but clearly signalling that they had Social Services on speed-dial on their giant-buttoned mobiles.

When I said in my special low-toned, calming voice, “now, Curly Girlie, you’ve already been allowed to keep the three kumquats that you picked and weighed all by yourself, so can you please put the pumpkin back and maybe we’ll try that another day?”, they translated it as, “listen here, child of mine, you’re nearly three now so it’s time you learnt that Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy are cynical inventions of the greeting card industry, now buck up and carry this pumpkin – no, not that little one, the big one over there”.

When I bent down to her level and adopted my no-nonsense tone to say, “I’m going to count to three and I want you to put the pumpkin back, 1, 2, 3...”, what they heard was, “and while I’m at it, the photo of the man I told you was Daddy is actually Face from the A-Team, now I want to hear no more about it. On three, grab this pumpkin, 1, 2, 3...”.

And when I stood back up and started gabbling, loudly and rapidly while waving my hands around a lot, they didn’t realise I was pleading, “this is the third meltdown of the morning, you ran away into the path of a car nearly killing yourself, then you turned over the table in the restaurant with all our food on it and now you’re having a tantrum over a pumpkin and you don’t even like pumpkin! Now let’s take some deep breaths together to calm down and get on with our shopping”, they imagined I was threatening, “look here, useless girl-child with a lower-than-optimal potential earning capacity, just stop making a fuss over this pumpkin-carrying. You already messed up the job I got you in a textile factory, you keep falling out of chimneys and you’re not cute enough to model, so you’ve got to earn your keep somehow. Now quit whining about the heavy pumpkin – I’m putting a crate of beer in your backpack in the next aisle...”

And they say toddlers get frustrated when they can’t express themselves...

Toddler conversation

January 3, 2011 jofurniss

Mummy?Yes, love? Can I take my sock off? OK. Mummy? Yes? Can I take my sock off? Yes, OK. Mummay? Yes. Can I take my sock off? Yes, if you want to, take your sock off. Mummaay? Yeees? Can I take my sock off? Darling! Yes! Take it off. Mummaaay? *sigh* Can I take my sock off? Yes. Mummaaay? Yes? Mummaaaay? YES? Mummaaaaay? ... Mummaaaaaay? Yes! Can I take my sock off? Look, it’s your sock, I really don’t care, take it off, leave it on, it’s your decision. Mummy? *deep breath* Yes, Darling? Can I take my sock off? Is this some form of psychological torture? Mummay? What? Can I take my sock off? Are you working for the CIA? Mummaay? With a profound sense of dread and trepidation - yes? I took my sock off. Excellent. Mummy? Yes, love? Can I take my other sock off?