Giving in to chaos

A reminder to myself

This morning, after a stormy night's sleep, Sylver tore down the baby gate we had put up the night before to give the kids some space from each other when they needed it. Then loudly protested while I put him down to make breakfast, tugging at my legs in the kitchen. Next up, Sonny decided he didn’t want the porridge he had asked me to make once it was in his bowl. The only way he could possibly eat it, he told me, was to eat it off the rug on the floor. So he tipped right out then proceeded not to eat it because it was on said rug…This was all before 5:30 am, Matt had just left for work and I was on my own.

Next, the chairs are toppled on their side in the living room to make farm gates and there is a huge pile of unfolded laundry on the couch. And I’ve had to sit by the floor porridge and stop Sylver crawling through it, which he is desperate to do while sticking to my guns and getting Sonny to clean up his mess and after 30 minutes he finally eats it off the dirty rug with a mixture of his hands and a spoon.

Chaos. But also a very normal morning.

I’ve never been a particularly neat person. My room growing up was always a complete mess. Mostly clothes and crafts strewed through the room. Me and draws never really got along. I'm the kind of person who opens their suitcase and clothes spring onto every bit of furniture in the room. My dad used to love making the joke ‘Oh you’ve got floorboards!’ on the odd occasion I did clean my room. But as I got older I started to realise that a clean space is far more soothing to the mind. I am still by no stretch of the imagination a super clean person. I like things to be tidy and dishes to be done. But a deep clean doesn’t happen that often so this sudden desire for order and calm was confusing for me until I realised where it came from.

When my parents came over the other day I complained about the constant mess on the back veranda. “It looks like you have kids” they laughed. After having 6 of their own, they would know.

And it’s not just the physical chaos of unpacked beach bags and months of rubbish in my car. It’s the chaos of toddler tantrums and a baby who pulls everything out of any draw he can.

My Kids are little gods of chaos. Tricksters. Mostly I’ve delighted in it and mostly found it rather amusing but every now and again I go through a crisis where I get this idea stuck in my brain that chaos is a sign of failing as a mother. If I was just more ‘connected’ to my child he wouldn’t throw porridge on the floor. If I was more organised the beach bag would always get unpacked straight away and the laundry wouldn’t sit in the machine for a few days. If I was more in tune my toddler wouldn’t scream for 20 minutes about having his bike helmet on. It’s like there’s some kind of end goal that I have to get to. That at some point if I can just do XYZ my life will become calm and peaceful and our days will be filled with picture-perfect gentle parenting moments, a beautiful perpetually organised house and completely obedient children. And as I write this out I reflect, like I always do, on how boring that sounds. I love my wild unpredictable children. They are hard work, but extremely amusing.

So where is this feeling coming from? When I think about it, it comes to me every time I start to look at pictures of other people’s homes or read a lot of parenting posts online/on social media. These are mostly from people providing (highly expensive) parenting courses. And they all promise the same thing. That you can in essence tame your toddler, stop power struggles, stop temper tantrums and just have an all-around calm and easy-to-soothe child. It triggers me in such a deep way. I read these things and try their techniques and they almost always don’t work! I'm sure these things do work for some and I love that there is so much more information being shared about gentle-style parenting. But I feel that along the way in order to make money by sharing these ideas an unrealistic picture is getting painted. This picture seems to put all the pressure on the parents without the understanding that children are (as my sister put it this morning while I was indulging in self-pity and texting her to tell her what a bad mother I was) individuals and we can’t control them. We can just engage, set boundaries and examples and hope for the best.

My husband tried to cheer me in a similar way when I was down on myself for Sonny’s refusal to sleep and once again felt like I failed him. “It’s not you, it’s him!” What he meant in essence is that we could only do what we could do. Some of this stuff is just his personality.

When I consume all these ideas of what being the perfect mum and having the easy to manage kids looks like. I forget that kids, like adults, have their own personalities. I can’t quite believe there is one ‘magic’ phrase that works every time to stop a tantrum. Sometimes they are just deep in feeling and it has to come out one way or another.

Today has been another reminder that there is no end with children. No point where all of a sudden life will just be easy and calm and the house will stay clean and look straight out of Pinterest. And to wish for that illusive time is only making me unhappy.

I remember my mum telling me that the one constant with children is that they change. As soon as you think you’ve worked them out they change again and you’ve got to start over.

It’s this saturation of information I submit myself to and the rabbit holes I go down whenever I see an article promising the answer (for no small fee) that leaves me spiralling when these things don’t ‘work’ on my child like he is some broken toy in need of an instruction manual.

So today was my reminder to pull back from searching for an ‘answer’ and give in, once again, to the chaos of raising kids. Give in to the diggers scattered in the garden beds and the fact the floor will always have food on it no matter how many times I sweep. Give in to the fact I have a wild strong-willed toddler who will not be easily pacified. Give in to the fact I will most likely never choose the right coloured cup…Instead, keep finding the humour (which was easy when he and his friend escaped on their bikes naked riding through the streets and laughing their heads off this evening) and realise there is no destination to get to where life won’t be in some way messy and hard and crazy. These are the funny moments that are remembered and looked back on, like my favourite picture of my brother and I spilling oats all over the floor. I won’t look back and laugh and smile at photos of our house looking clean and tidy when I’m older and neither will the kids.

There is no point in fighting the chaos, I just need to embrace it. This is parenthood!