by Dr Carol Cooper, doctor, journalist, award-winning author and Lucy Air Ambulance for Children Patron
Before I had children, I considered myself clued up. I’d already looked after plenty of kids as a family doctor, though my education actually began much earlier. As a fifteen-year old, I often baby-sat a feisty brood of five. Four of them moved so fast that I could barely tell them apart, let alone stop them wrecking the place. The baby, less mobile, needed constant nappy changes, which was a challenge as he was in a frog plaster for developmental dysplasia of the hip (aka congenital dislocation).
The scales fall from your eyes, however, when your own children arrive. Here’s what I learned from having three sons.
1. Everyone has an opinion on raising children, especially those who never had any. The fewer children someone has, the more frequently and insistently they pass on their wisdom. Experienced parents rarely dish out advice, because they know that not all kids are the same.
2. Yes, all children are different, even identical twins. My own twin boys had different personalities from day one. After all, why should they be exactly alike? The environment begins in the womb, and there are always differences in the closeness to the mother’s heartbeat, to her dominant hand, even in the amount of blood flow from the placenta, and so on.
3. Babies need a lot less sleep than adults. They don’t have to go to work in the morning. They can just loll about all day looking cute and innocent, and save their strength for the night ahead. Had I fully appreciated this, I would have stayed on maternity leave longer rather than dragging my exhausted brain (plus a breast pump) to work.
4. The best toys for kids are the ones that engage the child’s ingenuity, not the toy designer’s. That’s why empty boxes, old saucepans, wrapping paper, and key rings are such attractive playthings. (If you’re still looking for your keys, try checking inside your boots, behind the radiator, in the toilet, and out through the cat-flap.)
5. The longer you take to prepare a meal, the less likely your child is to find it appetizing. Strangely, letting a child make his own sandwich does not put him off wolfing it down, even if the sandwich looks like nothing on earth, with added mud.
6. Supermarkets and havoc go hand in hand. Before big shops provided trolleys that took more than one child, I used to push one trolley and pull another one. My own kids rarely had tantrums while out shopping. The reason was a mystery until I discovered that they’d amused themselves pulling toothbrushes off the shelves and stuffing them down the front of their dungarees.
7. Children have an infinite capacity to embarrass their parents. At a neighbour’s house one morning, I was offered a coffee, only for one of my lot to pipe up, “Mummy usually has gin and tonic.”
8. While being a medic helps you cope with your own children’s illnesses, nobody’s superhuman. One of the low points was a Christmas when both twins had bronchiolitis. I can’t say their older brother got much attention that year. Another low was a convulsion which landed one of the boys in hospital. My husband drove into a bollard on our way to A & E.
9. The biggest lesson? You have to put your child first, before yourself, before anyone else. But that’s absolutely OK, because, until it happens to you, you have no idea how intensely you can love a little person.
Our committed patron, Dr Carol Cooper, is supporting our mums this Mother’s Day. Join us in helping parents cope when their child is seriously ill by donating a Mum Matters Support Package.
