Grandchildren

Although I loved being a mother, I wouldn't want to do it again. Not for lack of physical energy, but the strain of being on call 24 hours a day and coping with all the traumas of childhood: falls, emotions, tantrums, illness, sibling rivalry, fights, etc. I have tremendous respect and admiration for grandparents who raise their grandchildren, often with the added burden of very little money.

I adore my own grandchildren and when they arrive for a visit I am delighted, but when they leave, it is so peaceful ! Something all my adult children expect me to do, is talk to their tiny children on the phone. I can seldom understand a word they say and what they do say is usually at full decibel. Rather the way the British were renowned in the mid 20th century for shouting at foreigners, as if that would make up for the lack of comprehension.

When my second child was born, I had the naive expectation that she, as a tiny baby, would be exactly the same as my firstborn. Nothing could have been further from the truth, but it still amazes me, with each baby born into the family, how each one differs so much, almost from the very first day. My firstborn, a son, was a screamer who had a hard time digesting his food even though he was being nursed. Until he was about two years old he hated to be cuddled, unless he was being fed, since he saw it as restrictive. At 6 months I stood him up in his crib to show him that he could see out the window into the garden, and after that nothing stopped him. He would haul himself up and stand there, shaking and wobbling until he fell over from exhaustion. He was a very quiet child, and would play for hours by himself. He didn't speak clearly until he was almost 5 years old, when he learned to read in just a few weeks. I had never taught a child to read before, so didn't realize how unusually fast he was learning. By the time he started school he was reading at a 6th grade level.

My second child, my first daughter, had to be woken for each meal. She slept almost round the clock for the first few months, and grew fat and sassy until she started crawling, when she slimmed down. She never sat down to play, but was always roaming about looking for mischief !!