Raising Boys

Nobody tells you how hard parenting actually is. There are no guidebooks or instruction manuals to help you make it through the good days, let alone the difficult days. The days where you feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. The days where you endure temper tantrums because you refused to plate up the dirt your kid has collected from the garden and now wants to eat for tea. The days where you forget to send your child into school in their PE kit, even though PE’s been on the same bloody day for the last year.

It’s tough. Tough on your body and tough on your mind. I mean, my back wasn’t made for carrying a six year old under my arm down the school path whilst he kicks and screams because he’s got a cheese sandwich instead of ham for lunch that day. Thinking back, I shouldn't have told him and just let the teacher deal with the breakdown.

But on those days where you wake up to them stroking your face and kissing your forehead it makes it all worth it... until they jab you in the eye or sucker punch you in the windpipe.

I am so lucky to have my mum and my group of mum friends. If I'm being completely honest, I don’t think I would have coped without them - they’re the best! Within the mum group we have a mixture of boys and girls, I think there’s around fourteen kids between us all, so you can imagine what it’s like on days out to the park - absolute fucking chaos. It's absolute hell to get out the house, let alone anywhere on time. We say we'll meet somewhere at midday, but realistically we're looking at half one, maybe later depending on how much food smeared the kids have smeared into the furniture, or how long they've had you chasing them around the house trying to get them dressed or the length of time they've been have a bitch fit for. I only have Frankie and as of recent, taken on the responsibility of a nine year old girl, Faith - who gets dressed no problem, which is a godsend when you have a seven year old either slobbing out on the sofa refusing to get dressed, or climbing on the worktops and jumping off pretending he's some character from Fortnight.

I get that all kids are hard, and hats off to those who actually decided to birth another child after the first. Girl mums are always moaning about the attitude that their kid has, or the amount of LOL dolls that are constantly laying around the house. Boy mums have other, let's say... issues, to contend with. They are something else, seriously they are. Between eating mud and scratching their arses every five seconds, we’re presented with a whole barrage of tiny man delights, farting, burping, jumping off of tables and climbing the walls pretty much all day - every day. Everything he picks up is now used as a weapon, literally everything from the stick he's found in the garden to the cat - who now runs away as he's clearly had enough of Frankie's shit.

We sacrifice the way we look, we don't have the luxury of sitting there with a little angel doing each others hair or make-up. So, whilst I'm trying to round Frankie into the car just so I can run him down the school path in an attempt to get him there on time, I already know full well that I look like a crackhead 99% of the time on the school run.

THEY DO NOT CARE.

They also appear to have the inability to sense danger, have no filter and lack general hygiene - I swear Frankie comes out the bath dirtier than he went in. They are an absolute force of nature. But I’m so glad I’ve got this crazy kid to keep me on my toes and have adventures with!

I remember taking Frankie out with this guy, who I will refer to as "Mr. Clean" for story purposes, and his little girl once and he'd be cleaning her hands and face at any given moment. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for keeping the kids as clean as possible, say if we're going out to a restaurant for dinner or to a party, but over the park... in the middle of winter, not a chance, go and be feral my boy! On this particular day I think this Mr. Clean's OCD must have been on top form. There were baby wipes flying out left right and centre. I couldn't live like that, I couldn't pretend to be one of these parents who was constantly worried about keeping their child wrapped in cotton wool. After about an hour and twelve packs of baby wipes, I kid you not, Frankie only went and fell in a pond, and no I'm not talking about an oversized puddle, I'm talking a real life, full scale, fucking duck pond. Baring in mind it was the middle of winter and I was out with Mr. Cillit Bang and the Dirt is Gone, it left me with no other choice but to jump in after him - God forbid Mr Clean got himself the slightest bit dirty! Luckily, for the both of us, he'd only fallen in at the edge, which was still pretty shallow, well for me it was, maybe not so much for a four year old. He cried, Mr. Clean stood there in shock, his girl cried, and me, well... I laughed, I laughed so fucking hard - I mean, surely they'd all see the funny side to it, right? By the time we'd got back to the car with a few laughs and odd looks from strangers, Frankie was laughing along with me. Mr. Clean on the other hand looked absolutely distraught. He should have been happy, I mean at least it wasn't his immaculate daughter who fell into the filthy waters, and can I add still didn't have a hair out of place. Long story short - that wasn't ever going to work out.

Being a parent, you know you need to bring all essentials for any potential situation that may arise, in this case it was a towel and spare clothes. I'd had too many incidents where I had been caught out. Too many occasions where I had to stop what I was doing and flee from wherever I was because Frankie had shit himself. Nappy explosion - 1, Danielle - 0.

I look back now and laugh, I laugh at how I ignored my mums advice to take a spare set of EVERYTHING wherever I went. I laugh at all the times I'd run out of baby wipes and have to use the already poop covered baby grow to make an attempt to clean up Frankie. I think the only way I get through things is by laughing. It's either that or loose my shit - which don't get me wrong, I do, quite a bit more than these perfect Instagram mums do - Like are your kids really that angelic 24/7? Mine somehow manages to get dirty straight after having a bath, he doesn't pose sweetly for pictures, but instead he asks me to take photos of his crap down the toilet and send them to his nan and uncle. Which can I just confirm - I don't do. Okay maybe once, but you should have seen the size of this thing!! Honestly, I was impressed. Needless to say my mum wasn't when she opened WhatsApp to find a photo of the worlds biggest turd produced by an under five.

Frankie hasn't ever been a stranger to injury and hasn't really learnt that sometimes the consequences of his actions result in something completely different to the outcome he probably had in his mind.

See below my top 5 moments where Frankie knew he had fucked up:

1.) Shoving a berry up his nose at pre-school, which remained up there for a total of 4 hours whilst the nurse tried to suck it out. I was completely unaware of this until I picked him up after work that evening.

2.) Getting his head stuck under the kitchen cabinets at home. Again I took great pleasure in telling him the firemen would have to come and cut him out, although, I think he probably thought I meant they'd have cut his head off to free him. I remember the uncontrollable tears.

3.) Not turning his bike to avoid the 8ft brick wall in front of him. Yep - you guessed it, he rode straight into it. Doesn't make sense to me either.

4.) Nose-diving into a coffee table when he was two, damaging his front teeth so badly that he had to have them removed. They didn't come back through until he was nearly five. I've lost count the amount of people I've had to explain that story to!

5.) Eating dirt and sand in the garden... straight after lunch. He spent the rest of the afternoon spitting it back up and taking sandy craps for the next few days.

Although the majority of things with boys involve either weapons or some form of rudery. Frankie's latest trick is going around the clothes shops squeezing bras, pulling the underwear down on the mannequins and laughing to the point of wetting himself. It's all fun and games until the security guard comes over and asks you to stop your pervert of a child from doing it.

As hard as it is some days to keep myself together, Frankie is big-hearted, he's brave and fearless, he's loving and knowledgeable. He's the best, and needless to say, I love him with every ounce of my being, the good the bad and the ugly.

They are creations of us. Let them be who they want to be, and don't ever try to change them 💙

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