You want to know something that’s massively overrated? Idealism. Stupid bloody idealism, filling your head with idiotic notions about how to raise your child before you’ve even been properly introduced. “Hey buddy,” idealism whispers in your ear midway through the second trimester, “It’d be great if you could raise him as a vegan.” And “Psst,” as you flick through a parenting manual, “don’t let him watch any television until he’s 15. That’ll show ’em.”
In my case, idealism manifested itself by suggesting that our son should only play with wooden toys. Because wooden toys foster the imagination. I played with wooden toys as a kid, and I apparently hate change. Plus, you know, I write a parenting column and if I don’t attempt at least sporadically to be obnoxiously middle class, they’ll sack me.
The wooden toy experiment was lofty, but always doomed to fail. The thing with wooden toys, you quickly learn, is that they make a full-on racket when smacked against a radiator. And that’s all my son does with anything you give him. Up and down the radiator he goes, clanging anything he can find against its ridges. On the plus side, this means that my son is destined to become a terrific corrupt prison guard when he’s older, but for now it means all his wooden toys live in a cupboard.
No matter, we also have plenty of plastic toys. This is because he’s a baby and people buy presents for babies, and only a legitimate monster would turn away gifts in order to maintain a berserk and unbreakable toy policy.
It turns out that plastic toys are better. They still make a noise, because many of them are battery operated, but at least they have off switches. Plus, after about a year, the batteries begin to run out. This is precisely the stage we’re at now, and it’s like we live in a haunted mansion.
The talking dog, the one that sings songs about giraffes and bananas, has started to sound like Hal from 2001. The little aeroplane – the one that keeps repeating “The airport is a safe place to land” with such overcompensatory zeal that I’m now massively suspicious of all airports – does a bang-on impression of a melting Terminator.
Every noisy plastic toy he’s ever been given has started to quiver and croak at half speed, and if you’ve ever wondered what it’d be like to raise a child in an environment that consistently sounds like the sort of abandoned fairground that murderers live in, pop over for a cup of tea sometime. It’ll be awful.
None of this – the banished wooden toys, the acceptance of plastic, the endless freakish din – is how I’d planned things. But screw it. He’s happy.
Pre-baby me would be appalled. He’d see my son, happily banging his fist against the plastic rocket that now sounds as if it’s being captained by Satan himself, and he’d make all sorts of judgments. “This isn’t what the books said,” he’d protest. God knows what he’d do if he ever caught me holding my son three inches away from a Hey Duggee marathon with my eyes closed because I was too tired to read him a book. He’d probably faint.
“Whatever gets the job done” is my new motto. We’re all in the trenches here and if that means throwing our good intentions against a wall to keep everyone happy, so be it. Head down, plough through. If it works, and nobody gets hurt, then idealism be damned. Who has the energy, anyway?
