Why a visit to the local child and family health centre saved my sanity - Women's Agenda

Why a visit to the local child and family health centre saved my sanity

A few weeks ago I saw a poster, or possibly even a meme, that carried this message: God gives you the children you can handle. Now I am not particularly religious but I’ll admit it resonated. Deeply and immediately. I thought “There’s been a TERRIBLE mistake!! God/ Buddha/Whichever deity in whom you might believe, got me so wrong. The powers that be mistook me for someone else; someone far more patient and resilient than I am. I got the wrong kids!”

That is how I have been feeling recently with our 15-month old daughter. One of the realities of parenting that continually astounds me, is the fact that despite being a child’s actual parent, and knowing them more intimately than anyone else in the whole world, it still, occasionally, feels rather like you have a total stranger camping in your house. Small children change often, their developmental needs, wants and abilities wax and wane daily, and they have quite frequent and erratic mood swings. The result of this, in my house at least, is that I often find myself staring into my youngest daughter’s eyes wondering exactly who – and what — I am dealing with.

It’s a generalisation but between the ages of one and two children have an extraordinary radar for danger, which is matched only by their appetite for finding and pushing boundaries. You can remove as many obstacles as humanly possible in an effort to safeguard your baby from itself. You can go to great lengths to ensure their well-being, put them in a room filled with fabulous age-suitable toys, soft floors, baby-proofed corners, cupboards and stairs. You can buy into every safety gimmick in the world. None of it will deter them: they will defy you and your efforts.

Without fail they will seek out the least-appropriate and most-hazardous object or situation in any room quicker than you can fasten the safety gate behind you. If there is a pistachio shell hidden beneath the furniture or any small highly choke-able or toxic object tucked somewhere out of sight, they will unearth it swiftly. Their curiosity and enthusiasm for the world around them really is quite exceptional. However, as a general guide, I think any wonderment this induces is indirectly proportional to the amount of time spent responsible for the master-of-danger. The less time you spend with them, the more exceptional it might seem. The more time you spend directly responsible for their safety, in the face of blatant and repeated attempts to compromise their own safety, it becomes less exceptional and more exasperating.

For the past month at my house mealtimes, bathtimes and change times have become obstacle courses of sorts. The highchair and bath are my toddler’s climbing frames of choice, both suitably perilous, you might note, to satisfy her innate desire for risk. As she wriggles, pulls and twists herself into various unsafe positions in the bath or her highchair, she stares at me and screeches as I thwart her efforts.

She protests madly if she is given a cup with a lid but of course if she’s given a cup, or any receptacle without a lid, she pours it on the floor. Which, neatly, poses another safety hazard. She looks, and sounds, deeply wounded when her requests, however unreasonable, are denied. It would be grossly inaccurate to say peace has reigned at any mealtime in recent memory.

Even outside of meals and baths, however, we are battling our baby. She is rarely happy to be put in her car seat or the pram. She wants to scale the coffee table, shopping trolleys, our bed, the couch and basically any other surface sufficiently above ground to pose some danger. If necessary she will drag toys and chairs over to her designated climbing frame to give her the leg up she often needs. Of course, she is hugely resentful of my efforts to impede her in this regard.

I admire her tenacity and her resolve but frankly, after several weeks like this, the whole charade is growing a little tired. I vaguely recall enduring a similar phase with my older daughter but it seems our youngest is a little bit more defiant and so this chapter is a proving quite a bit more punishing. Last week my frustration finally propelled me into taking some action. I remembered our local child and family health centre had drop-in appointments available so the next day, when some time presented itself, my husband took our defiant daughter along. He outlined her antics and then chatted with a community health nurse for half an hour. She gave him – and us — a variety of tips to use to diffuse the situation. She assured us that however loud her protests, her safety cannot be compromised. The nurse was a fountain of wisdom and a voice of reason.

It wasn’t so much that she offered us a silver bullet (tantrums and toddlers are something of an inevitable match) but the visit was invaluable. It made us realise that we are not alone. That we are not doing anything wrong. That we just have a 15-month-old who is acting very much like a 15-month-old. That probably sounds quite trite but when you’re in the midst of a difficult phase with a small person that simple perspective can get lost.

When I had my first child I was living overseas which, in some ways, was more isolating than having a baby here in Australia. But with my first, despite being on the other side of the world, I had a baby group with whom I caught up regularly and I sought out free group activities and visited the community health centres often. Those people and resources provided a tremendous amount of support; I was surrounded by people living through exactly what I was for the first year of my baby’s life. That shared experience was invaluable.

This time around I didn’t join a baby group and I came back to work much sooner. It’s only been in hindsight that I have realised because of those things I have had far less community involvement with my second child than with my first. It isn’t something I would necessarily change but I had sort of forgotten that in that community there is an extraordinary of support. Last week’s visit to our local community centre reminded me that there are resources out there to help parents with their small children and they are worth using.

Who do you turn to for support with your kids?

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