‘Oh .. you should have seen him earlier’ – syndrome

Rosie Willcock - 6 Aug 15

so what is this all about..?

Ok I totally understand being embarrassed when your little child belts out hideous screeching or unsavoury behaviour in public. when you’re trying to smile as you wrench them off the wooden choo choo train (despite 15,10,5,3,2,1 minute warnings of departure)and they (albeit accidentally) kick a clod of sand mixed with dog faeces in your mouth.

But when your child is impeccable and staring down the barrel at a screaming peer who will NOT return the HotWheels surf Ute your little boy kindly ‘shared’. Why does embarrassment strike then.. It’s perverse. I actually think I need therapy.

Spending your entire existence guiding your toddler down a morally good, steady path – desperately fire fighting the flickering flames of trantrumdom to be EMBARASSED when they are everything you want them to be in the face of the polar opposite?

I can only assume that this scenario is slightly unique (he does behave very well quite often actually – thank you very much).. In such that this is Baden Baden and despite my perpetual attempts to sound fluent, my German is not as wunderbar as I would hope. Wolfgang (who H Bomb shared his car with) is hitting his head against a tree and I can’t work out what he is saying between the sobs but he has now turned to reversing very fast and hard into the waste bin and will not let go of the car his mother is trying to prize out of his clasp. H is in a state of shock and I kind of what to say ‘good boy’ ‘don’t worry’ but I also really want to be able to say to Wolfgangs mum ‘don’t be fooled by this one, you should have seen him this morning when I didn’t give him the YELLOW spoon, let alone when he noticed it had been given to his brother who was using it as a weetabix catapult’. But I just think my head is screwed on wrong. H Bomb was great, he shared, he was quiet and kind and I should have held my head high instead of cowering embarassed.

When I stepped away from the scene, the car had been returned and the screams were out of earshot I thought, I need to be more continental. I mean Wolfgang was dressed in an outfit that would have made Prince George look like a total pleb and his mother was purse lipped and more than a little cold and intimidating. She wouldn’t have worried one jot about my boys and I if the tables were turned, she would have walked off with her nose in the air to take Wolfie for a gluten free schnitzel at the Roederhof.

Yes, I am going to be more proud and more continental…. Except I might wear deodorant, every few days.

Rosie Willcock

Mummy of 3 boys - Henry (7), Freddie (5) and Paddy (3). Rosie lives in Oxfordshire and juggles a career in gardening with writing and mumming: @rosierthings www.rosiewillcock.co.uk

View profile for posts, events and more info