Being self employed has gifted me a love/hate relationship with the school holidays. On one hand, I have incredibly flexible working hours and on the other, if I’m not working then I’m not earning any money - there is no holiday pay when you’re the casualist of casuals AKA freelance. I’ve written about this conundrum many times over the years and every time the parameters are slightly different.
These holidays have both Matt and myself working from home. It's the first time in 10 years we don’t have a massive factory to escape to. While an external space is greatly missed right now, it also caused a fair amount of arguments about who would be able to go there to work and who would stay home and look after the children. We tried all sorts of combinations and none of them really worked that well because at the end of the day, parenting and working at the same time simply don’t gel. It’s like trying to mix oil and water.
That inability to do both at the same time has made for a rather stressful holiday considering there are four of us living, working, parenting, adulting and being kids in the same small house. We’ve always lived in relatively small spaces but surprisingly the kids are getting bigger and louder and consuming so much more of our finite space. I love sharing this space with them of course but as we hit week 4 of 6 this house feels smaller than ever!
The one saving grace these holidays has been playdates. For the first time we’ve had a stack of playdates and sleep overs with both kids hitting that age when friends start to become really important. Up until this point the kids were pretty content hanging out with Matt and myself during the holiday but now we get bombarded with requests to go to another kids house or to have another kid come to ours. Redispersing childcare throughout the community has been a welcomed relief these holidays. It's also super fun.
I loved going to other people's houses when I was a kid. I loved the insight into the different dynamics of another family. I was the oldest of three kids but I had a few friends who were the youngest so their dinner time was normally full of rowdy teenagers which was just so exotic when I was a kid. I loved bringing my sleeping bag and setting up a little trundle bed on a friend's floor and talking absolute garbage until we both fell asleep in the wee hours!
Now as a parent who has been hosting these playdates and sleep overs my perspective has changed ever so slightly. Looking after someone else's child can be quite stressful. We took one of the kids buddies to the pool with us the other day and I spent more time watching out for them then I did my own kids. Being responsible for someone else's child feels like you're being tested on how good of a parent you are.
If I put the self-judgment to the side, having a house full of kids is really fun. Frank had a few buddies over for a sleepover and we needed to bring in the outside table inside so everyone had a space for our pancake breakfast. It reminded me of being a kid and sitting at a friends dining table full of chaos. The conversation was ridiculous as it only can be with a bunch of nine and ten year old boys but it was fun. I watched Alice soak it all up - the energy of it all.
These dynamics are so intoxicating when you're a kid. Getting insights into how other families behave, their routines - do they sit at the table for dinner or on the couch? What do the parents talk about? OMG the older brother's girlfriend is over for dinner!!! It's the start of realising that your way of living might be different from someone else's.
Up until this point, their life has been an elaborate event we’ve curated for them. With these glimpses into other peoples homes you start to see some of the alternatives - for better and worse. I remember this being the start of me wanting more freedom. As the oldest Mum and Dad were rightly cautious about what I could do while my friend who was the youngest of four was allowed to pretty much do whatever she wanted it felt like. I started to question the rules I had that others didn’t.
As I got older I associated a house full of friends as a healthy one. We were only 15 minutes walk from my high school so my house was often filled with friends. Sleepovers were normal and decided upon in the moment. Mum was famous for feeding us all and it was a really joyful time. As my kids start to experience this new phase of self realisation I hope they love it as much as I did.
Alice has been exercising her boundaries this week and decided that this house and family wasn’t for her so she was going to leave. My sister ran away when she was about the same age and I vividly remember her walking off down the street with her giant soft toy under one arm and 2L’s of milk under the other. She made it to the end of the cul-de-sac and gave up. I obviously misheard Alice because she wasn't running away but moving out. I went into her room and she had taken three moving boxes from the garage, taped them up and filled them with every single item of clothing from her draws and all the toys in her room.
It was incredibly hard to know whether to be cross or impressed. It's far more practical than the 2L of milk (and she didn’t actually run away) but it did mean I’d have to unpack three boxes of Alice's things. Figuring out your boundaries is so very important and these sorts of things are happening constantly as the kids get older. God, it’s happening all the time to me as I figure out my own boundaries and how to use them to my advantage.
Having a house fill of kids is such a treat and as my friend just dropped off another two of hers I better wrap this up. Knowing who the kids are hanging out with and opening up our home to them is as close to being raised by the village as we get in these modern times.
