all the guilt will be on your head

Dear Marianne,

I spent half an hour chasing Mike around the front room with hair clippers and scissors this afternoon, during which he screamed and shouted and stamped his feet. By the way, stamping feet is something I think grown ups should indulge in, say for example when you are in a queue at the Post Office or trying to discuss issues relating to parking with local attendants, you will find it is a technique difficult for people to argue against. Anyway, after my Edward Scissorhands impression, Mike stood in the middle of his shawn hair, weeping, his head half shaved, his face covered in snot, wearing only hairy pants(from the hair on his head you understand), - that's all he was wearing before, but it just made the whole image much worse. He looked like a child from the Gorbals circa 1953, staring vacantly up at the photographer from Picture Post, the only thing missing from the moment was a caption reading, "...what future for poor Billy McConnolly?"

Apart from all the obvious misery of the moment and the knowledge that I will have to repeat it tomorrow, what got to me most was that two months ago he sat in the hairdressers chair (on a slat of wood on a chair actually), whilst Janet did him; she cut and combed and sprayed him with water, and he smiled and chatted and laughed whilst sitting very still. I had even taken the precaution of giving her a get out at the beginning of the cut, explaining that he would probably get up and leave after the first snip, but she wasn't to worry and I would pay her anyway and blah blah. Janet smiled and thought, that's with you love, there'll be no such nonsense going on with me and Mike, I'm not his Mum.

This happens all the time with your own chidren. You spend ages explaining to child minders, nursery staff, baby sitters, auntie Sue and Denise from next door that Mike/Anna/Archie needs the light on and the door open at bedtime, her milk warm but mash potato cold, you tell them that blanket and bear are vital for his afternoon nap to be successful, and that he will poo after lunch, so look out for the far away look so that you can get the nappy on in time, or you will be scraping poo off his pants, trousers, hands and your sheepskin rug. When you return from whatever it is you have been doing that makes you feel like a rubbish Mother, you find a happy and contented child who has eaten hot mash potato and drunk her milk cold, had a two hour afternoon nap despite the fact that you drove away with blanket AND bear, asked for a nappy before pooing and is now fast asleep with the light off and the door shut.

When your children are with other people they retract their emotional blackmail antenae and go about their daily business as though life was fair and rules were there for a jolly good reason. Anna used to worry us sick, because her daily food intake at home until she was four, was two peas, half a fromage frais and a third of a small banana. However, she would return from her child minder having eaten two hearty meals with puddings and all the sensible savoury snacks in between. What kind of black magic was this woman dealing in, we used to ask ourselves, until we remembered that she wasn't related to Anna, she didn't need special powers, but more significantly, Anna had no biologically driven special powers to contront her child minder.

I'm not allowed to cut Anna's finger nails, she puts her hands behind her back and starts to yelp before I get the tiny safe childrens scissors out of the plastic holder, but grandad John can put neat TCP on her sore knee without her flinching. I can't get Stan near a green vegetable, but if Denise serves him a plate a broccoli he smiles a charming smile and clears the plate, Archie grunts at us but uses whole sentences when our friends come round, and so it goes on. Friends, school teachers, even passers by get the unfucked up stuff from our children, we get the grim stuff, the end of day, over tired, end of tether snarling that strikes fear into all parents. What nature banks on of course is a parent's emotional and biological connection with these angry snarly things, and nature is right a Mum's got to do what a Mum's got to do. Which in this case, is have another go at Mike's hair tomorrow without bringing up the fact that he was perfectly fine with Janet and what's wrong with Mummy's haircuts?

If he gets the chance to answer this question, he will point out that I make him look like a kid whose Mum uses a wonky bowl to cut his hair, and then he will use his emotional blackmail skills (learned in the womb) to point out that I am his Mum and in his eyes I am supposed to supply, a roof over his head, hugs, kisses, food and chocolate. So tomorrow I will finish the haircut, then I will feel guilty that a) it looks so bad and b) that I should be doing lovely Mummy things with him instead. This see-sawing of emotional blackmail and maternal guilt will then continue for oh, say, another thirty to forty years at which point I can get myself some guilt free senile dementia and then lets see how the children like it!

Although I do foresee some flaws with my plan, because, by this time my children will be playing their own fun version of blackmail and guilt with their children, and they will not have time for me and my wobbly, scary madness. I will quickly find myself in a home (which will not resemble a home in any way) and I will just be able to make out the words Becky is saying to the nurse, "...and she likes her mash potato cold and her milk warm..." before I am wheeled away, down a long corridor smelling of wee, to a dark room, where, despite being without my blanket and bear I will have to endure my compulsory perm, with the home's resident hairdresser, Janet.

Rx