Don’t feel like tinkering with my kids

Image: iStock and Unsplash

Marieke van Wijk can think of many things that she likes about being a mother, but fiddling, tinkering or mindless games are not one of them.

It is Sunday afternoon and a neighbor texts: yes hi, does Madelief like to come and make glitter soap with us? I have to read the message twice to believe it’s really there and then I can’t believe my luck. Yes, Madelief (5) likes that. What can I say: Madelief thinks that’s fantastic. Because Madelief loves making, glitters and soap.

I text back that she’ll be there immediately, pull Daisy into her coat and wave her off, ignoring that a little bit of guilt is rising somewhere inside me. Because what Madelief has forgotten is that she herself also has a glitter soap do-it-yourself kit. Skillfully fished out of the pile of birthday gifts by me and put it away in the attic (with the excuse to myself: I save it for a rainy day and then surprise her with it – but that has been over a year and quite a few rainy days now).

In detail

The thing is, I just hate it. And that doesn’t just apply to making glitter soap – or most of all other glitter projects – but to a lot of play things that my children prefer to do with me. Take my son Maarten (7). Passionate about football. Me too, so I’d love to play a game of football with him, but I don’t want to take 500 penalties and endlessly mimic how his great hero Antony cheers when he scores. I just want to play a game of football, preferably two times five minutes, and then I’m done.

But unfortunately, those penalties and that cheering, that’s exactly what Maarten wants from me, about three hours in a row. To explain to me in detail how some boring game on his iPad works exactly. “Look mom, if you press here, that doll will jump and you can jump over these stones in no time, here, you just do it, because that’s fun, yes, and now to the next level, because we’re only at four and there there are 61.” It’s probably not hard to guess that I’ll drop out at level four. Or better still at level one.

Fröbelend, fidgeting and playing

Another example: I’d like to cycle a bit, but I don’t want to stop two hundred times because my children’s pace seriously has a minus for the speed (“How fast were you driving?” “Oh, just minus three miles per hour”). I really want to make a drawing with them, but I don’t feel like making a mini-line with each of our 3418 felt-tip pens in the pattern that my rather determined daughter has predetermined.

“I’m just not that primal mother who spends her days fumbling, fidgeting and playing”

I’d like to do some tinkering, but the idea of ​​folding Easter baskets for six hours and decorating them all with braided string and cut-out eggs in patterned paper (a craft project that Madelief came up with and that almost made me fell into the water on Saturday afternoon, but luckily I avoided it in time). And yes, I understand that it’s not about what I do and don’t want, but I am simply not that primal mother who spends her days fumbling, fidgeting and playing.

games

Which doesn’t mean I’m some listless witch. Take games. I love. I genuinely enjoy a game of quartets with my kids, whether Beverbende, Twister, Catan Junior or Thirty Seconds. I love how fanatical they are and how well they try and their extremely concentrated faces when they try to keep their totally transparent strategy a secret or try to keep eight quartet cards in one hand, for example. The four of us recently played Monopoly (the adult version) and my husband Simon and I couldn’t beat our own son. Great, it made me happy all day long.

But I don’t like all games. Especially the large arsenal of mindless specimens gets on my nerves. We have a game where you have to turn over cards with clown faces and if there are two of the same you have to ram a bell and you get the cards. The one with the most cards wins. Simple in itself, but according to the rules of the game you have to put down two cards at a time and if they don’t match, you remove them and put down two new ones. In this way it takes a long time – unnecessarily long, if you ask me – for the game to end and I find it so boring.

That’s why I recently changed the rules and now each player turns over cards until there are two of the same and then that person gets all the cards that are there. Result: a game takes five minutes or less. When I introduced the change of rules, Madelief looked at me with some doubt: “I don’t think it should be, Mom.” “Yes,” I said, “it’s in the rules of the game.” She accepted it, but the fact that she is now learning to read at a rapid pace will of course soon be my downfall.

Inexplicably disappeared

The game might be lost by then, because that’s such a strange thing in the house: toys that I find annoying tend to disappear inexplicably. I regularly help search for something that I personally banished to the recycle bin or the trash can some time before. I build in a margin of error of four weeks: I put it aside and if no one has asked for it in four weeks, I eliminate the toy in question. This is especially the case with things that are broken or downright junk, but I always scan the cupboard with a critical eye for those things where my help is indispensable and I already get a puller in advance.

Like there are: a set with 10,000 tinkling beads with which you can make bracelets (I can already see the whole set rolling over the parquet floor in my mind, and besides everything that has to do with tinkering makes me very impatient), a princess edition of diamond painting, a baking set, and my favorite: iron on beads.

“It’s more like my kids want me to take care of most of it”

I’d like to take on the ironing part, but of course it doesn’t work that way. Usually my kids want me to take care of most of the beading part, after which they demand that they can do the ironing themselves. A typical example of a lose-lose situation. That is why the iron-on beads are now in the back of the cupboard and I am waiting with some impatience until they have completed their four-week period.

Also read: ‘Enjoy my child? He does that himself’ >

Endless patience

Incidentally, none of this is a quality that I am necessarily proud of. In my mind it is true that a really nice mother should play and tinker with her children with endless patience. I actually don’t know why I think that, but maybe it has to do with the fact that I’m usually quite critical of my own functioning and therefore choose exactly what I don’t like as a parameter of good motherhood.

So I think that with real attention I should make the most spectacular shapes with a folding tray, conjure up the most beautiful baking creations (unfortunately I did something wrong with my last attempt at buttercream – still no idea what exactly – causing the large swirls that I had in mind for the cupcakes collapsed and I lacked the will to try again (they were very tasty, those cupcakes, by the way) and with endless patience should welcome just about everything that comes along on Pinterest.

“As energyless as I am when it comes to craft projects, I am so fanatical when it comes to reading aloud”

Recently my parents had a tree cut down in the garden, leaving countless slices of trunk. My sister – who does have the Pinterest gene – immediately sent in dozens of ideas about what could be made with those discs. I suspect that each of those ideas has been implemented in her home by now. Here the discs are gathering dust in the garage. I do want to argue in defense that in the time that I did not build a bird feeding station from tree trunks, I did read two parts of Wiplala, because as energyless as I am when it comes to craft projects, I am so fanatical when it comes to reading aloud and reading together .

watch

Well, that wasn’t the point right now. Recently I felt that if I still think that I should show more effort to be a really nice mother, I also had to put my words into action. Madelief had received from Sinterklaas those plaster molds that, with the necessary time, effort, energy and especially attention, you can make beautiful unicorn figurines that you can then paint with glitter paint with a small tinkering brush.

I know that such a project makes Madelief extremely happy, but every time I see the set, I prefer to reach for the paint bottles and the roll of wallpaper that we use as paper. With that, I install her at the table and let her go about her business freely, while I watch myself, unload the dishwasher, get rid of some emails or simply scroll through Instagram.

A silent reminder

Recently, however, in an unguarded moment Madelief discovered that unicorn plaster set and I decided to go for it with her. Then I would sacrifice the afternoon for such a plaster statue in candy cane colours. I unpacked the entire set, set out all the supplies on the table with Madelief and pretended to be looking forward to the part of the project where we were going to paint the unicorns like her. What I hadn’t thought of: plaster has to dry. First four and then 24 hours. Road project. I couldn’t say I was sad because who was there 24 hours later in charge about the kids: right, the nanny. Who has raised the fröbeling to an art differently than I do and who genuinely likes it.

All I know is that I have to deal with my daughter’s disappointed face and slightly reproaching the light, “Why don’t you ever tinker with me, Mom?” I didn’t give my true answer (“Because I don’t like it”). Instead, I muttered a promise to start organizing something with glitter and cards soon. Luckily she forgot.

“The plaster unicorn is a silent reminder that I am hopelessly lacking as a crafts and play mother”

A rainbow-colored plaster unicorn now sits on my desk as a silent reminder that I’m hopelessly lacking as a crafts and play mom. Maybe I’ll have to get that glitter soap set from the attic soon. Although, thanks to my dear neighbor, we have a stock of it well into 2031.

This article appears in Kek Mama 04-2022.

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