Morning Glory

I’m beginning to think our seven year old son exists in some sort of parallel universe when we’re getting ready in a morning; he must hear entirely different words coming out of the mouths of my husband and I and in his little world he must be surrounded by peace and tranquillity instead of utter chaos and carnage.

When I ask him through gritted teeth and for the eighth time to get his uniform on, he looks at me blankly for a couple of seconds before answering sweetly, ‘Oh, OK, mum’ as though he’s hearing me for the very first time.

He must not notice, then, the vein that pulses in my temple when he then asks me where his uniform is.  Maybe in ‘Josh Land’ his uniform ISN’T waiting on the back of the chair in his bedroom every single morning, so I shouldn’t really get cross, should I?

It must be like being underwater for our little sugar plum where sound is muffled and comes from afar, so when I tell him that his school shoes are in his school bag because he had an after school club last night and came home in his football kit, of course he’s going to go and look in his wardrobe, on the stairs and in the porch before yelling, ‘MUUUUUM!  I CAN’T FIND MY SHOOOOES!’

It’s therefore entirely unreasonable of me to want to throttle him with his football boot laces when he comes downstairs in odd socks.  Just because he can’t be bothered to match them up and then complain tomorrow that he has no pairs of socks in his drawer, doesn’t mean to say that I should feel the urge to breathe into a brown paper bag, does it?

I really need to be more understanding and accept that twenty past eight in a morning is a perfect time to play with Lego; hey, it’s not like he has to brush his teeth, learn his spellings, put his homework in his bag, finally put his shoes on and get into his coat, is it?

A thought has just struck me; maybe he really can’t understand what I mean when I say, ‘Zip your coat up.’  Maybe I need to change it around like Yoda, ‘Up your coat zip, young Jedi.’  Maybe that would be better?

The poor love, all this time I’ve thought he’s just being lazy and has the attention span of a goldfish and maybe he just finds my syntax too complicated.  I really must make more allowances.

I mean, who wouldn’t want to play with the puppy and give her a stroke (getting black hairs all over his uniform) at twenty to nine as we’re going through the door?  What kind of a mean, heartless mother am I to interfere with the beautiful bond between boy and beast?  We wouldn’t want the poor animal to feel neglected, now would we?  I mean, that’s far more important than getting to school on time.

Then when we finally get in the car…’Josh, put your seatbelt on, please.’ (Thirty seconds later whilst he finds some hidden treasure in his coat pocket.) …’Josh?  Seatbelt, please.’  (He turns up the radio and then looks for a CD.) … ‘JOSH!  SEATBELT!’  (I watch the cogs in his brain slowly whirr into life.) …’Wha’?’  (Right, we’ve got some sort of verbal feedback but he’s still messing with the handle of his bag)…

I put the car into gear and get ready to take the hand brake off, then… ‘Mum?’  ‘What?’  ‘Don’t set off yet!  I haven’t got my seatbelt on!’

Morning glory, eh? AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!  🙂