TurkeyMum

The hardest part about this solo parenting gig is that when I've had a rough week, my son has been forced into a rough week of his own.

I noticed this particularly keenly this week. Mine has been...challenging, which means that his has become that way. I don't know if it's my reduced patience that affects him, or if he picks up on my general sense of frustration, exhaustion and stress and mirrors it back, or more likely a combination of the two and quite possibly a little stress of his own. It's true that kids are resilient, but the guy has had a lot of change thrown at him in a short time so it's taken a bit to find his equilibrium.

Maybe it's just that time of year. I have several friends who are struggling through some things as well, and much of it compounded by having a lot of pre-holiday work that has to get done.

What then compounds things is that the stress and frustration become a kind of death spiral--I come home from work frustrated and unhappy, which gets transferred to my boy, which advances the spiral which feeds my displeasure which adds to his stress which turns me into a ball of angry, seething ick that I try to keep to myself but somehow spills over--and the descent into this very awful place continues for days until we're both just miserable.

Enter the TurkeyMum. Yes, the TurkeyMum. I picked up the boy from his after school program, needing to get to the grocery store because dinner options were pretty limited (as they can become when you don't get to the store).

We were both in our crabby places when we got to the market, and I was bracing myself for an escalation when we walked in, and there it was:


Yes, that's a mum all gussied up with pipecleaners and googly-eyes and glitter. At the store, we stopped in our crabby tracks and stared. Then we looked at each other and burst out laughing.

I don't know what we paid for TurkeyMum, and it really doesn't matter because now, when we're in the kitchen together, we both smile. And believe me, during a really challenging week when the frustration is rubbing off? Any smile is good.

It is much too easy to forget, at the end of the day or the week, no matter how awful it's been, that what matters is each other. TurkeyMum is a great, and silly, reminder.