A DAD'S LIFE:Every time she visits anyone, she wants to move in
FEWER THINGS make you look more nuts than losing the plot with your kid in front of her friends and their parents. Something innocuous sparks the madness, something with roots far deeper than what just happened, roots unknown to those witnessing your meltdown.
My personal nightmare is extracting children from friends’ houses. The younger child isn’t so bad, she’ll protest a little when departure is announced but begrudgingly haul on her shoes and make her way to the car. The other one though, her behaviour at the point of extrication makes a case for leaving her wherever we are. Every time.
This isn’t new. From the first time she became conscious of visiting people, it appeared she wanted to move in with them. It gave a terrible impression to others of our own home life; what could we be doing to her that she was so reluctant to go back?
She was small back then. She would tell me she needed to return upstairs to locate a discarded sock, and not reappear. I spent hours hunting for her under beds, in and on wardrobes, mugging through the dust of attics and peering in wall cracks, begging for her to come out and trying not to allow my voice crack with the growing strain.
She would infect the friend with her enthusiasm for the game. Soon I would have at least one child dragging from a leg in a bid to curtail my search as I attempted to locate the source of the occasional giggle making its way out of the ether. The other parent, an adult who I may have known only a little, would become aware of the rising giddiness in their own child and begin to make noises that we should get on our way. Which was exactly what I wanted to do, but couldn’t.
Other parents would peer at me. Their words say, hey it’s fine, don’t they all act up like this, aren’t they all minxes. But their demeanour suggests I have no control over my brat and need to take the offending article home because she’s becoming wearisome. I hunt on and eventually find her, throw her over my shoulder as she screams and beats on my head and leave with dignity in shreds.
This scene has played out countless times over the years. I’m sure she decided early on to plant articles of clothing at the extreme points of each house we would enter so that later on it would be as difficult as humanly possible to make an exit. We have left behind whole wardrobes of clothing as I have manhandled a roaring child from various premises around Ireland.
In recent times her methods have become more sophisticated. She is warned in advance that when I say it’s time to leave, she comes quietly. She is told she will be left behind/on the side of the road/down a mine if she makes a spectacle of herself and me again. So, she doesn’t any more. Instead she distracts and diverts attention from the possibility that I may have somewhere else I may need to be with probing questions to her host’s parents in order to ingratiate herself, and buy time.
Case in point. I spent nearly 90 minutes last weekend trying to leave a kid’s birthday party. My trials were exacerbated by the fact that I was collecting three children, two of whom were following the elder’s lead in making a mockery of me. The difficulty factor was ratcheted up by the party being held on a sprawling farm which allowed for several escape routes. I chased them through cabbage patches, across streams and in and out of the house. Finally, when I had the two not related to me strapped into the car, I cornered my offspring in the kitchen.
“Dad, I want to stay for a sleepover,” she says. “You haven’t been invited for a sleepover. Now, please, let’s move,” through clenched jaw. Other mother pipes up, “Well actually she could I suppose . . . ”
My glare cuts her dead. “Thanks, but we’ve made other plans and this one knows that. Get in the car, child.” Pitch is rising, hands shaking.
At this stage the elder engages the birthday girl’s dad with questions about pictures on the wall of his cycling trip through Africa. He is delighted that someone so young would show an interest in his hobbies and starts to talk her through the details. I grab her, saying to the other parents in a much too loud voice, “I’m sorry! I can’t believe she’s done this to me again, she’s impossible!”
And leave. Looking completely and utterly insane.