🦀 What the beach taught me about my kids 🦀

I took my two small-not-so-small-but-still-small-to-me children to the beach. They love the beach. The smallest spent his time sticking his hands in the pincers of crabs and scooping up shrimp from the rock pools. The not-so-smallest spent his time playing on the sand. Hours passed and they did not speak.

They say that siblings are rarely similar, and that’s true in our family. My first born, heir to the P Throne, was “easy”. He was never a great sleeper but he chuckles his way through life and has been a happy go lucky child who does exactly as I ask when I ask him. He is independent and can pretty much fend for himself, despite me trying to over mother him.

When his brother came along, my eldest told me to “put it back”. As there was no way of achieving this, we kept him (of course. Nothing was going “back” in there for a very long time, thank you) From that moment, my smaller child was full of revenge. It started in the shape of a runny turd in his big brothers bed and professed from there…

I’m going to write this next section like a teacher. Teachers will know why.

The youngest of my children is full of spirit. He is fiercely independent and highly motivated when focussed on something of personal interest.

In other words – he’s a complete whirlwind of a child who I could not have been prepared for even if I’d set fire to tampons in the arctic wilderness with Bear Grylls wearing nothing but my underwear (is there a wilderness in the Arctic?! *Checks Biomes section of Geography curriculum* #shitgeographycoordinator) I absolutely love him, just as I do his brother, but he’s challenged me. I mean really challenged me. He challenged me today, for example, when we were rockpooling and I turned my back to unearth a crab beneath a stone and he plunged his hand in and grabbed it. Front on. Who picks up a crab front on?! (Crab rules state that you should pick up a crab arse end to avoid fuck off pincers!) He challenged me when he leant right over the side of the jetty in search of fish and tried to reach down to grab what he saw. He challenged me when he climbed the biggest rock available to him with crashing waves beneath him to check for starfish, in what I can only describe is at a competitive pace (Ninja warriors here we come!) and he continues to challenge me with his death defying darts and his impulsive nature every single day. I love it though. Just as much as I love the chilled out older child. He’s brings balance to my children and I love them both for their unique nature.

Anyway, I’ve massively digressed. Blah blah we were at the beach…

Once the adults had tired of rockpooling and cricket, the kids were left to their own devices. Once the crabs, shrimps and one terrified starfish was released (and protected until they reached rock-pool safety) my children started playing together.

Now don’t get me wrong, when the spades came out I thought there would be arguments. We are well in to the high conflict period of the Summer holidays. But alas, they didn’t argue at all. I mean, I was pretty upset that I had to give up my spade but I compromised and was still allowed to use it when smallest child was not using it to do some digging of my own. *fist pump*

I loved watching them work together, their own uniqueness shining through. The eldest began by organising; some might call it being bossy, but his critical and objective nature meant that he could see the big picture. He did the mental planning and adapted what was occurring as he went. He’s got a few years on the other one, but he’s so chilled that he can communicate effectively without the panic setting in (and we all know how much panic sets in when water is collapsing a sand trench!)

The youngest was the grafter. Many years of crawling on the ground like a dog, playing fetch with his friends, means that his core strength is shit hot, and his digging skills are on point (wasn’t impressed that he flung a full spade fill of sand in my hair, but I was looking pretty seaside-rough anyway, so I let it go). He was also great at listening to his brother’s instructions (although you wouldn’t know it – he’s not an eye contact stop and listen kind of guy!) and so he completed his brother’s vision with accuracy. (There was this guy I met once who was dead inspiring called Ken Wilby – he taught me all about visualisation and story telling. Must write more about what I learnt from him another time! My kids did a cracking job of communicating vision here!)

Now those of you who know me, may well understand that I’m a massive geek. I mean comic-con-attending-game-of-thrones-squealed-with-excitement-when -we-got-new-cupboards-at-work-attend-self-funded-courses-on-my-own-because-I’m-a-geek kind of geek. They’ll also know that I would never have been able to resist getting involved, so when I was allowed, I joined in, obviously after the hard work was done!

The kids built a water system using the stream of water that ran in to the ocean. They dug linking river systems that housed my youngest son’s collection of teeny weeny baby crabs he’d kept in his pocket (don’t worry, we’ve chatted this out and he now knows that baby crabs do NOT want to live in his pockets. I’ve also thanked the Gods that I noticed these before the wash was put on!) They made barriers to redirect water and then tried to float shit down the little rivers. (Not literal shit, although the potential buoyancy might have been more successful than the stuff we tried?) Such fun! Behold the excitement of rolling a piece of foil down the system!

Anyway, the point of me sharing this was that were often told to celebrate children’s unique personalities. I spend too much time saying that my eldest is too sensible and unadventurous. I spend too much time calling my second child a whirlwind. I spend too much time rolling my eyes and telling people they’ve spent the past week arguing about nothing.

What I should be saying is that they are individual, they are unique, they are one of a kind and together they are shit hot. I know that no matter what problems occur in each of their lives, they will have one another to build each other back up again. They will have one another to keep them whole.

Meanwhile, I’ll just go grey and spend my life worrying as I did before, but with kinder words and less judgement. Oh, and with careful frisking of the pockets before putting on a wash.

🦀❤️🦀