From angel to devil in 60 seconds
|Published
I run faster, she scoots faster, her little face contorted in an angry scowl like Gnasher the dog from the Beano. I run faster, she scoots faster, her little face contorted in an angry scowl like Gnasher the dog from the Beano.
London - My nine-year-old is chasing me down the street. She is on her scooter and moving at quite a speed.
I’m running away from her as fast as my 45-year-old office-bound body can carry me. It’s not a pretty sight.
“Why can’t you just be nicer to me,” she is yelling furiously, her blonde ponytail swishing angrily behind her.
People are staring as this domestic dispute plays out in public, no doubt hoping it’s heading towards some kind of farcical You’ve Been Framed conclusion.
I run faster, she scoots faster, her little face contorted in an angry scowl like Gnasher the dog from the Beano.
I’m quite scared because if she catches me I fear she may bite my knees. She used to do this during her toddler tantrums whenever the Mean Reds engulfed her. Frankly, I’m not sure she’s outgrown the Terrible Twos.
It all started on Sunday with an altercation over her swimming costume. It didn’t fit perfectly, the colour was wrong or the seam up the back”‘felt wonky” — something or other, I don’t know, because it is the same costume she always wears.
But whatever the problem, it was apparently, and illogically, my fault. The debacle delayed us for her weekend swimming lesson and we had no choice but to run like the wind to get there on time, continuing the escalating cossie debate in the street.
Crikey, if this is year nine, what fresh hell awaits me in the teenage years?
Gracie has always been a wonderfully spirited child — her emotions are on the surface, visible for all to see. She is the polar opposite of her calmer elder sister Sky, aged ten, and her more accommodating brother Henry, aged six. She’s proof children are born, not made, because despite growing up in the same household her personality couldn’t be more different from her siblings.
She’s popular at school with teachers and pupils alike and loved by mums who drop her back from playdates.
They praise her courteous and obedient nature so often that I suspect a case of mistaken identity because with me (and only me) she can be a volatile, illogical ball of excess energy, due to what I believe is an unreasonably high expectation of life and the events therein.
She’s easily disappointed because her nature is generally over-optimistic.
This makes her cross (mad with rage even) and emotions cascade out of her in a rainbow of unpredictable intensity. Then she bites me (well, she hasn’t done that physically for a while, but verbally it feels thesame).
I’m either in the full force of Gracie’s happy golden glow or the shadow of her miserable fury. It’s exhausting being “us”.
Everyone else mostly gets Gracie the angel, I mostly get Gracie the devil. Why is this?
Mr Candy thinks he knows the answer. “Mini me,” he’ll say, when I hide behind him during one of Gracie’s disagreements with me.
For a while I thought he was referring to our physical resemblance (she is the spitting image of me), but I have realised he’s talking about her personality.
Data on mother-daughter relationships would suggest that this is, indeed, the reason for the occasional clash. But I’m not entirely convinced.
It’s a complicated female dynamic at the best of times and, apart from seeing my face in the mirror every time I look at her, I don’t think we have any traits in common.
But as far as I can tell from mums with older girls, everything turns out to be the mother’s faultanyway.
Occasionally, her elder sister will collude in ganging up on me and they’ll retire upstairs to the bedroom they share, muttering “That’s so like her” about one or other of my imagined failings/ embarrassments.
All the while the youngest of the Candy girls looks on.
Mabel, two, takes mental notes, assimilating mother management knowledge by the bucket load, witnessing the many ways in which to get what you want from the goings-on ahead of her.
She’s quietly shaping her manifesto for tomorrow: world domination is surely just a matter of time. And I wonder how I’ll deal with my third female teenager in my later years.
I can see Mabel, a formidable force already, forming her motto for life as I write.
“I meant to behave, Mum,” she’ll say, “but there were so many other options.”
Pray for me. - Daily Mail
* LORRAINE CANDY is editor-in-chief of Elle.