With both our kids, we got through the Twos pretty unscathed. The Terrible Twos could (almost, but not quite) have been the Terrific Twos. Sunshine and Starlight both developed a sense of generosity (both materially, and in spirit) as they showed each other, and us, the humanity that is in all of us. Yes, there were tantrums, hard times. We battled through. When they were over, we congratulated ourselves at how well we handled it all. As parents, we assured ourselves, we were ace. We didn’t even know what we were doing, yet we were doing it so well. 

Only one part of that last sentence remains true. On both their third birthdays we said “Aren’t we lucky? I mean, everyone talks about the terrible twos, and sure there were moments, but that wasn’t so bad, was it?” (We always talk like characters from a novel, even if our lives could have been plotted for a soap opera). 

As Starlight hurtles through her third year, she leaves a trail of destruction behind her. Her personality has burst from somewhere and left its imprint all over our house and our lives and our spirits. 

Fit the first (and I steal this expression shamelessly from Lewis Carroll) began with our bedtime stories. We read a story every night, and I tried them once or twice on Lewis Carroll’s Hunting of the Snark. Sunshine was not a big fan, not right away. My copy is not a picture book. And as Lewis Carroll said in Alice in Wonderland: “What use is a book with no pictures in it?” Well, it turns out Starlight knows. She looks on half transfixed, half smiling at my amateur dramatics and ludicrous voices. She laughs unmercifully. Soon, we have a fight. Sunshine wants a better book. One with pictures. Starlight wants a funny book, one with voices. This book, that book. There is no winning Starlight over with a compromise. There is no more “us” or “ours”. There is only “mine” and “mine” (you need to imagine two voices saying “mine” there). Now we read two stories. 

Unfortunately, the Hunting of the Snark didn’t last long. Starlight’s (wilful) personality gathered strength and stubbornness. It also gathered influence from other sources. Namely Peppa Pig. And Ben and Holly. And all manner of other characters who Sunshine had resolutely “grown out” of and Starlight “grew in” to, the better to demarcate herself from her sister.

And so ends our early era of harmonious sharing. 

“That’s mine!” comes the cry from downstairs.

“No, MINE!” is the resolute response. The two girls are cry-screaming incoherently at each other. I am noticed in the room, then I am cry-screamed at by both of them.

“Now, you two listen to me,” I say. In control of little more than my voice, “you have to share. What are you fighting about?” More cry-screaming. Waving of pencils. I tell them to slow down. They each want the others’ pencil, but are unwilling to give up their pencil.

“This is LUDICROUS!” I tell them, “You need to learn to treat each other properly. Share. Love each other.” Come on everybody, it’s time to get together right now. More cry-screams, followed by higher-pitched cry screams as I remove both offending pencils. “Do you want me to put these in the bin?!” I ask, drunk on power over a five and a three year old, so drunk I don’t know what to do with it. “Now,” I say, buying time, “play something else. I’m not having this arguing!”

“But… but… Dadeeeeeee!” they scream “It’s MINE!” (they both speak of the other pencil – the one they don’t want. “Look” I say, thinking I have a chance to reason with them. “You want this one?” “Yes” says Sunshine, looking at her feet. “And you want this one?” “Yes, says Starlight, with one eye cast on the colour she wants, the other on the pencil that is hers.

“So,” I say, “why don’t we swap?” I cross my arms, to direct each pencil to the child that wants it. More cry screaming, and now they start shoving each other and grabbing for both. “That’s MINE!” and “I want that one!” is all I can make out through the clamour. 

I have no idea what is going on. Not long ago, they were too small to fight. Then, they were too small to fight me. Now, they are too small to care for my large, lumbering attempts at familial justice.

I try to calm them. Tell them to do their jigsaws. 

Apart from things that are mine, Starlight has also discovered ways that are mine. She pulls out a jigsaw and starts jamming pieces together. Sunshine and I look on, bewildered. Is this fury? Or does she not know what to do? I show her the box. “Look, love. See the picture? You have to try and make the picture…” I may be expecting too much. Sunshine was doing this jigsaw at 3, but that doesn’t mean Starlight can or should be able to.

“No.” she says.

“What? No, look” I say, “the idea is to make the picture. Here, will I help?”

“No.” she says. “I want to make my own picture.”

“But that’s not how it works love. Look, let me help…” I say, putting two pieces together, dramatically pointing out how the shapes fit into each other.

“No.” she says. “I’m making my own.” she says, pulls my pieces apart, then jams one in beside another piece altogether. Sunshine and I look on. Sunshine is bewildered. I am scared.

“No” has become a popular statement with Starlight.

“Time for bed!” “No.”

“Tidy up time!” “No.”

“Starlight, can you bring in the…?” “No.” 

We speak cheerily enough in the sing-song tones of one talking to a three year old. She speaks like an old man in a corner of the pub who’s just been asked whether he’s ready to go home.

Every time she says it – this fragile child – we are bewildered. Where did she get this from?

Her new found personality is not all bad. She has learned to be kind of her own accord, which is a heart-warming (if strange) thing for any parent to witness. We are used to telling her to be kind. We are used to telling her how to be kind (share your toys, say please and thank you, give your sister a hug and so forth). Every so often, if her sister is upset or lonely, she will pass over her inseparable Pink Teddy, or offer a sweet or drink to cheer her up. Sunshine, like her father, can be stubborn in her misery, but Starlight will persevere. Sometimes, she gets through. 

Sometimes, we have to separate them again, as a fight brews. Of course, we are very proud of this side of our daughter. Generous, kind, giving.

Then, one day, while having an Alice in Wonderland party, the girls managed to spill juice all over the table and floor. As I came in, I found Sunshine trying to clean it up, as Starlight rubbed the liquid around with her hands.

“What are you doing?!” I asked. I had lost my temper. As Sunshine started apologising, Starlight jumps in, shouts over her:

“But Daddy. This is our house too, you know” Our threenager. We are sure Sunshine was the same, but still wonder How did this happen and what do we do now?

Since Sunshine started school, she has found God. In the classroom, in the schoolyard and then at home – like her father before her – she has dived head first into the stories and the parables and the mysteries of the Church.

As a lapsed Catholic, I’m a bit bemused.

As a one-time-considering-to-be-Church of Ireland, I wonder if we should change religion (trans-substantiation is a problem for me).

As a part-time-amateur-observer of human beings and doings, I think, well, religion is something hard wired into us. I first read this theory in a book by John Gray (a philosopher, not the Mars and Venus guy), and it made a lot of sense to me.

While I am agnostic (there may or may not be something or someone “out there” of a higher power, but either way, we cannot definitively prove it, and we are probably better off looking at this place and trying to make it a little bit better either way), I can’t deny Sunshine her beliefs.

For one thing (as John Gray the philosopher points out), denying religious expression – especially where there is religious fervour – leads to bizarre religious expression (fundamentalism, or a disregard of fellow humans and humanity in favour of the myths, parables and commandments of a religion).  And children have the greatest fervour for almost anything that interests them.

For another thing and this I do know – my kids are finding themselves in the stories they tell and are told. They exercise their imagination through these narratives. Starlight likes witches and the big bad wolf, Sunshine wants to know more about Jesus. But as they learn more about these stories and play more with the situations, we see them becoming more themselves.

So, we see our job now as that of guidance. Starlight – at 3 – is too young yet – she is manic for silliness and nonsense, and knows her own mind to the extent of knowing what she wants and does not want and acting accordingly (tantrums). Sunshine – now 5 – knows her own mind in a new way, she is discovering things about herself she didn’t know before, like she is discovering the world around her and further afield. The world of which we are not a part (with her friends, in school and so forth).

Her religious feeling is quite powerful to her. She prays. She knows her prayers before food, and she relates Christmas to the birth of Christ more so than receiving of presents or Santa.

I was the same at her age. It was a comfortable imagination through which to move. One of justice, of kindness, of equality. A world that was not around me. And alas, is not around my children. And while “reality” is important, it is simply the outcome of other people’s imagination – so why not let her forge her personality within an imagination where things can be better. I would prefer if it were a scientific world, one based on facts and evidence. One that did not carry an historical burden (of which she will not know about until she is older).

But religion is the story she is forging her imagination through. And I think we can at least guide it to some extent so that she takes on the good of it – the community sensibility, the basic morality of reflecting on others’ situation in life, charity and doing unto others, etc – and we may be in a position to play down the darker sides – attitudes toward sexual morality, opinions on scientific matters and opinions on the way a country should work. If we were to deny her religious expression, someone else would surely control it. And then we would have no idea about the way she sees the world. Nor would we have an opportunity to help her better understand all the problems out there in that wider world as she grows older.

It is a brave new (old) world for me. I will have to put on my boots and my coat and bring the child to mass. Luckily for all of us, as I was the same, I remember the lessons, the mysteries. If nothing else, they will be useful to re-learn for interpreting Nick Cave song lyrics.

Since September, we have been learning. Sunshine started school. I learned that for most, this means coming into school with mum and maybe granny. The other people learned that for our family, this means coming into school with mum, little sister both grannies and Dad.

We stood in the playground, looking around at the other mums and dads and grannies looking around until the Child Raid siren went off. We confused our ways into the various classrooms. Parents studiously avoiding each other as the children pile into, crash off and swing around one another (parents will do all this later, in their cars). One plucky student welcomed us and indicated where everyone was sitting. I noticed she wasn’t wearing a uniform, and then I noticed she was the teacher!

Later that week, I had to go away for work. So the next morning, Sunshine asked for me to bring her in to school. So, in we went. “Good morning, good morning” I said as we passed the other parents, other children in the playground. It was quiet inside. I had Sunshine hang up her coat and bag. Said hello to her teacher. Sunshine and I made small talk as the teacher did her bits and pieces. “I wonder why nobody’s coming in?” I asked.

“Well, you’re meant to wait outside until the bell rings” said the only other child in the room. Wait. Teacher. Said the teacher. I’m sure I went red. When I was in primary school, we were told to go into our classroom and sit down and wait quietly for class to start.

“I… I’m… I’m sorry, I had no idea. Will we go out?” “No, there’s no need. But you know for future…”

“Yes, of course. Sorry.” to Sunshine I ask “Why didn’t you tell me?” to which both of them looked at me. It was, after all, her second day.

Well, with that bumbling start, things went downhill for a little bit. Sunshine comes home, a bit upset. Tells my wife no one will play with her. And the next day. And the next day. And one day, there are tears.

I assure them all it will be perfectly fine. I bite my nails, smoke cigarettes. I remember being the same, settling down later than the others. But then, I never was one for company. But is that why? Are my bland assurances simply leading her to be similarly introverted – is it nature or nurture that is at work here?

As my existential crisis unfolded, my wife spoke with the teacher and some other mums who encouraged other children to try and include Sunshine a bit more in their games. That was all it took. Sunshine made friends and played well with them. For now,  the heartbreaking spectre of her coming home, feeling lonely was over (I am sure this will happen again, as Dr Seuss wisely told us “I’m sorry to say so, but sadly it’s true that bang-ups and hang-ups will happen to you”) . So, as well as her lessons, she learned that sometimes it is hard to make friends, sometimes hard to be alone.

Starlight is learning the same, back home.  We have not been able to send her to a crèche, where she might meet some friends her own age. She knows some of the local children. But without Sunshine around, her best friend is her mum. She has started asking to “go for coffee” (which is her own code for going somewhere – anywhere – that my wife can drink coffee as Starlight eats a sausage).

She is also learning to make up her own games. These often involve jigsaw pieces or dolls or books and have a great deal of involved rules about who does what and when and how turns are taken; all made up as we go along. “Now, you go over there. And I…  I… I bring this over and you take it, then you go over there and…” and so forth. Games of strategy so involved, intricate and interminable, she will surely be a government minister one day.

“Daddy, boys like blue but girls like pink; but I like blue because we’re twins” says Starlight one day. Until that point, I thought all learning worthwhile. But somehow this didn’t seem right. I could explain the political and social ramifications of her statement to her, but she would see it only as involved, intricate and interminable. So I hold off.

“Wait. I have pink shirts, and I’m a boy, aren’t I?”

“No, you’re a Daddy. I don’t like boys. But I like Daddy. Here…” she says, stuffing a jigsaw piece into my mouth (in a parallel, but synchronous existence, she is the Mummy and I am the baby).

“But not all boys like blue and not all girls like pink. I mean. Look at all the other colours! Who likes green and yellow and purple?”

“Sunshine.” she says, without batting an eyelid. “Now, I’ll be the baby.” she says, very matter of fact. “I’m worn out from you.”

“I like black myself.”

“Goo goo, gaa, gaa” she says, in a frighteningly exaggerated staged baby-character. “I like black too! We could be twins!”

“Are we twins?” I ask “because we both like black?” I am curious that we have gone from being twins to “could be” twins.

“Noooo” she says, annoyed, “we can’t be twins because you’re a Daddy and I’m a little girl”

“Ah, I’m the Daddy…”

“NO, YOU’RE THE MUMMY” at this point she gets upset, so we quit our philosophical treatise and also the Mummy and Baby game.

Thursday evenings is dancing night. After Sunshine’s Irish dancing, after I drag my work-worn carcass across the threshold, Sunshine teaches Starlight and I about Irish dancing. It has become a regular part of my keep-fit regime with hopping and skipping and flailing limbs and keep- your-arms-down! I can’t keep up. Starlight can, but she cheats – making up her own rules again – with hop, skip, scuttle across and back, spin, skip hop.
Then one day my wife says “There’s a fedge next week.”

“A fedge?”

“No, a feis”

“Fresh?”

“Feis”

“Fesh?”

“Feis”

“Oh, a feis. Great.”

We go. It’s on at the school, which is cold of temperature and light. Parents go in, studiously avoiding the other parents as the children bustle their way through to the hall where the lower limb flailing will be done.

Sunshine is up in a group with some other children, and is partnered with her friend from down the road, which is good. Then the dancing starts. It’s like Goosestepping: A Warning from the Future, as the children swing their knees, drawing feet from ground level to forehead level and back to ground level with a slight thud in time to music as the teacher speaks lightly, delicately counting rhythm and saying things like “…and turn…” then “…and swap…” and so forth.

Starlight is dancing beside us, in the bleachers (well, seats collected from around the school), trying to edge her way out to the stage area. I grab her and bring her back to me. But of course, it is ultimately useless. They are ever dancing away from us, with all these things we’re all learning about ourselves and everything else. Ultimately useless, yes. But right now, I pick Starlight up and hold her on my knee until Sunshine gets her prizes (like the caucus race from Alice in Wonderland, all had won, and all must have prizes). Then we all go home.

“Everybody knows umbrellas will cost more in the rain.

All the news is bad. Is there any other kind?

Everybody’s talking at the same time.” (Tom Waits) 

It has been a summer indoors.  We hid from the deluge of rain, then from the deluge of news about the economy and the politics and the other sad stories (whatever happened to “And finally…” with the dogs driving motorcycles and monkeys training children to do card tricks?).

 My wife was living the summer of Ireland past. Like an RTE documentary or a film with that grey light filter on everything, she was ‘Home with the Kids’. As a contract lecturer, she was without pay.  

Being inside with kids can be tough after a while, but its worse when you know there is no escape and really think there should be. It is summer, after all. Outside, the grass is growing high enough to trap us in here for even longer. 

We tried the cinema one day, but Starlight just couldn’t stick with it. We tried one of those fun-prisons where you sit and drink coffee while the kids work out all their energy trying to break out of brightly coloured foam dungeons, but this was too expensive for a (albeit temporarily) one-income family. In the house, the girls are playing, laughing, crying, fighting, shouting, crying, laughing, playing, laughing, crying, etc. My wife and I too. Laughing, crying, fighting shouting… 

As the song said: Everybody talking at the same time. It is not claustrophobia; it is a build up of the various pressures of personalities filling the same space. We distract ourselves as best we can. I reread Flann O’Brien, and start a joke with the kids. They come in the door, I ask: “Is it about a bicycle?” They fall around laughing. Then they ask “Can we go out on our bikes?” and I have to say “No, sorry – it’s still raining”, then they cry. 

A break. From behind a bruised sky peeks an uncertain sun. We make a break for it. Head to the Curragh, or the playground. Free, easy exercise. We are a few minutes out when the sky starts weeping once again. Woe. 

Back at the house, I put on some music, which works out for a while. The girls have their songs, their bands. Then they fight over the songs and the bands, “STARLIGHT!” screams Sunshine “do as I tell you! I am your older sister and I’m the boss of you!” (Where did she get that from?) This barrage comes as a result of starlight taking too long to get upstairs, where there is a tidy corner somewhere, looking for a mess to fill it. That is the children’s responsibility. 

“I’m only little” says Starlight “with little legs…” as she scurries through the sitting room toward the stairs. This is rehearsed later, when it is time for bed and she says she needs to be carried up the stairs. She scurries into her sister’s room well enough after the story is read and the light turned out. 

In June, we had a 2 week staywaycation, or whatever it is called.  We spent our first week in Donegal for my sister’s wedding in Lough Eske, the second we spent in west Clare. Even in the rain, the Irish landscape is impressive – especially on the west coast, where the land suffers the continual slings and arrows of outrageous winds and rains. I dream of us all with cliff-like faces, stoically facing down this weather, this economy, this summer. 

My sister was married under the driving rain of a June day. The clouds broke to let us in and out of our cars and the church, then resumed a thunderous applause for the union of these two souls. My two souls were bridesmaids, which meant wearing pretty “Princess” dresses with ribands that were perfect for spilling things on.  After the wedding, we travelled across from Fahan to Lough Eske for the reception. Luckily, my sister had entertainers come along and look after the children while the (so called) grownups had their dinner. A marvellous plan, made better only by the fact that my wife’s parents then took the children for the evening. Much as we love them (I have no idea why one ever needs to quantify that), it was a welcome relief to not have to be the moral and behavioural guardian for the evening. Hypocrite that I was, I drank too much, spoke too much and behaved too brashly. 

We spent the next few days touring around the northwest.  At Dunree fort, we had to convince Sunshine that the fort was built to protect a Princess and was staffed by Superheros (Starlight – much to my bemused delight has taken up with Superheroes the way Sunshine has taken up with Princesses. Her favourite is Mr Tayto.) After a few days travelling around the North West, we pointed the car toward Clare and let the road take us where it will. 

Ensconced in Kilkee, we set about staying in again. The rain beset us there as well. We had one afternoon in the playground, where Sunshine and Starlight shot out like mercenaries, playing on every piece of equipment in every way possible. Swings were climbed, slides were hurdled, see saws were jumped from.  Another day, we got down to the beach and the kids got to build sandcastles and complain later when the sand was stuck to them by the rain. One day of wind (but no rain), just after getting paid, we got ourselves some kites and headed back to the beach. The wind twisted our cheap kites inside out. It seemed like we weren’t getting a break on this break.  But the girls laughed for a while, hanging onto string and tangling themselves up trying to run with the kites to raise them all the better. 

Then the rain barged in on us; it was late for work on a project with the wind to make a miserable day. I like to think of myself as a progressive Dad type, not the old-fashioned “We’re here to have fun and by Christ we’ll have it: rain or shine.” type. It turns out; my wife is that latter type. I plead with her, as I untangle Starlight from strings and psychedelic pieces of plastic, “We better go home… it’s raining”

“No, it’ll be fine!” she says with mendacious cheer. She is out and she will be damned if she is going back in. The wind whips up some sand to fling against us with the rain. Starlight is running one way, Sunshine has started to cry.

“Come on”

“No, it’ll pass” (secretly, I believe she is gloating because her kite has been flying for more than 13 seconds – my record)

“Come ON! You’re only gloating because your kite is flying longer!” (There’s that shout that Sunshine had, but coming from me). Now the kids are really crying. Starlight wants to go home. Sunshine wants ice cream. My patience has blown away with the wind.

My wife turns round, as if awaking from hypnotic state

“We better go” she says. “It’s really raining now.”

The latest hurdle we are faced with sometimes is at bedtime. 

It starts with-”Five minutes to bedtime Danny.”  Which is answered with-”Yeah OK Dad.”  Sometimes Danny even goes as far to say “that’s fine.”  Then, when the time comes, there are sometimes tears and tantrums.

Our attempts to calm him down whilst applying logic begin brightly and positively.  “You need sleep so you can have more energy to play tomorrow.  If you’re a good boy and go to bed now, I’ll take you to the playground in the morning.”

Our smiles eventually fade though when trying to reason with him gets us nowhere and the bottom line is that we realise he’s just trying it on.

The dialogue sometimes ends with this:  “We’re going to call the sleep police.”

We’ve road tested this questionable ploy several times-on each occasion it has been successful. 

Here’s what we do.  Got a fake call utility on your phone?  You can record a voice (your own, pretending to be the local ’sleep police’ checking to see if the kids are in bed.) and when you hit a certain key your phone begins to ring.  We let our son hear the ‘cop’ on the other end asking if all the kids in the house are in bed.  If we get the timing right, any bedtime defiance by Danny usually vanishes quickly and instead he pleads: “I want to go to bed now!” 

We don’t feel great about what is essentially lying to our child but, we file it under the ‘little fib’ category to make ourselves feel better.  

At the end of a long day us parents need rest too and whilst we may have to resort to jedi mind tricks to get Danny to go to bed we know he doesn’t harbour any ill effects when he wakes up the following morning, comes into our bed and bids us good morning with a hug and a kiss each. 

In five minutes time Danny’s going to be a teenager presenting us with a whole new bunch of challenges, I’ll take whatever assistance I can get now-God bless the fake call utility!