Surviving winter with children
“My living room isn’t an indoor playground, damn it!”
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Our author is actually more of the robust type of person. But there is one combination that is mind-boggling: children’s toys in the living room. So not two. Not even five. It always has to be five hundred. GRRR!
by Marie Stadler
Children in winter – that’s always been a thing. As easy to care for the offspring in summer, when it’s wet, cold and dark outside, the little ones mutate. Either they are as grouchy as Germany’s next top model candidates or as unbalanced as Boris Becker on bankruptcy issues, and their moods change as erratically as Britney Spear’s body mass index.
Just go out!
Of course, you can still go out, even when it’s cold. That would help, right! And of course there are also indoor swimming pools, indoor playgrounds, gymnastics clubs and doctors’ waiting rooms, where you can keep busy and work off. But unfortunately winter turns every adult (well, at least me) into a somewhat disgruntled contemporary who cannot always bring himself to dance in the freezing rain. That’s why the living room has to believe in it quite often with us. Because children’s rooms somehow seem to be the most boring thing there is to explore on this planet. Living rooms, on the other hand, are obviously ultra hip in the U7 scene.
Chaots also need order
There are so many people who always have a leak in their living rooms. Admirable, but I’m not like that at all. I wasn’t like that when I didn’t have any children, and that’s why I don’t expect that from me and mine today either. No, I’m a mess in front of the Lord, I forget appointments, birthdays and somehow improvise my way through life. But that’s precisely why I need a tiny bit of structure at home, a couple of beautifully arranged vases and a kitchen table that doesn’t look like the studio of Van Gogh’s great-grandchildren. From October to March I live with the said great-grandchildren, lots of ink boxes, Lego boxes, creeps and Playmobil figures and the “structure” of our entire living space consists for the most part of sofa cushions on the floor arranged according to the chaos principle, self-made caves and very, very , very, very generously planned Lego landscapes.
This is MY living room, damn it!
Lately I escalated again. The only reason I didn’t break my shank was because after falling over the Lego building site, I landed gently on a pillow tower. Immediately my offspring stood up in front of me, snorting anger and with their arms on their hips, accusing me of sabotage of unbelievable efforts. I found that a good cue, got to my feet and gave a no less angry monologue about the sabotage of MY efforts. “And anyway!” I concluded my lecture. “This is MY living room, damn it!” For my eloquent presentation I got nothing more than a blank shake of my head. “Do you know what I really don’t understand?” My six-year-old asked me. “You always say that you should share.” So. What can you say to it? But one thing I learned that day: Watch what you teach your children. Anything you say can one day be used against you.
Ergo?
I improved my negotiating position and put my desk in the nursery. As a basis for a fair deal if the day comes when the children rediscover their rooms. So at 16 or so. Wish me good luck!