The cost of having kids....

Research out this week suggests that the cost of raising a child has hit a staggering £271,000. According to insurance company Aviva, day to day costs including school trips, food, clothes, outings, university fees and childcare means us parents are spending around £271,499 on our kids before their 21st birthday.
These numbers do not, of course, factor in the Irish mammy who still washes, cleans, cooks, fends for and lends her kids money well into their 60s.
Still I’d say those figures are well below average for our four children. I mean, where in all these calculations are the figures for broken remote controls? So I decided to do my own sums and here’s what I’ve come up with.

Broken remote controls
Averaging one smashed, flushed, buried or dismantled remote control every two months approximately, figure does not include the petrol money to ferry child/children to casualty with concussions after remote control-related injuries to heads.
Total £5,040

Smashed windows
Windows getting in the way of speeding footballs and/or rocket-propelled shoes are an unfortunate consequence of having male children. Averaging in a new window every six months, including the ones smashed by yard brushes swung in a spinning motion around head – it may be impressive, it’s still a hit.
Total £1,680

Destroyed mobile phones
Mobile phones make for great hammers with which to bash things, they are great for flushing down toilets and also phoning people in Australia and leaving them hanging on for two days. They also make great beepy noises when you run over them on your bike.
Total £1,890

School Trousers
What with it being First Holy Communion year and all, my boys are always praying out the knees of their standard greys. And ripping them on wire, sticking ballpoint pens through them to see if it makes a hole, finding really tiny bits of loose thread and ripping them out to see what happens, drawing smiley faces on them with permanent marker and spilling olive oil-based consumables on them. Am keeping the recessional wolves from the door of Marks and Spencers by maintaining an average purchasing rate of two pairs per month.
Total £3,528

Cleaning products
In 21 years we would have gone through a positive mountain of baby wipes, a river of industrial strength carpet cleaner specialising in boke removal, hundreds of hard-core car valeting treatments and dozens of sand blasters to remove dried in Weetabix.
Total £4,890

Biscuits
A packet of 30 biscuits lasts approximately 20 seconds in our house. From point of purchase many don’t even make it to the car safely. Despite various camouflaging methods adapted by us, our boys manage to seek out, locate and destroy biscuits like a school of ravenous piranhas, often risking life and limb to achieve their custard cream goal.
So we’ll be averaging one packet of biscuits every 20 seconds for 21 years, not counting petrol and parking money for visits to casualty for fall related injuries acquired while seeking out biscuits.
Total £25,441,418

So in total, we’re not averaging £271,000 per kid. No way. We’re stratospheric in our spending. We’re looking at spending £25,455,146 in total on our children and their various needs, with the greatest bulk of that spend being on biscuits.
I may have to start saving now.

Torture by toddler...

The ‘terrible twos’ doesn’t adequately cover the depth of screaming, howling and pure badness that has taken hold of our house in recent months.
The youngest boy, who once won prizes for being the calmest, most chilled out baby in the entire world, has turned into a crazed lunatic to commemorate his second year on this earth.
We’ve been through the tantrum stage. We’re so over that. Tantrums are very last year. Now we’re on the ‘I own everything’ phase of torture by toddler. The child is the Donald Trump of the kiddies world. He wants everything he sees – from remote controls to the toys of stranger’s children to other people’s houses. He’ll go to any lengths to get them – kicking, screaming, biting, throwing shoes, holding precious stuff to ransom over the toilet bowl.
He strives for household and indeed global domination daily, mostly by howling ‘it’s mine!’ in a high-pitched, screamy voice. Unfortunately it’s not so high-pitched that it’s only audible to canines and we may all need inner ear replacements by the time this particular phase has run it’s course.
Everything is his – the hi-tech remote control cars that Santa clearly marked for the older boys, the Scooby Doo costume that permanently hangs on the washing line next door, the pureed mush that the baby now eats.
The husband and I, obviously at the end of our tether to take such measures, conducted an experiment. The husband pointed at his own hand and informed the toddler that this hand, which was attached to the husband’s arm belonged to himself and himself alone. The boy protested loudly that the husband’s hand was actually his and followed him around the house screaming ‘It’s Mine!’ never further than two feet from his ear.
And he doesn’t just save the screaming for us, he shares with his public also. If he is unleashed in a supermarket he’ll run for the hills, well maybe not the hills but the front door or the frozen chip department at the very back of the store, all the while screaming at random strangers that the contents of their trolley is his. Any attempt at securing him in our trolley is met with violent body thrashing that would put a fresh water salmon to shame.
All the advice books tell us that we should connect with the toddler, meet and eliminate the tantrum before it occurs. But this boy, an absolute force of nature, doesn’t fit into any categories nor follow any of the rules that the books say will work. I’ve tried to alter his diet, attempted to cut down on sugary stuff, cut down on his coffee intake but nothing works. He’s driving us to utter distraction, just as his brothers did before him.
We thought his older brother Caolan was bad. That child, whom we nicknamed Captain Destructo, broke everything in his path. We had considered lending him out to toy companies who needed to stress test kid’s toys for sturdiness but thought that the damages he might cause would counteract any wages he might earn. We sincerely thought that Caolan’s cupboard door wrecking, TV shaking, window breaking terrible twos were the worst we’d ever see. We fondly imagined that no parents would ever have to endure such torture again. We never imagined that the youngest boy – who is known now as Professor Chaos – would out-do him on so many different levels, particularly noise levels.
I took the child into town, just the two of us, for a bit of mother son bonding to see if we could banish the screaming. Since the baby came along he’s been out on the town with his father of a Saturday, while I stay at home praying o Jesus and the patron saint of lost causes that my ears will function properly again.
So I imagined on our jaunt the two of us would skip down the high street hand in hand, nip in for a coffee and cake and we would discuss the whole screaming thing like two proper grown ups.
Instead he stopped outside every bun shop and bakery we passed from the car park to the city centre and screamed bloody murder, pointing at the shop and nearly pulling my arm out of the socket to go in. I thought the child simply fancied something off the gorgeous displays of pastries in the windows and was rather surprised to see many of these different bun shop ladies come out and greet my son by name.
It was all ‘hello Finn’, and ‘where’s your Daddy today?’ and ‘here’s a cream finger’ or ‘is it a jam doughnut you want today, I know you and your daddy love them’. He was gifted a positive mountain of fancy delights just for being a curly haired cutie. It may well take a week for the smell of sugar and fake cream from confiscated cream buns to leave my handbag.
It seems that the husband has been using the undeniable cuteness of our little boy to stock up on fancy calorie-laden, sugary treats which are banned, by the way, in our house. And it seems my boys, big and small, are all ladies men, well bun shop ladies men anyway.
But it all ends here. From now on it’s lettuce leaves and carrots for breakfast, lunch and dinner in the hope that we can exorcise this obviously bun induced screaming demon.

No wonder they're mad.....

Overheard conversation between the husband and middle son...

Caolan: "Daddy what's that green flag flying outside our school that says Eco-School on it?"
Husband: "That's an alien flag, son. It means aliens have taken over your school and they've raised that flag there to say that they've beaten your teachers and conquered the territory."
Caolan: "Really?"
Husband: "Yes, you see they raise the flag on the pole so that other aliens who might be flying overhead knows that they can park there in the playground beside the monkey bars."
Caolan: "Really?"
Husband: "Yes, and by the time you go back after the half term break the aliens will have taken over the minds and bodies of your teachers, so you'll be in for a few more interesting lessons."

Holy Joe....

First Holy Communion fever has hit our boy’s school. And I’m not talking about the kids getting all hyped up about being on first name terms with the big man up above. No, the little dudes are more concerned about how much cash will change hands on the day and the little ladies are all about who’s got the biggest and best dress.
I’ve been watching My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding over the past number of weeks with interest, particularly the traditions followed during First Communion celebrations. And while most of England are up in arms about 7-year-olds from the travelling community wearing Holy Communion dresses that are twice their body weight and getting spray tans before the big day, I’m thinking, judging by the mumpetition at the school gates around these parts, get a Channel Four documentary camera crew over here STAT, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
There are mothers getting dresses shipped all the way from America for their little darlings, mums spending up to £1,000 for a truly impractical white frock which their girl will never get another single wear out of and mums cutting back on grocery shopping to save for princess tiaras. There are limos, dinners in fancy restaurants and function rooms being booked en mass. There are special trips to various cities to purchase mother of the holy child outfits, entire families getting kitted out in designer gear, Christmas day style presents being bought, hairdressers being flown in from Dublin. There was even a rumour of a LED-style dress with accompanying fire extinguisher-wielding assistant, but that is, as yet, unconfirmed.
Maybe it’s because I’m not buying the big flouncy white dress and tiara this year – white isn’t really Daniel’s colour – but I’m not really feeling all the hype.
I have been learning a lot about God and religion with Daniel this past few months and for that I’m grateful. It has been a learning curve for us both. I may not have listened too well in religion during my school years but I suppose through my son I’ve learned everything I needed to know about the big man but was afraid to ask. I have often felt the urge to stand up during Sunday mass and request an explanation – and recipe – for that whole water/wine thing and the logistics of how Moses parted the sea. Also it’s good that my own extensive religious training (standing outside mass smoking and chatting to boys) allows me to answer all his profound ecumenical questions – like why did Jesus commit suicide and why God invented blue bottles, like what purpose do they serve?
My own memories of my First Holy Communion are happy enough ones. My mother and father, in true Breslin fashion, got the time wrong for the mass. We arrived at the chapel – me in all my finery – as my classmates were filing out to go home.
As I stood in the car park actually balling in terror – assuming that because I didn’t receive Communion in my allocated time Beelzebub himself was about to appear and drag me off to the fiery depths of hell for eternal damnation – my mother arranged for me to attend another ceremony up the road, thus saving all our souls.
After the mass we did the rounds of the rich relatives and made a right few quid, which my mother kept safe for me. I must ask her for it back actually, I’d say there should be a fair few pounds interest on it after 20-odd years.
But the thing I remember most about it is the rosary beads my Grandmother gave me. They were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen – pearly white beads with silver links and an ornate silver cross. I still have them in a drawer at home.
As with all things these days – Christmas, Easter, everything – commercialism has blinded us to the real meaning behind the celebration. Christmas equals Santa, Easter means chocolate. Holy Communion seemingly means getting all dolled up for the day and hitting the most expensive restaurant in town.
First Communion is one of the most sacred and solemn occasions in a Catholic’s life, and indeed calls for great celebration. I don’t know if there’s a mention in the big book of rules about spending shed loads of money and booking limos in a recession to do that, though. Maybe I missed a chapter.
Me, I’ll buy my son a nice suit, take everyone to the church (on time) and have a big gathering of our nearest and dearest back at our house. Bring your wallets folks!