This is a lesson of being that large and in charge parent but still being able to listen to the messages that your children are sending out. This story took place November 13th 2018. I always wanted to be a hippy dippy mum and in a lot of ways I am. Unlike my parents, children don’t always have to be seen and unheard but the Jamaican in me means that at some point, my children have to understand deathly silences, deathly looks (commonly known as “The Look”) and deathly clips around the earholes when silences and looks are unheeded.

I remember the day that my children were able to call me Mummy because at that point I knew that they would be able to communicate how they felt, what they wanted and what exactly they would need from me as a parent to make their childhood a better experience. There have admittedly been days when I wished that day had never come because within a year of being at their beck and call, I told them that “I wasn’t their Mummy”. Of course they looked at each and instead of the fearful anticipated outburst of tears, I instead got a burst of laughter and a hug with “You’re silly Mummy. You’re Mummy.”

Now my childhood wasn’t completely Edwardian, we were given a relative amount of freedom to speak; just not to speak our minds… too much nor too freely. It’s a cultural thing and I am not afraid to admit that it is needed in certain instances. However, it wasn’t something that I completely wanted for my children. I was worried that not speaking enough or letting me know what was on their minds could lead to all sorts of troubles – including mental health – and it was one less thing that I wanted to deal with. No, let them speak freely and independently – as long as they do it quietly, or at a reasonable level of noise.

Unfortunately, silence was not my children’s forte and at one point, I had to deal with a lot of noise and then TWIN TALES no. 357 happened.  for months I had to deal with an increasing level of decibels whenever girl child was speaking and I thought that she had a problem with her ears. Ears, nose and throat problems were common in my and my siblings and I thought that this had been passed down. Poor Hannah, she was consistently and constantly requested to “take it down a notch” or ” use her inside voice” – a nice little phrase I had borrowed from the teachers. She was also clumsy which made me think that she possibly had an inner ear problem too.

So I took them for a hearing test. I needed to prove that the last 5 months of shouting at each other was the children and not them resisting my meticulous instructions in all aspect of life. Be seen and not heard. However upon waiting for the hearing test results, it turned out that boy twin was the issue and not Hannah. He failed both his hearing tests. How could I have gotten it so wrong? She was too loud! However, she was the most sensible out of the lot of us. She had figured out that he couldn’t hear too well, so was shouting at him. He was shouting back because he couldn’t hear himself and I was shouting at the both of them for being so damned loud and driving me crazy with their noise!! There were days when my house felt like this picture lol

Be the best that you can be!