There was an old woman who lived in a shoe....

It's been almost four weeks of help-less in Hong Kong and I reflect on progress so far. With apologies to Eric Carle and his Very Hungry Caterpillar;

On Monday my four year ironed a lone football sock. The synthetic sock disintegrated into a green and black mess which stuck to the ironing board and wrote off the iron.

On Tuesday my four year old found the chocolate cake I had baked cooling in the kitchen. He took two large bites out of each half and left the rest for us.

On Wednesday my four year old watered the plants in the yard. He also watered his sister, the windows and the dry washing.

On Thursday my four year old found scissors in my desk drawer. He used them to cut holes in the mattress protector on the guest bed.

On Friday after getting repeatedly lost in a part of town I do not know, I put my head in my hands and may have been heard to mutter, “Sometimes I hate Hong Kong.”

“Sometimes I hate you.” said my four year old.

On Saturday my four year old cut the plug of my mobile charger from its wire. Fortunately it was not plugged in at the time. That would have given him a shock.

On Sunday my four year old went missing at rugby practice. My husband found him eventually in a hole 2 metres deep and part of a disused army assault course at the edge of the rugby field. He was yelling for help and had taken off his socks and shoes to throw up in the air in hope of someone noticing.

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I am no expert but you don’t need to be a child psychologist to work out that my youngest boy is crying out for attention. This my sunniest boy, charming, confident and funny is hurting inside and he’s angry. I assume it’s with me. Mother’s always do.

One day, on his return from nursery he seems unusually upset. I ask what’s eating him and after smouldering in a corner for some minutes he suddenly throws up his hands and says with passion, “I just don’t know what it’s all about!” I have put him into the bilingual class (Mandarin/English) of his pre-school assuming this was the best thing I could do to help him integrate into his new life here. As far as I understood they were learning to count in Mandarin, sing the odd song and learn some greetings. Now I feel like a horrid pushy mother who not only expects her four year old to move seamlessly from London to Hong Kong but also wants him to speak fluent Mandarin by the time he’s five.

We seem to be locked in a downward spiral. Searching for a way to break the cycle, to help him restore faith in his ability to do right, I praise him for getting his shoes on and in that moment he pinches his younger sister in the face, wrenches her beloved muslin from her grip and runs off. I am consumed with guilt that it is all my fault and that he just doesn’t want to be here.

I ask him if he likes Hong Kong and he says he misses his bed. He misses the trampoline and he misses Tom and Josh and Nick.

At home my four year old and I would snuggle down together most afternoons for a nap after lunch. Unlike his siblings, all elbows, knees and heels, he would merge his soft little body into mine and thus we would fall asleep, I for an hour, he for two. I awake to sound of his snoring, spread out like a sunbathing bear and tip-toe downstairs. On waking his first request is to go on the trampoline.

In the London garden we had a huge trampoline dug in at ground level. In no danger of falling off, my littlest boy would crawl down the garden as a baby and would bounce on his knees long before he could either stand or walk. As he grew up he would bounce out his frustrations with the world, enjoying the space he had to himself before the older boys got home from school. Then he would bounce with his brothers and the neighbourhood kids.

In my new role as Mrs Mop, our shared afternoon nap has become a thing of the past. He will still sleep after lunch, when I’m not dragging him and his sister into the car to collect the older boys from their after school activities, that is. When we get home we stumble in, tired, hungry and fractious. There is homework to be done and the older boys move centre stage and voice their needs while the younger two are side-lined for a while.

To keep some sort of order at home in this help-less time I rely ever more on the electronic babysitters of TV and computer. Homework begins to suffer. I don’t have as much time for any of them as I would like. Everyone is compromised. I feel like the old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children she didn’t know what to do.

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And yet, I must do something for my unhappy four year old. He doesn’t need a domestic goddess, he needs his Mummy. Today after lunch I snuggle down with him to sleep and stroke his arm as he snuffles gently beside me. Water is his thing and since we arrived in Hong Kong he has thrown off his armbands and jumped in to show me he can swim. After an initial sharp intake of breath I see he really can and I rejoice with him.

It is half-term. We go to the beach and he swims in the sea. I leave the ironing undone and we spend a morning at the pool. We take sandwiches on the Star Ferry and go to a museum. The next day we visit my New Friend. She is musical and her three girls all play instruments. My four year old discovers a small cello, sits himself down and plays and plays to his heart’s content. The next day we have friends of his over to play. Seeing that his Mummy is building a tower that others are enjoying he kicks it down in a rage and the other children sidle off with their mothers. We go down to the pool and I watch my little fish dive down angry and rise up smiling.

This week at rugby my little boy found a tiny snake (dead) and put it in his collecting pot. He showed the other boys and both his street cred and his self-esteem rocketed sky high. And this afternoon, he put his head against my thigh and his arm around my legs and said, “I love you Mummy.”