“Why would you lie to your child?”

From my book Needs Adult Supervision📚 written in 2020 🦠

Hello, today’s post was originally written in 2020. It’s in my book Needs Adult Supervision: Lessons in Growing Up. I hope you like it. But most of all I hope you have a gentle Christmas and you feel loved and supported. I’m on leave for the next week. See you soon. Emily x

“Why would you lie to your child?”

I’m not sure when Santa discourse became so personal but at some point it did. I’m not sure I ever thought I’d write the words ‘Santa discourse’ but here we are.

For the eight years I’ve been a parent I’ve followed the discussions on Facebook and Instagram on the rights and wrongs of the Santa story. Some people feel very strongly about Santa. Very. Very strongly.

Santa, people say, is a stranger. A strange man. He breaks into your house while you’re sleeping. You have to sit on his lap. He’s a pervert. Parents are not just lying to their kids. They’re putting them at risk. They are teaching them consent doesn’t matter. They’re traumatising their children for life. And then there is the privilege of it – what about the kids who get nothing from Santa?

Photo by Mike Arney

In the other camp – Santa, people say, is magic. If you deny your child Santa their entire childhood will be colourless and grey. They’ll never know joy. You’re not just ruining it for your child either, but all other children. The whole world.It’s woke, PC culture gone mad. Why should children miss out because their parents overthink everything?

The Santa war continues. We parent. Are we parenting at each other? Are we just parenting?

I think about what I can write, on this topic of Santa. I turn on my laptop. I stare at the blank page.

Then my son’s temperature spikes. My husband comes into our room. He’s pale. “I think he’s got it”.

It feels as if we have tiptoed through this year. Eddie’s diabetes has felt like a creature haunting the halls of our home. If we do everything right, if we creep gently – don’t wake it – we might get out alive. We scrub our hands raw. Have separate hand wash for each of us.

He developed a tiny graze from washing too much. It made his blood glucose levels soar and it took us so long to realise it was the graze. So small, we would never have noticed it before.

Before. It’s been a year but we sometimes can’t remember what it was like before and maybe that’s a good thing.

In January, I was peering through the red clouds and thinking about my sister in Australia. I tried not to picture her with her babies, the smoke of the fires everywhere, the heat.

Then my husband said he’d heard about a virus in China. We try to tame the beast of illness in our different ways. His is research. He reads research. Looks at diet. And he monitors what is around – measles, flu, norovirus. “I’m worried about this,'' he said.

Our youngest started school the week before. We decided to pull him and his brother out the following week. Others with immune compromised children were doing the same. A few weeks later, the country followed suit.

I worked and parented the best that I could like everyone else. I developed a lump inside me. I had three days in a row where I was in unbearable pain. The following week I felt for the lump and it felt bigger. I worked and parented.

I was in pain a lot. After a few months I saw a doctor. Then a specialist.

Lockdown lifted. Our youngest began school again. He was nervous – asked me if I would be there for pick up. Promise? He slept in our bed and began worrying about dying.

I was booked in for a full hysterectomy. I didn’t want to be away from my children. I fell asleep before the anaesthetist started counting.

I tried to work in a tramadol haze. Financially we were struggling with the cost of the surgery and the loss of income from Covid 19. All of my events had been cancelled.

I worked. I parented. I tried to rest.

We tiptoed and the beast was kept at bay.

I booked events for as soon as I could after the surgery to claw back some money.

There were bugs – but we avoided hospital.

Until now. The youngest has been to after hours twice in three days. We were doing everything we could to keep him away from Eddie.

Last week, he was asleep on my lap and for a second he looked just like his brother did one year ago.

And I was just back there. Back with Eddie in emergency. Rushing after him and the doctors and nurses. Please, let him live.

This is how it started. With a tummy bug. I can feel my blood inside my veins. Not again.

Diabetic ketoacidosis is hard to explain simply. Your blood becomes acidic because you have high levels of ketones in your blood…because your body is not producing insulin.

DKA happens when your blood sugar levels are too high and your insulin levels are too low. We all need insulin to use the glucose in the blood. In DKA, glucose can’t get into the cells, so it just builds up. Then your blood sugar levels rocket up. Then the body starts breaking down fat into fuel – that’s why our children lose weight so rapidly. That fuel is the ketones. Too many ketones and your blood boils with acidity.

It leads to coma, death – if you don’t see it and treat it straight away.

We took him to hospital and he was tested. He’s not type one.

We breathe again. We tiptoe.

Then he got it. And yesterday we were on 10 minute checks trying to manage his levels as he vomited up the juice boxes we needed to deliver sugar into him.

We got our youngest to nanas. Prepared to call the ward. Then his levels slowly begin to increase. We have outrun the creature for now.

*

I stroke his hair. “I’m tired” he says.

I tell him to sleep. He asks me to sing to him.

He blinks slowly and falls into rest as I mumble – “A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices. For yonder breaks a new and glorious morning”.

Please. Give me Christmas. Give me Santa and magic. Give us a co-parent in him. Give me a symbol of kindness and goodwill and hope. Give me someone who represents the best in all of us. Give me a jolly old man who won’t call me a cunt online. Give me someone to turn to who exists beyond the exhausted day-to-day.

Give me the embodiment of Christmas. I want to invite it into our homes. Want to say this home welcomes those who do all they can, with the energy they have, to give what they can, when they can.

Santa the myth is one I need this year. I want to believe. I’ve tired of “real”. I’m quite happy for someone else to take the credit, to help me out.

My youngest said he was told Santa isn’t real. “But I know he is!” he said.

“How do you know?”

“Well, he said that your mum is Santa but I know it’s not you because you couldn’t go to every house because you look after me and Eddie”.

That’s why I need Santa, I said. He helps me and your dad. Especially when we are tired.

The children ask Santa for gifts, not us, knowing the sleigh can only fit one present each. They know all children are good. Nobody is bad. They’re not greedy.

Santa is at the mall. He’s one of many – because Santa is a network of people who help each other. I test Eddie’s levels before he rushes into the arms of someone who spends their December bringing joy to kids who might really need some.

“Kids need to know they can trust their parents” the comments say.

As he sleeps, I monitor his fever. I know he trusts me. He trusts me to do anything I can to smooth the road he has to take but there’s only so much I can do when life is like this. I need another shovel. I need a bit of magic to make it all work. . A thrill of hope…for a weary world? Please.

Some of us just need to believe this year. We need it.