This week my mom skills was put to the test. I would like my children to be open-minded non-scared little humans – also when it comes to their interactions with animals. ALL kind of animals. But how do you teach your child to be open and not afraid of animals – when you yourself gets freaked out by even the smallest of insects?
The other morning there was a gigantic spider with hairy legs and a big fat body sitting on our bedroom wall. Sticking to my mantra about teaching the kids to like all animals, I off course had to show it to the toddler. However, when he asked me to grab it and give it to him, I quickly found some other interesting things for him to see. (Spider later left the wall and are now still hiding in either the closet under my clothes or in baby’s bed!)
Later the same day, while the toddler was taking a nap, I was on the couch breastfeeding when a mouse choose to enter the house through the open front door. Twice! First time he walked back out, but second time he got more adventurous. So I jumped, baby hanging on tit, at him and luckily he got scared and ran in the right direction, meaning out of the door, instead of venturing further into the house. It’s not that I am really freaked out by mice. Its only that the last time we had one to visit us, he chose to hang around for quite some time, leaving little black presents all over the living room floor … which is particularly not nice when you have kids playing there. That one saw a sad end, when we discovered him one night around 23 and the hunt began. A good time past midnight we gave up, thinking he must had disappeared through a magic hole – until we realized he had crawled under the carpet where he had gotten his head squashed while we rearranged the couch to chase him.
On my “I do not like you a lot”-list of animals are dogs. I mean … don’t even get me started on the subject of dogs. Yes, yes – I know: loyal companions, man’s best friend, la di da, but when I am taking my kids for a walk in the forest and a whole posse of dogs comes running towards us, my heart beats on triple speed and I start making strategies on how to call on phone for help, while throwing rocks at the dogs, fighting them of us with sticks when they start biting all the same time as I protect my two children by putting myself between them and what must surely be a rabies-infected gang of wild dogs. (In all fairness, I have to point out that it turned out to be an extremely well-behaved gang of dogs, out for a walk with their dog sitter, who, the moment she saw I was there with little kids, called them all back.)
To finish of the week, a new animal made it to my “why do you have to exist”-list. Normally I am not freaked out by birds. Normally. But after a big black and white bird tried to poke out the eye of my bonus son, 9 years old , (after first having tried to attack him several times on the top of his head), leaving him with a big bruise and scrape right under the eye, that species are no longer to be trusted!
So no, animals are not my friends. I do try to love them all – but it’s not working. The mom-test for at least the next 10 years is then: pretend to love the damn things, no matter what shape and size.
Oh what a joy!