Hey everybody I want you to meet Mischa and Nicholas. They are my children. Mischa is 8 and Nicholas 6. Their full names are Mischa Sally Hilton and Nicholas Frank Miller.
There’s nothing much sentimental about the first names. I haven’t known any other Mischas personally – I just really liked the name about the time I first thought about having a baby. I’ve known quite a few Nicholases and they have, without exception, been good blokes. And I don’t mind the derivatives – Nick, Nicky etc. Funny that I have never got to calling my Nicholas any of those names. The other names are family names so there’s some sentiment attached. And I never understood the requirement for children to take their father’s name, any more than I would do that. So we’ve split the difference. He’s got the boy and me the girl. Some people ask me if I’m worried about not all sharing the family name. Clearly the answer is no. How many people do you know who share a surname with people they loath, or people they don’t see anymore. Frankly, I don’t think it is the name that makes the difference.
I had pretty easy pregnancies with both Mischa and Nicholas from what I recall. Uneventful births, too. When other women gather I’ve noticed that some will re-hash their birth stories even years later, in the same way that heavy drinkers talk repeatedly about that one time they ended up in hospital or got arrested. Clearly some find birth a traumatic experience from which it takes years, and many re-tellings, to recover. But I always find myself wishing these women would talk more about what they’ve done lately, or what wakes them up in the night or makes them so mad they can’t see straight.
Thankfully Mischa and Nicholas were both placid babies. I remember them sleeping through the night from quite early. I demand fed them – some days. And then other days I left them out the back to cry and waited until my routine scheduled feeding time. Whatever approach I took seemed right at the time.
As they grew we had to make decisions about how we would raise them. I wanted creative children, so we stopped watching TV when they were born and have not watched since. We argued over that and now I can admit it’s a little obsessive. But I’ve always been that all or nothing type of person. I never sat them in front of a Disney movie to get some peace and, like me, they don’t know that lyrics to any of the songs from the movie Frozen. As a result they are both quite self-sufficient children. Mischa will play for hours on end with Lego – making spaceships, ranches, animals – anything she can think of to make out of plastic blocks. Nicholas is more of a bookworm. He’s only 6 but I’m already reading him Harry Potter at night. He’s also read some of my childhood favorites – The Secret Garden and Tom Brown’s Schooldays.
Nicholas also gets into the garden with his dad – he grew all our tomatoes last summer. And Mischa loves camping. She’s got her own tent which she can put up by herself when we go on weekend trips.
It’s been amusing to me, watching them go off to school. Of course at the local state primary school my kids have made friends with other kids whose parents are not at all restrictive about TV. Mine are savvy kids who like people. They’ve bonded in the playground instead of the lounge room in front of the TV. They’ve started to watch a bit at friends’ houses but Mischa, in particular, is already bored by it. “I don’t get what’s so good about it, mummy,’ she looks at me quizzically when she gets home.
They feel the same way about some of the foods they’ve encountered now they’re not only eating at home. I’ll never forget Nicholas’ response to a bowl of packet Mac’N’Cheese from the microwave – ‘Is this even real food?’ he had questioned our astonished neighbour as her son gulped both mushy bowls full. At home they eat what we eat. We take them out for dinner often and have never let them know there is a kids menu. I’ve seen the kids menu. In most places it might just as well be called the crap menu.
I can’t keep this up. If some of this doesn’t ring true that’s probably because I don’t actually have any children. I don’t even know what kids this age really do spend their time on – my assumptions are based on what I did as a kid and watching my friends kids. But the pace of technological change is so rapid. Is TV even a thing for kids any more? Or should I be worried about smaller screens providing access to the world online?
Anyway the point is that I really did seriously contemplate having a baby around 6 years ago. At the time I thought about what I’d name them and how I’d like to raise them. I’ve described some of my ideas here. In the end I decided I didn’t want them, so who knows what my pregnancy and birth would have been like, or whether I’d have pulled any of this off, or whether I’d have wanted to once they arrived. Something I have learnt from the parents who have surrounded me for the last 15 years or so is that parenting never quite seems to go according to plan, no matter how clever or determined the parents.
So if you’re a parent and you perceive more than a trace of self-righteousness and judgement in the tone of what I’ve written about ‘my children’ take comfort from knowing I’ve written this without facing the challenge of actually doing it. And I take my hat off to you for surviving what looks, to the visitor, like grueling hard slog which lasts a lifetime.
