Stress Is As Stress Does

or A Theory On Life, Stress, Children and Robots…
 
One of Two had a sleepover the other night. TPCKAM doesn’t approve of mid-week, school night sleepovers because of their disruptive element, but I like to work to the principle that as long as it’s at someone else’s house, and they’re mad enough to make the offer, they can take the disruption.
 
Two of Two instantly changes personality when his sister is off out for the night. You can tell he loves the chance to get his parents to himself. He comes home and kind of snuggles down into the entire house, knowing that his sister isn’t going to be around to bug him and that he’s not going to have to perform his own bugging duties for another twenty-four hours. One of Two, however, hates it when her brother is on a sleepover and she’s not. Like she’s offended at having to spend time with her dull old parents by herself.
 
The minute she comes home and the wee man’s not there, she starts mooching around saying, ‘Why can’t I have a sleepover with someone? How come he has all the sleepovers. I never have a sleepover with anyone.’ Give it an hour or two, and she’ll be leaning out the window shouting at passers-by, ‘Excuse me! Can I come to yours for the night, my parents are really boring?’ One of Two would rather spend the night with a tribe of feral goatherders in sub-zero temperatures in a yurt on the Russian steppe under a cloud of chemical waste, than actually spend time alone with her parents. Sleepovers are her holy grail, and she will rarely let an occasion pass without inviting herself to someone’s house. The phrase, ‘you have to wait to be invited,’ is as alien to her as ‘do your homework early and get it out of the way.’
 
We like to think of this as a sign of how secure she is at home…
 
At the end of school on Tuesday, prior to One of Two heading off for the sleepover, I was discussing with the other mum the small print of the contract – more particularly, who would provide her snack for the next day. I was saying I’d do it, the other mum said, no bother, I’ll make her a ham sandwich. One of Two hates ham sandwiches. On those mornings when I’m foraging painfully round the kitchen trying to find something, anything, to put in their snack boxes – where’s your show about that Ray Mears? – should the words ‘ham sandwich’ pass my lips, the pair of them will immediately start hyperventilating and will allow their heads to pitch forward into their Cookie Crisp. So, the words, ‘One of Two doesn’t like ham sandwiches’ were on the very tip of my tongue, they were there poised to tumble out over the precipice, when One of Two herself, on hearing mention of a ham sandwich started leaping up and down in celebration, punching the air, crying, ‘Yes! Yes! A ham sandwich! I am emancipated and have been re-born, my path that has been dull is now aglow, as was the road to Damascus for the blessed St. Paul. At last I am free from the tyranny of Dad making my snack, even if only for one day! Rejoice! Rejoice!’
 
‘That’s great,’ I said to the mum, ‘she loves ham.’
 
The pace of life is different with one kid. Slower. Suddenly there’s not just less stress, there’s no stress. No arguments over the tv or the computer. Two of Two can do his homework without her butting in and telling him the answers, because it’s easier than doing her own homework. There are none of those ridiculous fights which begin, ‘It’s mine!’ and descend quickly into complete anarchy. Suddenly you walk around your house, aware that there is still an underage presence, just not as you know it.. One which is accompanied by choirs of angels singing soothing songs of tranquillity and calm.
 
Yesterday morning we awoke to the peaceful sounds of Two of Two playing himself at chess. I pottered around making one packed lunch, doing a few chores, enjoying the pre-school peace. Think about it…’pre-school peace’. How often can you say that without choking on your muesli? Then, for some reason, TPCKAM arrived downstairs and within thirty seconds the two of them were having a Nescafé argument. Hot, instant and not very satisfying.
 
It was a work of genius on the part of TPCKAM, plucking an argument out of thin air. Like Shane Warne conjuring up a screaming leg-break on a dead wicket, Thierry Henry producing a wonder strike with his back to the goal in a crowded penalty area, or Peyton Manning finding Marvin Harrison with an inch perfect pass through a swarm of cornerbacks while being chased to the sidelines by five 350lb behemoths, it was a sublime act of brilliance, creating anger and noise when before there had been calm. Clearly she’s been working for the British government too long.
 
However, unlike the mornings when there are two children at the breakfast table, the white squall quickly passed, and the rest of the pre-school period snuck quietly into the morning rain.
 
Sadly, of course, this is just an illustration of how everything is relative. Having one child around isn’t stress-free, not when you only ever have one child. For a while I used to look at stressed-parents-of-one and think, get a grip, for God’s sake. One kid? How hard is that, for crying out loud? Get a second, my stressed amigo, and then you’ll find out how awful it can be… And then I’d go off and be stressed with two.
 
But of course, everyone with three, four, five, six or more kids, would read my weekly stress-analysis and think the same thing. Get a life! Or more to the point, get some more kids, then you’ll know how hard it is. It’s all relative.
 
I have this theory. We were all created by robots. The robots programmed into everyone different levels of various emotions. So, for example, for me they put: Happiness 9.8/10, Gloominess 0.1/10, Stress w/o Kids 0/10, Stress w Kids 8.4/10 etc. We then just go along through our lives, applying those levels to each situation. So, with your constant levels of stress, if  you’re the type who gets stressed by kids, one kid will do it, and you won’t be that much more stressed even if you had another five. Your stress levels are what they are. If you’re not stressed by one, then more than likely you wouldn’t be stressed by having another two.
 
Being less stressed when one of your kids is away for the night, doesn’t really change the tenet, as you know that if you had just the one long term, it’d pretty quickly become stressful again.
 
It’s not a hard and fast psychological statement – particularly the bit about robots – and I’m not calling it Lindsay’s Law of Stress and looking for a mention in the New England Journal of Medicine, but I think it’s fairly accurate. If you have your doubts, then why not have another couple of children to test out the theory?
 
We got home last night after school clubs, the house back to its normal quotient of two kids. One of Two got out of the car and hid at the back of the garage. When her brother got out she jumped up and scared him. He burst into tears. She ran up stairs. He ran after her, they screamed at each other for a short burst, and then Two of Two concluded the argument in his usual manner by throwing a hard plastic toy at her and gubbing her in the face. One of Two burst into tears.
 
It had taken forty-three seconds from the time we arrived home...