The following is an excerpt from the diary I kept while working as an au pair in Bavaria in 2000/01. As I read it, it struck me that it echos the way I occasionally feel with my own children now.
L., the child I was looking after was seven then, the age of my eldest child now.
This evening I totally freaked out with L. All day he had been irritating me. I'm still not sure if he was being exceptionally bad or if I was just being particularly easily annoyed. As I was putting him to bed, I broke down in tears caused partly by him, by the frustration of work and the fact that I couldn't call up Laura. It hit me this evening how she and I used to vent our emotions at each other over a beer or a few glasses of red wine at 'El Catalan'. I couldn't hold in any more all the feelings that I had bottled up since she died - sadness and loss, homesickness after returning from Ireland, frustration from the au pair job and uncertainty about the future.
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| An old-fashioned selfie |
I remember that evening so well, although it is fifteen years ago now. When I lose my temper with my own children, there is always that thought at the back of my mind - was it their behaviour or my frame of mind today that made me snap?
