The Lost Art of Keeping Time

Though this here Mummy rarely knows what day it is, I do know, almost to the minute what time it is at any given moment during the day. But unfortunately this is not a talent I have passed on to my son, whose internal clock is very definitely not of the Mad Hatter variety.
This is a child who when told that we need to leave the house in five minutes will be found fighting crime on the landing in a vest and socks fifteen minutes later.  Bedtime has become a variable concept to him as he decides that there is an emergency comic that must be illustrated at ten o’clock at night. Morning a nightmarish drama of trying to tickle him out of bed.

Yes Darlings the day has come when all sense of both routine and ritual have gone of the window at Chez Brocante because my scrumptious little Finster will not be hurried or cajoled. He fails to understand the concept of time. Cannot see why it matters and is sending his poor Mother halfway to hell in a handcart, as she screeches at the top of her voice, or bends down to her not so little lamb and tries to make him understand why it is very important that he washes his mucky little face RIGHT NOW!

I am not a patient woman. Heck no: I am more your common or garden shrieking fishwife when it comes to getting Finn out of the house in the morning. So order must be restored before I lose my marbles. His lackadaisical attitude to timekeeping is rather upsetting the harmony of our little home. Part of the problem I think is that there is a lack of time telling going on these days. Though I frequently ask him to read the time on the clock on the mantle-piece, he studies the clock and declares it is fifty minutes to eight. In fact the only time he ever reads the time off his own bat is when he switches his iPad on and reads it in digital form. Telling the time properly it seems,is a lost art and one he seems deeply unwilling to learn in case understanding has far reaching consequences in terms of getting a move on!

But no more! This vintage housewife is about to take decisive action and buy that boy a watch he won’t lose. A watch I will insist he straps to his wrist daily if only so that he begins to understand that time matters. That our days are less fraught when we allow the clock to gently dictate what we do next. And that a smiley Mummy is much nicer than one all too frequently to be found pulling her hair out at the bottom of the stairs. The time is now to park him in front of the laptop, guide him to The Watch Hut and insist he chooses a watch he considers cool (though here we are very likely to suffer a difference in opinion!), before he dives head long in teenagehood and turns into the kind of shuffling monster who cannot tell breakfast from dinnertime.

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