“I don’t need my coat,” small daughter assured me, “I’m not
cold.” It was early in the morning,
there was frost on the ground and she was on her way to school. Of course, this was my cue to launch into
full Mum mode:
“It’s freezing!”
“Look at the thermometer, you can see how cold it is!”
“You’re going to make yourself ill” (this one’s not strictly true as
you can’t catch a cold from being cold but I always like to throw this one in)
“Everyone else will have a coat on” (usually, “everyone” is the reason
for anything happening – “everyone” has got the latest whatever it is,
“everyone” else is going, “everyone will look at me” so it’s often a good as a
last resort)
“Don’t worry about me,” she
said, breezing out of the door, “I don’t feel the cold.”
As I get older, I am slowly learning that there are times that you can
tell someone something till you’re blue in the face and they still won’t
listen. It’s as if you become invisible white
noise in the background. We’ve all been
on both sides of that one, closing our ears when it suits us and doing our best
to relentlessly hammer home the point on other occasions, frustrated with
ourselves and the other person as our words fall on deaf ears.
