My Diary of Triplet Fatherhood

I read a little fact that you might not want to hear if you’re also a parent of triplets. In a recent TAMBA survey of twin and triplet parents, they asked what stage of the children’s lives was hardest. While most twin parents said it was the baby years, the majority of triplet parents said it was actually harder when their kids were toddlers. And, I have to say, I can see why.

Those early months with the girls were hard. I spent most of the time in a state of utter exhaustion, trying to function on less sleep than should be humanly possible. But toddlerdom has bought about a new kind of exhaustion. We no longer struggle to meet the exacting day and night feeding/changing/sleeping routine’s demands. In fact, in recent weeks something quite remarkable has happened. The girls have begun to lie in. For the first time in two years, I’ve been able to sleep past 6.30 in the morning.
The only grey lining to that wonderful silver cloud is that we’ve needed that extra sleep. Days alone with the girls have become more exhausting than ever. Not that they’re not fun, mind you. They are… as long as you constantly stay on top of the situation. That means more getting out of the house, more directed play, more channelling of three very energetic personalities. Because it takes only a split-second of inattention for chaos to erupt.

The reason? With the passage of their second birthday, J and I have become familiar with a wonderful, new event: the tantrum.

A common cause is the fact that the girls have become able to disagree with one another recently. Only, because they don’t always understand what the others truly mean when they say something, their arguments are, more often than not, at cross-purposes, meaning that, unless J or I come and settle them quickly, they often end in an explosion of frustration.

For example, Evie might say “sore knee”, referring to a fall she had yesterday. To which Scarlett will reply “no sore knee”, looking at her own uninjured leg. Within moments the house will be shaking to the sound of alternate cries of “Sore knee!” and “No sore knee!”.

As I’m sure you can imagine, the possibilities for such misunderstandings are almost limitless. Maybe Jem will see a dog out of the car window and shout “doggy!” – only, when Jemima looks round it’s gone. “No doggy!” she’ll shout back, outraged at having her hopes raised. And again we’ll have a rally of disagreements that can be hard to settle before someone reaches the tantrum setting on their frustration-o-meter.

Still, it only requires a moment of explanation to settle this kind of dispute (provided you’re not on the motorway, when it can be rather trickier). More difficult , though, is the lawyerly objection. Now we try to operate a policy of having only a small number of rules but making sure we always enforce them without fail, which seems to have worked quite well so far. Perhaps too well. The girls have picked up on the fact that breaking rules is naughty and get quite upset if any of their sisters does so (provided they don’t instead decide to join in, that is). Of course, this can be handy at times. Shouts of “no up the stairs!” have called my attention to the fact that the stairgate wasn’t properly closed on more than one occassion, for example. No, the problem really arises when the girls decide to add to the rules.

“No round and round,” is the most recent one I can recall; Scarlett getting apoplectic with fury that Jemima wanted to spin on the spot. On a bad day (read: when they’re tired), it can be almost impossble to get anything done as I explain, again and again, using my ‘reasonable voice’, that “it’s ok for Jemima to turn around and around/sit on Daddy’s chair/put her trousers on her head – it doesn’t affect you, just let her be”.

Poor things. I can often see why they’re objecting. They’re just getting real rules confused with things that are just silly or no one really minds about. It’s not as if they’re being naughty. They’re being too good, if anything; just trying to be like Mummy and Daddy, enforcing the rules.

In fact, helping like this is another common bone of contention. How do three little girls all help carry a carrier bag back from the shops when it only has two handles, for example (answer: tie another handle in the bottom… and next time divide the shopping betwen more bags). Or what do you do when you’re in a hurry to get out of the house but they each want to help clean the table after breakfast, clean the floor, put everything away in the kitchen, choose hairclips, brush hair, change nappies, choose clothes, get dressed, put shoes on, bring in the post that’s come, put whatever toy they still have in their hands back in what they consider the right place, put the key in the door, open the door, close the door, lock the door again, carry Daddy’s bag to the car… It takes a long enough time to rush though those things alone; with three helpers it can take forever.

But it’s hard to know what to do. Only one of them can reasonable help with any one job, so I can either direct them all to different jobs which takes so much attention there’s no opportunity for me to do things myself, and besides, there’s nearly always one job they all want to do, or I don’t let them help, which means we get through everything quickly but there’s likely to be tears along the way, or I try to enforce taking turns, which they understand well enough but don’t always have the patience for (and woe betide me if I get the order wrong). Whatever we do, I have chaos on my hands once more… and risk tantrums.

What’s more, nowadays, they all want to be so independent. When in the house, being carried has almost become a punishment. They climb upstairs to bed and down in the morning, walk themselves to whichever room we’re doing our next activity in, walk to the car, carry their own teddy bears, get up and down from chairs themselves. They really want to be able to brush their own teeth and put in their own hairclips. Cries of “no helping”, “Evie do it” and “No carry you” are prompted by almost every attempt to hurry, direct or help, to which J and I have our own ritual responses, again in our best ‘reasonable voices’: things like “if you don’t come up the stairs right away, I will have to carry you”, “I’m sorry but you can’t hold the toothpaste because you just ate another mouthful when you said you wouldn’t” and “I know you want to put your own top on but your head is stuck in the arm hole now, just let Daddy get you out- you can help me do it”. Our own attempts at keeping control without adding tension to the situation.
And, to be fair, while it can be tiring to keep resolving disputes while keeping one eye on the tantrum gauge, I love the fact that we can resolve so many things through talking nowadays. It wasn’t long ago that I was posting about how the girls knew more animal noises than real words and now they can explain why things are upsetting them (however irrational they might seem to us grownups) and we can suggest solutions.

And there’s anything unnatural about all these tantrums and arguments. It’s just that my girls are able to express the how difficult understanding and relating to world is for the first time. No parent can expect their kids to suddenly be as civilised, patient and restrained as an adult. They need to learn these things.

At first, I used to find myself being drawn into the heat of the moment, chaos multiplying as I tried to stamp out one conflict after another, all the while the girls frustration feeing off my own. It’s upsetting to hear my little girls argue, stressful to see them upset. I hadn’t developed the discipline to stay aloof when I was finding the situation so stressful. But being calm and in-control rubs off on the girls just as much as becoming frustrated used to. I try to end conflicts by explaining misunderstandings, if possible, or by suggesting solutions that allow everyone to stay happy, or providing a distraction, or, if needs be, by taking charge and preventing things from escalating too much. and if a tantrum happens, it happens and I let it run its course.
Of course, that rather makes it sound like I never get it wrong and end up provoking a tantrum that could have been avoided or at least helping things escalate towards one, which is patently not the case. Nor do I have some amazing ability to prevent the conflicts that naturally arise as three little minds grow, learn and begin trying to assert themselves on the world and people around them. But I have learnt to take a deep breath, take that vital moment to size up what’s going on and think what creative solutions there might be, then appearing on the surface at least to be a font of calm and control, to try to channel things into a better way of being.

At the risk of sounding hackneyed, parenthood is a road we and our kids walk together. They learn about living, we learn how best to help them as they struggle along. Even as we learn to deal with their needs, they’re moving onto something else. Our greatest success is to make ourselves unnecessary.

I wrote this post in August but never got round to finishing it until today. As they do, things have changed since then. Not that we no longer see tantrums. Instead, the provocations they’ve changed a little. Currently it’s all about testing boundaries. Ah, well. Can’t say those litttle girls don’t keep us on our toes…