Not My Daughter

‘Alice…’ I stared at her in exasperation, and she stared back. A stand-off, and meanwhile the clock was ticking. ‘Fine, I’ll do it today,’ I said, quickly jamming her feet into the pink Velcro trainers. ‘But you do it tomorrow, all right?’

‘It’s hard.’ Her lip wobbled.

‘Take your time, then. There’s no need to rush. I know you can do this, darling.’ I gave her a quick kiss on top of her head and promptly forgot about the whole thing, chalking it up as just one more of those everyday moments with a four-year-old. Until it happened again.

The next day, about to go out to a local farm park, one of her favourites, and she sat on the bottom stair, resolutely shaking her head.

‘I can’t.’

‘Alice…’ I was at a loss. Alice had been able to put on her own shoes for months. Why this regression, this insistence? And did it really matter if I put on her shoes for her?

In the world of mothering, it’s so easy to feel judged. The telling silence, the raised eyebrow in the preschool cloakroom. Oh, Alice isn’t reading yet? You brought in iced party rings for a snack? I try not to participate in or even care about that awful race, but it’s hard not to justify and explain. She knows her letter sounds. It was just once for a treat.

So now, faced with the battle of the shoes, I didn’t know whether I should have given in or fought till she’s put them on. What was the right thing to do? Who could tell me?

I ended up surfing parenting forums online, hoping for some titbit of wisdom, and found on a pages-long thread about how four-year-olds should be able to put on shoes themselves, and if you do it for them, you’re teaching them to be lazy. A child psychologist weighed in: This is a skill most four-year-olds should be able to master. Look at what the underlying issue is.

So the next time, I was ready. When Alice told me she couldn’t do it, I knelt down to her, eye-level, and asked her gently what she was really afraid of.

‘Do you not want to go to preschool, darling?’ She stared at me blankly. ‘Are you worried about something?

She shook her head. ‘I can’t do it.’

‘Let me see you try.’

She glared at me in frustration, and then she began to fumble with her shoe. I couldn’t help but feel she was doing it deliberately; she was really not this clumsy. She couldn’t have been.

I waited, patient smile in place, as Alice continued to ineffectually push her foot into the shoe, her fingers fumbling with the Velcro straps. Then, to my surprise, she let out a groan of frustration and threw the shoe across the room.

‘Alice!’ In my shock, my voice came out in a scolding tone of censure.

‘I can’t do it! I told you I can’t!’ she screamed, and then she half-ran, half-stumbled upstairs and slammed her bedroom door as hard as she could. I stood there for a moment, completely appalled and perplexed. Alice had never behaved like that before, not even as a tantrumming toddler. What was going on?

‘She’s most likely just going through a phase,’ Matt told me that evening, when I relayed the whole experience after Alice was in bed. ‘Remember when she was two, and she insisted on doing everything herself? And I mean everything.’ Matt smiled in memory, but I was not so easily reassured.

‘This felt different, Matt.’

‘How so?’

‘Because it was as if she really couldn’t.’

‘She believed she couldn’t.’

‘It was more than that.’

Matt didn’t look convinced, and I couldn’t explain it any better.

‘Maybe she’s having a bit of a regression,’ he said. ‘Because of starting school. Isn’t that a thing with children?’

‘Yes…’ And so I told myself that’s what it was, that Alice would not be refusing to put on her shoes when she was seven or ten or twelve. How little I knew. How much I wanted to believe.

In August we went on holiday to Cornwall, the same cottage we’d rented for the last few years, starting when I’d been pregnant and we’d dreamed of a future, a family. We spent a lovely week frolicking on the beach, playing in rock pools and building sandcastles. Most of the time Alice didn’t need to wear shoes. Then, the night before we left, Alice had a seizure.

It was the most shocking thing, as if I’d been electrified, every sense put on high alert. I’d come into her room to help her change into her pyjamas, and she was lying on the floor, staring straight ahead, spittle dribbling from her mouth, her whole body jerking.

‘Alice… Alice!’ The note of raw terror in my voice sent Matt sprinting upstairs.

‘What…’