School holiday blues

I took the kids to the museum today. It was raining and there was no way I was going into the underground carpark so we parked a moderate distance away and walked through the rain. The queue at the ticket stall, although small, seemed to take hours and hours and Daniel kept asking me why we weren’t going in and letting me and everyone else within a 50m radius know that he was busting. Finally we got in and we went straight to the toilets.

Daniel has problems with public toilets. Something about them frightens him: the hand-dryers, the flushing noise, lights turning off unexpectedly…. He was fine in this one until the toilet flushed all by itself. It had one of those sensors and it flushed before he had a chance to go and he was so terrified that he refused to go after that. So we went in search of the children’s exhibits, stopping at two more toilets on the way, both of which were problematic for him. Being school holidays it was packed so after a bit of a wander, a few puzzles and some stories, we went home early. Once we reached the the car I pulled out the sandwiches I had packed. Elizabeth devoured hers but Daniel refused his. “Want something else,” he said. Elizabeth fell asleep in the car on the way home only to wake up the minute we pulled into the driveway. Daniel still hasn’t eaten his lunch, instead opting to starve himself rather than let my home-made sandwiches enter his mouth.  If I told him I’d bought the sandwiches at the supermarket, he’d have scoffed them down I’m sure. Meanwhile Elizabeth has supplemented her sandwiches with some garden dirt. School holidays are tough.