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How to deal with a control freak

18th July 2007 by Helena 3 Comments  

Leo and OliviaAt her christening when Olivia was only a few weeks old Mrs Miller, a friend of ours and wife to Olivia’s godfather, took her in her arms.

“This child is a control freak,” she said.

Mrs Miller at the time was running Goldman Sachs legal division globally. She is now running the legal team for the London Olympics. This is a woman who knows a control freak when she sees one.

Olivia as a baby was by far the most difficult of all my children. She would never go to sleep. You could try the ten-minute rule a thousand times but she’d still be awake, demanding attention, even at three months old. Forget the old milk bottle in the cot trick that has worked with the others. She hasn’t touched milk since she stopped breastfeeding.

She was never a child you could distract from a tantrum with some reference to an imaginary sheep or tractor. Once onto something she has always been single-minded and scarily determinded. I can’t understand where she gets it from.

Her character has not mellowed with age. But my stepson Hugo has finally understood how to deal with her.

“I’ve worked it out,” he announced yesterday. “You just agree with everything she says and she’s fine.”

I am on a train with the fashion icon (actually he looks fine but only because I dressed him while he was still asleep. His preferred outfit was brown cords and of course skiiing socks) and Bea. We are going to stay with some friends in the Savoie until Friday.
Although the thought of four hours on the train with two small and very tired children is hellish, I am comforted by the thought of Olivia organising everyone at home. I hope she gets them to do the washing.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007


Filed Under: Children, blog --> Tagged With: control, freak

3 thoughts on How to deal with a control freak

  • Jonathan Miller says:
    18th July 2007 at 11:08 am

    Well of course Leo is exactly correct and this is also true of the Miller fille. Mrs M was able to recognise the symptoms of control freakery in Olivia because of course thess were very familiar from Alysen. And it remains true 25 years later that Alysen is always agreeable provided you agree exactly with what she says. This will also be true of Olivia so you better get used to it.

    -Godfather

  • helena says:
    18th July 2007 at 2:51 pm

    I have resigned myself to this, finally, after eight years of fighting….
    Hx

  • Jonathan Miller says:
    20th July 2007 at 8:27 am

    She merely has to find an accommodating husband…

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor in chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. Helena is working on a thriller called Thin Ice that will be published in 2021 as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

Her latest non-fiction work Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles came out in hardback in 2016 and in paperback in April 2018.

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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