22 Things That I Have Learned About Parenting

Or how I have, so far, managed to raise two children to adulthood and one to his GSCE's without losing either them or my mind.

Today as I write this my middle child, Max, turns 21. I would love to say that I don’t feel old enough to have a 21 year year old, but the reality is that not only do I DEFINITELY feel old enough (retinol and fillers do their best, tbf) but I also already have a 22 year old so I am not new to this game. I have been considering, all morning, this state of affairs - my third child, Leo, is now 15 and in his GCSE year - and realising that soon, they will ALL have left home and be in charge of their own destiny. In charge of their own food preparation, clean pants, car insurance, bed making, loo roll buying, mobile phone bills, house key care - I live in eternal hope that they might even, one day, have their own PayPal, Netflix and Amazon accounts, although Ella left home for University four years ago and still hasn’t ever managed to log in (nor pay) in her own name. Sigh.

Without wanting to be a birth story bore, Max’s day of arrival was memorable. We were buying a new house which had been quite a long winded and stressful process (times ten fold when you’re heavily pregnant, the baby is lying on your bladder and you can’t even have a wee without lying horizontally in a bath) and, coincidentally, the day of exchange was the day that I was booked in for a c section. I will never forget being wheeled into the operating theatre as Nigel (our solicitor and Joe’s aunts neighbour) was calling Joe on the phone to say that he had found a last minute issue with the lean to planning permission that he’d missed and he thought we should delay and do it the following week. I was shouting ‘JUST FUCKING EXCHANGE!’ just as they put the cannula in. Which we did, obvs; poor Nigel was too terrified not to and actively avoided me from that day forward whenever he spotted me in the aisles of Waitrose Caversham.

Small, blonde and quite hard work.

Max brought our child total to two and we decided that that would be it. Our work here was done. Two was a good number. Good for car buying (no big one needed), good for holidays (you can fit four in one Hotel room, unless you are in France), perfect for a three bedroomed house and a nice even number for tables and sofas. However, in 2008 my Dad died unexpectedly and as I stood in front of the congregation with my sister and brother to give the eulogy, I realised that I wanted my two children to have the same sort of sibling support that I had had. So after going to my Doctor to check that I was okay to have a third c section (my body didn’t work properly; it wasn’t that I thought I was a Kardashian or a Beckham, just to be clear) we had Leo. Which made us a family of five, bringing us much joy although making it much more expensive to go on holiday.

Parenting children is a choice but one that I am forever grateful that I have been able to make. I am always very hesitate to talk about my children too much on my social channels, more than aware that not only could it be triggering for those who find it hard or impossible to conceive, but also that many people choose not to have them and don’t really want to hear about mine. Which I totally understand. Why would they? I also never complain about them (unless it’s for comedic purposes, obvs). Again, it’s a privilege that is denied to many and I never forget that.

Parenting is also, at the risk of sounding quite wanky, a journey. A long one. SO SO long. Endlessly long, sometimes. Like when your child has gastric flu on a flight from Malaga to Gatwick and simultaneously vomits and has diarrhoea just as you are hitting the tarmac. Or when you have to go to your neighbours house to tell them that your son has accidentally thrown your dogs poo at their bathroom window whilst flicking it with a spade and it’s stuck there. Or when your one year old baby escapes from his holiday cot and is caught running with intent towards the pool edge by a German guest whilst you are reading your book on the sun lounger. Or when you are called by the school to say that your son has chucked a glue stick at his friend in the car park, missed the target and dented a teachers car. Yes, that kind of long.

Tall, tattooed and really very good company indeed.

Anyway, Max’s birthday has spurred me on to think about what I have learned over my 22 years of parenting to date. So with a lot of tongue (very firmly) in cheek, here are my 22 top tips from my own personal motherhood experience.

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1. Sign up for an NCT class, but don’t be surprised when your partner refuses to return after only one session after he’s asked to put an elasticated band around his waist so that he can simulate being a pelvic floor in front of a class of 12.

2. Sadly, you will not stay friends with anyone from your NCT class as you will soon discover that you have absolutely nothing in common with them bar being pregnant and not knowing what you’re doing. Ditto: 99% of the playground when your child starts school.

3. But you will eventually find some parent friends that you DO have something in common with. That something is likely to be wine on a Friday afternoon whilst your children are playing.

4. You will drink significantly more wine, smoke more cigarettes and eat far more crisps when your children are small, yet be miraculously slimmer than at any other time in your life due to the fact you are constantly running around and up and down the bloody stairs and only sit down on a Friday afternoon.

5. For your first child, you will spend thousands of pounds on expensive baby equipment essentials in John Lewis, 75% of which you will not use. For subsequent children, you will ditch it all on to Facebook Marketplace and head straight to IKEA to buy the ANTILOP high chair because it’s easy to clean and only £12.

6. There is no shame in handing a screaming buggy bound child a bag of Quavers instead of carrot sticks in Waitrose, whatever the age. Also see: chocolate buttons, Pom Bears. Side note: if you are hanging the shopping basket across the buggy handles, be careful not to overload and then walk off to grab some tomatoes, else you’ll return to find your child lying backwards on the supermarket floor.

7. You can puree as many vegetables as you like, fill ice cube trays with mashed carrot, watch their salt and sugar content obsessively and stuff them full of broccoli when they’re small, but by the time they start school they’ll be asking for McDonalds Happy Meals, plastic wrapped chocolate crepes and refusing to eat anything that doesn’t come from the freezer in breadcrumbs.

8. Taking children to a nice restaurant when they are too young to appreciate it is like going to the cash point, taking out all of your money and feeding the notes to a goat. Plus, it’s no fun for anyone (least of all the other diners) and is equivalent to an endurance test.

9. Your child will still grow up to be a creative adult even if you refuse point blank to allow finger painting, Playdoh or Hama beads into your house because you don’t want a) the mess or b) the hassle. Not even with a plastic tablecloth. Nope.

10. When you go to school parents evenings, never, ever stay longer than your allotted five minutes. There are always people impatiently waiting behind who will now be late for their allocated time slot and they’ll be massively slagging you off. Next time, it could be you.

11. And on that note, NO ONE is as interested in talking or hearing about your children as you are. Nobody. Ever. Trust me on this one.

12. Do not trust your children when they swear ON THEIR OWN LIVES that if you get a dog, they will walk it religiously every day. Resign yourself to being the only person who a) ever walks him, b) feeds him or c) picks up the poo from the garden in rain or shine.

13. Your children will never, ever learn to load the dishwasher. They will always, always leave their plates and cups abandoned on the worktop above. Ditto emptying it and ditto removing food remains from the plate.

14. No child will ever hang a wet towel anywhere but the floor, even when they are told that wet towels breed spiders to try and put the fear of God into them. They will also have the outstanding ability to use enough towels to dry an Olympic swimming team in one day ALONE.

15. Every day, for their entire educational career, you will ask them ‘how was school, did anything exciting happen?’ on their return through the door and every day, they will answer ‘fine, no’ and head for the cupboards and fridge.

16. Every day, they will return home from school, open the cupboards and fridge and say ‘why is there nothing to eat, when are you going to the supermarket?’, despite being confronted with enough food to feed a small country as you’ve just been to the supermarket.

17. Do not trust your child to eat school dinners without keeping track of their purchases on the Class Charts Report, else you may find that for an ENTIRE TERM they were having four cake tray bakes for lunch.

18. Don’t forget to buy them books every year for Christmas and birthdays in the hope that they might become readers, so that they can put them on the shelf and never open them, ever. Ignore all the other parents when they tell you that their kids are OBSESSED with Harry Potter and how they can’t tear them away from Beast Quest. Eventually, donate them all to the school library.

19. You will never be given priority for attention by your child over a FIFA tournament, COD warfare or a Rocket League championship, but you will often be awoken in the early hours at weekends by them yelling profanity littered abuse at competitors.

20. Microsoft and Apple will regularly take random debits of £3.99 from your bank account in regard to gaming purchases, yet your child will regularly deny all knowledge of what these are for.

21. Always enforce Find My iPhone so that you can check that they are still alive. This is particularly applicable when they go on holiday with their friends and you see them apparently floating in the ocean when they’re actually on a boat trip. Or even better, Life 360 so that you can see how fast they are driving and what their battery life is.

22. Don’t be fooled into thinking that when they leave for University, they will immediately forget about you in a haze of vapes, drugs and alcohol. Save your tears and marvel instead at the tidiness of your house in their absence. They’ll be FaceTiming you daily to ask how to turn the oven on.

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    And finally, the very BEST thing I have learned about parenting is that all the hard work, the sleepness nights and the lack of any real financial security for 22 years has been worth every single second. Honestly, it has. Every age that they’ve reached, every phase that they’ve gone through; each has its own joyous moments (alongside the ones that make you want to cut off your own head) and I feel eternally grateful that we’ve been lucky enough to be parents. And the unexpected bonus? They are really very excellent company, too.

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