Naming & shaming those UK Rioters

Now that the testosterone levels of the country have fallen slightly, the fires been put out, burnt cars towed away and countless broken windows swept up, the true price of these riots is plain to see.

In total 5 people lost their lives, including a man found shot in a car in Croydon and 3 men who were hit by a car in Birmingham. The latest death was that of pensioner Richard Mannington Bowes, who received critical  head injuries when he was attacked in the Ealing riots on Monday night. Like the 3 other men in Birmingham who were trying to protect their neighbourhoods when killed, Mr Bowes was attacked simply for trying to stamp out a fire. Yes, it’s enough to make your blood run cold and boil at exactly the same time.

The last week has all been about identifying, hauling in and prosecuting those horrible specimens responsible and the whole spectacle has certainly made for some interesting viewing, or at least a glimpse of some of the countries worst parents. Many have stood outside the court, effing and blinding at the press and declaring Thug Junior and Minni Oik to be a ‘misunderstood’ little angel in Adidas.

The mother of the 11-year-old who stole a £50 waste bin from a trashed Debenhams store – the youngest looter to be prosecuted – swore and yelled abuse as she left court. Not a shock this one, considering his dad was only recently released from prison after serving time for theft. Mouldy apple didn’t fall very far from that rotten tree did it.

But there is now a glimmer of hope for the country following a long and very depressing week: some parents of underage looters are happy to shop their own kids to the police.

One such mother, on spotting pictures of her 15-year-old son trying to prise open shutters of a shop in Salford, was so disgusted with his behaviour and no doubt horrified that her own sprog was capable of such violence, that she promptly frog-marched him straight down to the police station and handed him over herself. Another father said that if his son had done the crime, then he deserved to have the book thrown at him and would have to deal with the consequences of his actions.

Now that people are being rounded up and marched through the court system at quick speed, what’s alarming to hear (aside from the fact that so many were children) was that many of these looters held positions of responsibilities within their own communities: a care worker with a 2-year-old child of her own, a postman, a lifeguard, an aspiring social worker and a teaching assistant. Heck there was even a ballerina twirling her way through the streets and a millionaire’s daughter running around filling her Louis Vuitton swag bag with stolen electrical goods, cigarettes and alcohol worth £5,500.

Photos of looters have already been posted online and in some city centres so the public can help police identify them. Perhaps however, just to drive the message home a bit more,  the police mug shot of every person charged should be posted (along with their name and a list of the items they took) up on big notice boards around the towns and areas in which they robbed.

Given that these yobs have all desperately tried to shield their identity from the cameras (and their parents) while scuttling in and out of court, I’m sure they wouldn’t appreciate being quite so publicly named and shamed.

So just to set the ball rolling, here are a few for the Hall of Shame – and what a bloody dodgy lot they all are! Perhaps if they were going to steal from shops they should have stopped off at Boots first to pocket some soap, a scrubbing-brush and a comb.

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Spare the Rod? No, bring back hardcore discipline.

More outbreaks of thuggery took place last night and even more juvenile delinquents were out swarming through the streets like a plague of locusts, looking for a free pair of trainers, a new flat screen TV, or in the case of some, bags of Basmati rice and a wooden rocking horse.

TV? New Mobile? Designer Trainers? No, let's take the rice.

Many of these masked and hooded looters were only in their mid teens, but some of them were as young as ten. Yes, that’s ten. As in should be at home and under the constant supervision of an adult.

Quite why a child of this age, or even those of 14 or 15, are allowed to be roaming the streets with nothing but violence on their minds is a mystery to any parent who has even the tiniest bit of control over their child’s whereabouts.

But many of these parents I guess are too busy blaming the government and those who pay their taxes for the shitty life they feel they have, not to mention the disappearance of their ‘Layabout Allowance’ and ‘Dysfunctional Benefit’. The ones that are paid with those taxes.

So it’s not a great surprise they probably wouldn’t have noticed or batted an eyelid when Thug Junior and Minni Oik got down from the table without saying ‘Thank you’ and skipped off into town to hurl a couple of petrol bombs and rob a few shops.

Now I’m well aware that I exist in a totally different world to the one in which many of these rioters live, and for that I’m very lucky. Well actually that’s not true. It’s not all down to luck is it. Potentially the fact that many generations of my family made an effort to listen and learn at school and worked bloody hard once they left had something to do with it. There were certainly no silver spoons being shoved into any of our mouths as babies and no titles or inherited wealth to rely on.

One massive difference that’s very apparent between our 2 worlds is a small matter of discipline, something that these feral little rats out there have obviously never encountered.

Go back a generation (in most parts of society at least) and there was a little something called respect. Respect (mixed with a helping of fear) for teachers, parents, the police and anyone with authority really. And unlike today, where these yobs think they ‘deserve’ respect from everyone and their brother, children back then accepted, or were at least resigned to the fact that respect was something you were given as you grew up and earned it.

When I was at school (a good one admittedly) we didn’t really do anything more rebellious than carve our initials in the desk or pass notes. We were expected to stand up when a visitor entered the room and wouldn’t dream of addressing a teacher by anything other their correct name. We had to keep our socks pulled up, our mouths shut in lessons unless asked to speak and our grubby little feet off  ‘Central Hall Carpet’ – which we did, even though we felt it was a pointless rule.

So discipline was pretty much a given and the punishments for misbehaving ranged from being hit across the hands with wooden rulers, smacked around the face (unacceptable even then but it still happened) whacked with a cane, made to stand outside the classroom, being sent to see the head, given detention or being suspended and, in the extreme cases, expelled.

These days (at some schools) it’s the pupils hitting the teachers with rulers and fists, throwing books at each other, threatening violence if they don’t get their own way, leaving the classroom when they feel like it or simply not turning up to school in the first place.

And why do they act this way? Because they get absolutely no structure, guidance or discipline at home either. Some parents just don’t seem to care that the only qualifications their vile offspring will earn are an ASBO and a criminal record, or that the only lessons in life they’re learning are how to get free handouts for doing bugger all.

These riots are down to ‘poverty’ and being part of a ‘suppressed and ignored society’ these angry hoodies all say, but this is a little hard to take seriously when they’re out on the loot dressed in £100 designer jeans and organising the nightly violent get-togethers on a £300 smart phone. They really need to look up the definition of  ‘poverty’ in a dictionary, but apparently Waterstones have been left well alone, so that’s not likely to happen.

It’s also rather funny how these kids openly resent everyone in this country who works hard to earn their money, yet they idolise soccer players who earn in excess of £100k a week and rap stars who wear diamonds in their teeth and blow a years worth of benefits on one bottle of Champagne. This sort of wealth is OK is it?

So can the actions and shocking attitudes of this apparently ‘lost generation’ all be blamed on the area in which they may live, the state of the economy, the government in power, the high unemployment figures, the state of the education system and a society as a whole that seems to treat celebrity, material wealth and overnight fame as the Holy Grail? No, I really don’t see how they can.

There may be many problems in this country, but none of them can be used as justification by this small group of pathetic individuals who are rioting for fun, stealing for kicks and destroying countless livelihoods and homes because they think they can.

And if all of these reasons above were the only thing to blame, then every child from a single parent family at a badly performing school in a deprived area would be out on the streets. But they’re not are they. The majority are at home with their parents being disciplined, trying hard at school and going on to achieve something with their life.

So in answer to those who are now wondering if it might just be down to a generation of parents being a little too soft on their kids, the answer is yes, of course it bloody is.

These pint-sized hoodlums need to face the consequences of committing this sort of crime. They don’t need a caution, a slap on the wrist or even an ASBO, they need old-school, hardcore discipline. So never mind ‘Spare the Rod, Save the Child’, some parents need to start using sharp sticks and electric cattle prods to get their unruly brats inline.

Why kids must learn to boil an egg and climb a tree

The world has changed quite a bit in recent years; some say it’s changed more over the last few decades than it probably ever has. Technologically speaking that it. Millions of years of lumbering dinosaurs and slowly evolving amoebas, various cold snaps and the dawning of multiple civilizations have all been overtaken by a new era: The Age Of Electronics.

It certainly seems that most things we use today come on a phone the size of your fingernail, as an app through an online store or on a touch screen gizmo that can even make you a cup of tea. They all call for some sort of computerised what-ya-ma-call-it or wireless thingy-ma-jig and require plugging in, charging up and regular (often badly timed) updates.

So what does life in a world of advanced technology actually mean? Aside, that is, from needing to commit to memory a list of passwords as long as your arm. Well, if you break it down, it really means relying on a whole host of different computers to help get us through each day: ipods that rouse us, sat navs that lead us, laptops that inform us, phones that connect us, TVs that entertain us, ipads that amuse us, game stations that mesmerize us and microwaves that cook for us. Wow, what an awful lot of microchips there are controlling our lives.

Yes, that’s right, controlling. Because let’s be honest, the moment any one of these life saving machines stops doing what it should, we all go into an immediate state of melt down and come out in hives. And then, if we happen to be driving at the time, proceed to get very badly lost.

So where might it all end? Possibly with a generation of pale, socially inept kids with short pudgy legs, bad eyesight, tiny lungs and enlarged thumbs. Kids who only communicate with ‘friends’ they don’t know, haven’t a clue how to hold a pen, pick up a book, boil an egg or find their way out of a paper bag. And let’s not forget play. Because it goes without saying kids in the future won’t have a clue how to do that without the aid of an instruction manual.

A recent article in the Daily Mail summed it up in one heading: ‘1 in 3 children has never climbed a tree.’

Based on research carried out by Play England and antiseptic brand Savlon, the worrying results showed that a staggering 60% of youngsters would rather watch television or play computer games than venture outdoors. A 1/3 of children (aged 6-15) have never climbed a tree, a 1/4 have never rolled down a hill, 1 in 10 children cannot ride a bicycle and a 1/3 have no idea how to play hopscotch or build a den. Almost 1/2 of those children asked have never even made a daisy chain. And let’s be honest, 1/2 of those again probably don’t even know what a daisy is.

So what or who is to blame for a decline in the sort of outdoor fun that involves rough, tumble and dirty knees? Is it simply a case of lazy children giving in to the lure of the computer screen, or is it down to the lifestyle of their perpetually busy (and often overweight) parents, who admit they rarely played with their children or took them to the park?

According to Catherine Prisk, a former teacher and director of campaign group Play England, if children miss out on such vital childhood experiences as playing outside, getting muddy and climbing a tree, they may well be heading towards a life as a somewhat dysfunctional adult.

‘Children are likely to be more physically active when they play outside and are more likely to play with other children.

‘This is essential for their emotional and physical health, well-being and happiness and is also important for their future development, to build vital life and social skills.

She added: ‘When children learn to climb a tree they are learning to overcome a physical challenge and it will stand them in good stead for overcoming other challenges in life, such as learning to read.’

To a generation of parents brought up on fresh air, frozen noses and imagination, the results of this research are a disturbing wake up call to the sedentary lifestyles that we are allowing our children to lead. For while many children today may well opt for a sofa over a swing, it is not down to them to make the change, but the responsibility of their parents to unplug the computers, hide the remotes and, if necessary, confiscate everything in the house that beeps.

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Taken from a blog written for Treehouse Life.

What every teacher would love to say

Now for all those parents, pupils (past and present) and frustrated teachers out there, here’s a school answering machine message to really make you laugh.

This Internet hoax gets across exactly what most schools would probably love to say to the parents of their useless pupils -  if of course they weren’t then instantly slapped with every type of lawsuit known to man.

And yes, of course it’s a hoax. For starters, as far as the part about moving to another country, if that applied to Australian schools, many of them would be empty!

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Where NOT to go to pass the time

A collective sigh of relief goes up across the world this week, as, after several weeks of captivity, parents are finally being set free. Yes, school holidays have once again come to an end, and children everywhere are gathering up their pencil cases and musty lunch bags and being packed off back to their classrooms.

Of course lots of parent do relish these special weeks spent at home, re-bonding over the craft box and cooking up a cupcake storm. Other parents however, particularly those who aren’t naturally programmed to moulding papier-mâché and making their own play dough, sometimes find these long periods of time a little bit tricky to fill.

Once the novelty of an alarm clock free morning and a sandwich-making free evening has worn off, and you’ve spent several days watching your creative child stick tissue paper and glitter directly onto the dining table and build a cubby in every single room, it’s likely you might start thinking of other places to spend the day.

‘Other places’ that aren’t at home, to be more precise. Places that won’t involve you having to vacuum up afterwards, and require the odd bit of plastering and repainting when the playing goes wrong.

If and when the weather doesn’t cooperate and rain pours down day after day, soft play centres – the sort with swinging ladders, tunnels, slides and multi-coloured balls – are a tempting refuge. It’s true that spending a day at such a place is likely to knock at least a year off your lifespan and leave you with a nasty chest infection, but at least you are safe in the knowledge that, short of the odd friction burn and heat exhaustion, your children can knock themselves out without actually coming to any real harm.

The downside of these play centres is of course the entry fee. It’s generally on par with a central London mortgage repayment. And to add insult to overpriced injury, the parent is also charged just for the privilege of sitting, watching and breathing in the rancid air.

After you’ve set foot through the door and all shoes have been removed and stored in a pile under the counter, you will of course remember that the obligatory socks are still sitting at home in your child’s drawer. So your wallet is forced to come back out again and a new neon-coloured nylon pair (Easyjet style, Harrods prices) are passed over the counter to your child’s outstretched little paw. They of course will claim to love these new socks more than life itself. You will consider them hideous, and likely deposit them in the bin on the way out.

Finally the door (or gateway to hell, depending how you look at it) is opened, and your newly socked child is set free, static sparks flying in all direction as they run across the matching nylon carpeted floor. Reluctantly you follow suit and enter the room. Your ears are met with the thunderous sound of a hundred children all screaming, yelping and hollering in delight.

Just audible beneath this din, is a distinctive white noise. The low-level humming of a gaggle of mothers, all rocking backwards and forwards on their plastic seating in a desperate, shared pain.

Moving forward into hell, you spot the only beacon of hope in the entire place – a café at the end of the room. As you draw closer, the ‘café’ takes the form of a scratched up old counter and a chiller cabinet stocked full of last weeks’ salmonella and botulism experiments. Located somewhere beyond the coffee maker and the enormous display of food colouring and MSG is the kitchen, with it’s impressive line up of deep fat fryers spitting out grease all over the floor.

Unsure about which of the food would kill you and which would just make you sick, you settle on a hot chocolate and a purple coloured muffin. How wrong can you go with hot chocolate? It’s made inside the machine and spat out into the mug below. The muffin, which admittedly does look slightly solid around the edges, at least claims to contain a type of fruit.

The unwashed looking child behind the cash register takes the remainder of your money and hands you a numbered baton. You’d much rather just stand and wait for your order, but apparently loitering around the counter is not allowed. You must go to your table and wait to vibrate.

Not particularly keen to strike up a conversation with anyone in sight, you are forced to walk the length of the room in search of a table free of rubbish and off-putting inhabitants. You hurry past mothers dressed head-to-toe in stone washed denim and others dressed head-to-toe in fleece. You rush past those on day release from the local young offenders institute, and scuttle past those who obviously favour hemp on a stick to soap on a rope.

Eventually, several trips past scattered prams and regurgitating babies later, and you are finally settled into your plastic seat. You’re sitting just about near enough to the rope cage to see your child fly past, but not so close you can smell the feet. You finally have your ‘refreshments’ and enough dog-eared celebrity magazines to help pass the time, while you wait for your child’s colour-coded wristband to expire.

An hour passes and your child shows no signs of tiredness or even the slightest willingness to leave. The litre bottle of water you’ve just washed down the muffin with leaves you with little choice. You must leave the safety of your seat and brave the bathrooms.

The smell hits before you’ve even pushed open the door. The floor is swimming with something and none of the cubicles have locks, let alone anything resembling a loo roll. Hopping from dry patch to dry patch, you mentally calculate if you’re still covered by the tetanus jab you had for your holidays last year. Emerging from your cubicle you find a small crying child stood opposite your door. His trousers are around his ankles and his Thomas pants are full of something they shouldn’t be.

You briefly cast your eyes back to the liquid matter on the floor.

Now you’re faced with something of a social dilemma. Do you make a hasty escape and hope the soggy child’s mother is about to appear, or do you take possession of the said soggy child and go off in hunt of the careless owner? It’s not that you’re necessarily an uncaring cow with a heart of stone, but clearing up your own child’s accidents is one thing – sorting out the mess of a child with a shaved head and a cubic zirconia in one ear is quite another.

Luckily for you, the mother of ‘mini thug’ swoops in on him and drags him back out into the room, his Thomas pants still dripping across the floor.

Emerging back into the fresh air (the word ‘fresh’ becomes relative in a place like this), you decide that your senses have taken enough of a beating for one day. You spot your fuchsia-coloured child refuelling at the table and seize the opportunity to grab them and make a beeline for the door.

On the way home your exhausted child in the backseat tells you that it was worth all the pain. But it’s only taken 2 hours up of the day, and now you’re emotionally drained and financially crippled. To cap it off, the bottom of your jeans look slightly damp and the car now smells suspiciously of wee.

 

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Going to hell in a breadbasket

Who doesn’t love to eat out?

The joy of someone else having to decide what to cook and clearing up the mess at the end of the meal. The perfect chance to order something you wouldn’t have a clue how to cook, with ingredients you’d certainly never recognise in the supermarket. Eating out is a valid reason to eat off a table instead of a tray. It’s the opportunity to actually hold a conversation, instead of woofing down your food in front of the TV.

Yes, going out to eat is the perfect time to relax and enjoy your food. Unless, that is, you have children. Then it’s really only one small step removed from hell.

It has to be said that, whichever way you look at it, there’s absolutely nothing relaxing about walking through the doors of any restaurant and wheeling an overloaded pram through the very tiny space. Or ordering off the menu when you suspect your children will refuse to eat a thing. Or clearing up spilt drinks and bread rolls that cover every inch of the table. Or needing 6 books, 3 colouring pads and a pack of crayons just to get through the starter. Or having to take them for a poo the exact moment your main meal arrives. Or having to consume your own cold and congealed meal in 60 seconds because everyone else has finished and the waiters are eyeing you up, your bill and coats in hand.

By the end of such a meal out, both you and the people seated around you, are inevitably wishing you’d just saved the money and avoided the stress by staying at home. There at least you can scream at a decibel of your choice and stop your children leaving the table until something has made it past their lips.

We were at Sizzlers a while back, having one of those impromptu meals out that always seem to be such a great idea when you drive past a restaurant starving. Sizzlers is a one of those restaurants that offers various slabs of meat and fish on a plate, as well as a ‘eat as much you can’ salad and desert bar. These always seem like such a great idea on the way in, but the food generally ends up looking and tasting the same – something along the lines of ‘fridge’.

With some serious training in the food eating and table manners department under their belt, my kids, for the most part, aren’t too bad when it comes to eating out. There have of course been those moments when I’ve wanted to curl up and die, but compared to some restaurant monsters I’ve seen, mine are an absolute delight in comparison.

We were at Sizzlers a while back, having one of those impromptu meals out that always seem to be such a great idea when you drive past a restaurant starving. Sizzlers are one of those restaurants that offers various slabs of meat and fish on a plate, as well as a ‘eat as much you can’ salad and desert bar. These always seem like such a great idea on the way in, but the food generally ends up looking and tasting the same – something along the lines of ‘fridge’.

Upon arrival you have to queue up, choose your meal from a picture on the wall and pay for it as you go in.  So if and when it arrives looking nothing like the picture on the wall and tastes like shit, there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. Except perhaps throw up.

Anyway, disappointing food aside, it’s the clientele at Sizzlers that can really turn your stomach.

Sat next to us was a family who had more food on the floor around them than they did on their table. The chief culprit was a small child standing up in her high chair and throwing platefuls of whatever she could reach onto the floor. The mother, who was sat only feet away, was either oblivious or brain-dead – between you and me; I’d say she was both.

To make matters worse, the other little feral children at the table were busy scurrying backwards and forwards to the food bars and bringing the majority of the contents back with them. Not to eat mind you, just to stack up, squash and leave as ammunition for Baby Feral in the high chair.

Seated on the other side of us were a mother and daughter combo – an unstoppable eating machine if ever I’ve seen one. In the space of time that it took for us to get our garlic bread, they had consumed half a cow and chips each, trawled the salad bar several times and been up the desert station 3 times. Just when we thought there was nothing else but the furniture and fittings left for them to eat, the daughter winched her sizeable frame out of the chair and nipped (I’m being kind here, there was nothing nippy about her) back to get one last bowl of ice cream. With all the toppings.

Between our 2 neighbouring tables, it’s surprising there was anything left for the rest of the room to eat.

So there you go. The perfect example of badly behaved children and people eating to excess all rolled into one depressing restaurant. Needless to say we haven’t been back since.

There is one nearby restaurant however that has perhaps come up with the perfect solution for parents who want to eat in peace. If I rated the food, I might have been tempted to take them up on their offer. Unfortunately I find the food here pretty dire, though considering what might be tucked away in their kitchen, I’m not really that surprised.

I can’t even image what the conditions of this offer might be. Perhaps the children have to be washed beforehand, or have any buttons or sharp jewelery removed?

o-]

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On the downside, the restaurant also has this sign on the door, so perhaps they aren’t quite so parent friendly after all..

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;;;

Be good for goodness sake

With only a few days to go before ‘C Day’, yesterday I had to pull the big guns out of my parental bag and threaten the ultimate in punishments. Cancelling Christmas. Or rather informing my daughter that if she didn’t quit with the naughty and start delivering more of the nice, then she’d be waking up to find a rather sad and empty stocking at the end of her bed.

This is obviously not something I’d ever want to do. It would ruin my day for a start – and then leave me with the problem of what to do with all those presents rattling around under our bed.

But the problem is, when you spend a large percentage of the year telling your child that Father Christmas only comes for those children who’ve been good, it does rather put you in a difficult dilemma when they then go and act like the devils spawn.

To be fair it’s not that she’s particularly naughty, as children go. She doesn’t have a criminal record or a HASBO to her name. She doesn’t even wander the streets with a penknife and a can of spray paint, mugging old ladies as she goes. No, her problem – along with every other 8-year-old in the world – is that she just doesn’t bloody listen. To me. Ever.

Everyday, or so it seems, I am met with the blank look, sulky pout or miserable face of a child who just doesn’t want to do what she’s just been asked. Which I could well understand if the asking in question was about  going outside to kill a chicken for dinner, or working down a coal mine to earn her keep. But it’s not. It’s more of an eat your dinner / brush your teeth / hurry up and get into the car sort of ask.

Of course I’m sure when I was her age I was probably a right royal pain in the backside at times. But that’s a while ago now, my memory is sketchy and that’s beside the point. As I keep saying to her, I really don’t understand how hard it can be to just go along with what I ask, listen from time-to-time, and use her ears more than her mouth.

So what’s a parent to do? Threaten the worst and then follow through? Or fill them with the fear of a present-less Christmas, and then relent at the end?

My husband could probably quite easily go through with the first option, and still sleep well at night. I, on the other hand, couldn’t. Christmas for me has always been about the stocking.

Nothing beats seeing the sheer excitement on my children’s faces as they attempt to haul their body weight in stuffed stockings across our bedroom floor. It’s the highlight of my day. Or rather my night, as this inevitably happens a mere 15 or so minutes after we’ve wrapped the assorted presents, deposited them at the end of the beds and finally gone to sleep ourselves.

So once again I have had to explain and outline to my daughter the terrible consequences that naughtiness can bring. This was followed up by returning the ‘missed call’ I’d received on my mobile from Santa. With my incredibly concerned child hovering in the next room, her ears wildly flapping like an African elephant, I apologised for her bad behaviour, promised she wouldn’t do it again and wished him a safe flight.

What I hadn’t taken into account in my oh so cunning plan, was the steam railway trip we had planned to take them on the very next day -  to see the very man himself. My poor daughter was so nervous about being told off she practically had to be shoved  past the overgrown elf and into the grotto.

Not only did this make me feel like total and utter crap, but as I had to hurriedly reassure her that she hadn’t been quite bad enough to get no presents at all, it also made the whole point of my exercise completely pointless. Marvellous.

How to be a BAD parent

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Like I’ve said before, it’s very hard to know how you measure up as a parent, and how badly your child rearing techniques are going to scar them life.

Then you see pictures like these, and you think phew, at least I’m doing a lot better than some.

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Don’t lie to me

Any parent worth their weight in low sodium salt would probably agree, that children should be brought up knowing that it’s wrong to lie. Especially to their parents. But teaching this particular right from wrong can be tricky, especially when trying to push the message home to your child often entails telling a whole range of elaborate and complicated lies to begin with.

Believe it or not, the reason that we lie to our children in this way even has a name.  It’s called ‘Parenting by lying’.

So why do we even lie to begin with? Mainly to shield our children from the harsh reality of the world, and to protect their innocence for as long as humanly possible. Children already have quite enough on their plate, trying to get a grasp on their own tiny world, without also needing the complete low down on war, death, natural disasters and the wonders of childbirth.

We also lie to encourage their imagination; to teach them how to fabricate new worlds and interesting characters in their heads, so that they in turn will grow up to concoct intricate tales to tell their own kids.

And of course there are also those lies that we tell because we don’t know the answer to a question, or because we have already lied once, and have to carry on just cover our tracks. And those lies, that if the truth be told, just make our day-to-day life that little bit easier.

Oh what a tangled web we do weave.

“I’ll know if you’re lying to me” is a classic parenting approach that I often use myself.

Of course I won’t know, so that’s a lie for starters. All I’ll actually be doing is fine-tuning my Mummy Radar, making an educated guess and relying heavily on the fact that my trusting daughter still believes that I know everything that she does, says, thinks and feels.

Like a lamb to the slaughter, I’ve seen the fleeting look of panic pass through her eyes when employing this rather underhand tactic. I can hear her brain frantically ticking over as she quickly tries to weigh up whether she’ll be in more trouble for having finished off all of the biscuits, or for pretending that she hasn’t even been near the tin.

Luckily for her on that particular occasion, as she stood there with the last biscuit hidden behind her back, good sense prevailed. She confessed, apologised and promptly offered to make me a cup of tea. To go along with the last surviving biscuit.

Good sense wasn’t even in the vicinity however the time that she blamed her baby brother for the cup of juice spilt all over the floor. The fact that the ‘accused’ was strapped into his bouncer on the other side of the room, and come to think of it, unable to do anything more than wobble, didn’t exactly help her case. As I watched her suddenly clock her serious lack of judgement, the part of me that wasn’t telling her off actually wanted to take pity and explain that there’s no point telling a porky in the first place, if your story doesn’t even stack up.

Maybe I felt sorry for her because I’m probably to blame in the first place. After all, I’ve already shaped her whole childhood with white lies, fiction and complete fantasy. It’s what parents do.

It starts straight out of the womb. As babies they howl and cry. So we jig them around, rub their backs and say “It’s OK, it’s OK” over and over again.

“No it’s not OK”, the babies are probably thinking. “My tummy’s sore, my nappy’s full and quite frankly I’m starting to feel sick from all this bloody rocking”.

From that moment on the lies come thick and fast, tripping off our tongues like seasoned politicians.

Firstly there are those lies that fall into the category of far fetched and thinly veiled threats – If you don’t eat your vegetables you won’t grow up to be big and strong. If you eat your carrots you’ll see in the dark.  If you eat your crusts your hair will go curly. If you don’t look after your toys I’ll throw them away. If you hear the ice cream van playing a tune, it’s run out of ice cream. If you say another word you won’t get dinner. If you don’t go to sleep you’ll never wake up tomorrow. If you don’t stop that now I’ll take you straight home. I won’t tell you again.

And my personal favourite – Mummy’s can’t hear when they’re sleeping.

Then there are the 5 main brush off lies that I’m sure most parents tell on average at least 10 times a day.

I’ll think about it – loosely translated to mean ‘It ain’t ever going to happen’
We’ll see – loosely translated to mean  ‘You’ll have forgotten in a few hours’
Maybe – loosely translated to mean  ‘Never, never, never going to happen’
I’m listening loosely translated to mean  ‘I’m not even remotely interested’
I’ll be there in a minute  – loosely translated to mean ‘I’ll be there in half an hour when I’ve finished whatever it is I’m doing’

And then there are the Mother of All Lies. The ones that involve a fairy collecting teeth, a bunny dropping off chocolate eggs and a large fat man squeezing himself down the chimney (regardless of whether you have one or not) and leaving a suspicious looking package at the end of your bed.

That last one is actually the stuff of nightmares, is you leave out the flying reindeer and the ‘Ho Ho Ho’. After all, we drill into our kids the danger of talking to strangers, particularly big, bad men. And then we tell them that if they are good, one will be coming into their bedroom late at night and watching them while they sleep. Probably the worst case of mixed messages if ever I heard one.

But of all the lies, the best one that we parents have up our sleeves must be the one regarding those clever little eyes we have in the back of head. This one works especially well when you have as many mirrors in your house as we do. In some parts of our home I really can see round corners, and that includes the fridge, the food cupboard and the biscuit tin.

A few years ago, quite out of the blue, the very existence of my second set of eyes was even confirmed.

My daughter and I went for our visa medical check up, and the doctor in question was giving my eyes the once over with a torch. “So how are my other set of eyes?” I asked him, with a straight face and a hidden smirk. “The ones in the back of your head?” he asked immediately “Oh those look fine too”.

My daughters face was a picture. A mixture of complete disbelief and total awe. “Would you like me to check your other eyes too? he asked my daughter. “But I don’t have any,” she said.”Oh but you do,” he replied “everyone has them, they just don’t work properly until you have your own children”.

He peered into her eyes. “Yes, yours are growing quite nicely.” he confirmed.

My daughter was practically buzzing with excitement when we left the surgery. “I never really believed you Mummy, but the doctor saw mine growing so it MUST be true.” God bless child friendly doctors, they earn every penny and more.

That was of course only a harmless little white lie, the sort which are sometimes said just to be kind. But where I wonder do you draw the line, and how can you teach kids to know the difference between those lies that are ‘OK’ and those that will be categorised as a ‘lifetime grounded to the bedroom’ type offense?

Like when Mummy asks how she looks in her new dress, obviously it’s best not to tell her that her bottom looks like the back end of a bus. Or that the dinner she spent hours cooking tasted horrible. Or that Daddy is definitely loved more because he shouts less.

Needless to say I’m dreading the day that my children find out Father Christmas is just Daddy, a red suit and 3 cushions. Or that the lost teeth that were supposed to become stars, ended up at the back of my jewelery box. Or worse still, that the Christmas Elf that follows them around and watches their every move from October onwards doesn’t actually exist.

Oh how my life isn’t going to be worth living, not least because my daughter (who always likes to state the obvious) will undoubtedly be very quick to point out that not only has her life been one long lie, but I’m the one that’s been telling them.

I feel my payback may be right around the corner, just about the time when the hormones kick in.

Is it possible to parent without Prozac?

I’ve often wondered, what makes a good mother? And if I were to be marked out of 10, what would I get?

I mean these days are you considered a maternal goddess simply because you manage to keep your offspring alive, fed and watered till they’re 18, or is there more to it than just ensuring the survival of the young? Maybe it’s about teaching Junior not to knock every other child to the floor, in the stampede to get the last biscuit. Or how it’s unacceptable to spit at passing old ladies in the street, or hold up the local corner shop with a Swiss army Knife, for the sake of a pocketful of jelly beans.

Basic ground rules no longer seem to apply to kids today and it’s hard to know what will keep them from falling off the straight and narrow. Personally I concentrate on good manners, eating well, doing what they’re told – and the all important learning not to interrupt me when I’m on the phone. But who knows if this is enough.

Perhaps there should be a Parents Manual 101. A check list so we can tick off what we’ve done right, what we’ve got wrong and and what’s still to come. Actually scratch the last one. If we knew what was to come, the survival of the young would be put into jeopardy and Prozac sales would sky rocket.

I do sometimes feel that I probably fall well below the Mother’s Mark – that’s the parental version of the Plimsoll line, there to let you know when you’re about to drown in another child rearing disaster. These feelings of inadequacy are often as a result of me completely losing the plot, followed by my temper. Generally over something that is, in the grand scheme of things, really not that important at all.

Like my daughter sifting through her dinner as if I’m deliberately trying to poison her with an olive. Or my son deciding that the clean, cream wall is the perfect empty canvas on which to exercise his untapped artistic talent. The sort of stuff that I no doubt did at that age – and got a smack for.

So when one tearful child has gone to bed with no pudding, because he refused to eat any of the vegetables, or the other is glaring at me as she stomps to her room because I’ve abruptly switched the TV off – without giving a full  60 minute’s worth of warning – then I feel like crap. Well actually, lets be honest, initially I don’t feel that bad at all. I’m normally glad to have some peace and quiet at last and a chance to sit down without being talked at, tugged down to floor level or questioned over everything I say.

It’s about an hour later when I go into their rooms and see them laying there, all angelic looking with a tear still clinging onto an eyelash. Then I feel like crap.

Worse still, when looking for reassurance the next day, I ask my daughter, “So do you still love me or am I the meanest Mummy in the world?”

“Of course I do”, she says, looking horrified at the very suggestion she wouldn’t, ” you’re the very best Mummy in the world”.

And that’s when I feel REALLY crap. As I think to myself how important, on a scale of 1 to 10, was it that she ate that last piece of aubergine.

The trouble I find is that intending to be nice, loving and patience to my children every minute of the day, and actually achieving it are often about as far apart as the North and South Pole.

Sometimes it’s impossible not to be a bitch, even to them. I never mean it, but they seem to have this knack of catching me at a time when I’m especially stressed out, tired and hungry. They then  pull out all the stops and leap up and down on my very last, very frayed nerve. At that point, unfortunately for them, the most appetising looking thing to bite off just so happens to be their heads.

To make matters worse, it’s at these times that I come out with the most god awful things. Threats I have no intention of ever carrying out, character assassinations that are completely unfair and phrases that instantly morph me into my own mother. I hear the words come out, and even in mid flow think to myself ‘what the hell, shut up will you’.

I’m presuming, or rather hoping I’m not alone in all of this. Judging by some of the sad looking children and the angry, muttering mothers I’ve seen stalking around the supermarket and away from the playground, I’m guessing not.

In a perfect world I’d deal with stress better and never take it out on my kids. But the trouble is, as with most multi-tasking mums, half the time I’m too busy trying to work to play dress up with Barbies, and too busy cooking, feeding and clearing up to make necklaces out of pipe cleaners and the contents out of the ‘Bits’ draw.  By the evening I am certainly too bloody tired to discuss in detail, all those things that children find endlessly fascinating, and parents find, well, boring.

Yesterday for example, after a long day at the keyboard, my daughter informed me that for her latest school project she had to learn all about the banana. Now it’s not that I don’t care about the banana project, or wish to restrict her learning all about the cutting edge life cycle of this thoroughly nutritious fruit. But my brain just doesn’t have enough functioning cells left at the end of the day to process such an uninteresting topic.

I could let her lose on the Internet to find out more, but god only knows what would pop up if she Googled ‘ banana + picture’. I have images springing to mind, and none of them I wish to have burned into the memory bank of my 8 year old. I am tempted to just be blunt – ‘A banana grows, it’s peeled, it’s eaten – end of story’. But I suspect this just won’t cut it.

Besides that, it would be mean to crush her imagination and wish to learn. Particularly as I’m something of a witch when it comes to policing her homework and making her learn her times tables in the holidays – when all the other little girls seem to be out chatting with their friends on the street corner, wearing 2 inch silver kitten heels and eating sweets…

Juggling life and kids is an uphill battle at the best of times. Add to that a job, whether in an office or 10 feet from the kitchen table, and you may as well throw in a couple of knives and a blindfold. I wonder how many woman wish they didn’t have to do it all, or at least to be seen to be doing it all.

Given the choice, some days I think I’d rather go back to the Stone Age way of life. Sitting at home in my nicely decorated cave, with nothing to do but carving up and cooking whatever gets dragged back in through the door after the hunt. As long as there was Ebay that is, and Eastenders on the telly.

Anyway I have to say I felt slightly better about my mothering skills the other day, when I set eyes on this picture. I may bark, bite and occasionally smack my kids, but at least I’m not subjecting them to this type of beauty pageant child abuse. I ask you, what sort of self obsessed mother does this to her child? It’s freakish, warped and quite frankly creepy.

In comparison to these ‘eyes on the prize’ mothers,  I’m practically Maria Von Trap, with a little Mary Poppins thrown in for free.