Today has got off to a great start for me and it looks like it will only get better as I am spending the day with me, myself and I!

My One and Only husband has taken our Darling Son fishing, about 120 miles away, as you know, he rarely does things by half! Going out the door, he left me a photocopy of where they are going saying that ‘If we are not back, this is where we will be’! Need I be concerned? No, even if it sounded like they were heading off to the Wild West rather than a day trip to the sunny South East.

So, our Saturday started around 8 o clock this morning, which is not a great time for me. I dream of us all sleeping in and missing football, just for once, while deep inside I know that this will never happen with due to the compulsive nature of this activity in my Darling Son’s psychic! But I can dream, especially as this was the end of the first week back at school and we are now officially firing on all cylinders. We are back at full steam ahead, even if that is only the full steam of one child.

Summer time is so different to term time and these few weeks transition are always challenging. So whilst he has been embracing his new regime, I have been embracing mine albeit in the form of returning to beautiful embracing September sea swims.

September is the most perfect time for sea swimming and this week I had the longest swim with one friend, a fortieth birthday swim and breakfast with another and lastly on Friday I had a swim with all the girls that got me started in the beginning, the yummy mummies who swim after school drop at nine o’ clock every day. This week the group included the fabulous four original members that I tag along with, a friend who joined in after me and low and behold, two husbands! Then we were coincidently joined by the original of the species, the legendry mother of six who inspired the group in the first place, I believe. It was a great swim and someone remarked as we all waddled in like a line of ducks ‘it looks like we came by bus, there was so many of us!’ It must be September!

So all this effort and more this week deserved a duvet morning! The Angelus bell is ringing; I think I will give myself one more hour. What a perfect way to spend the odd September Saturday morning!

So, what are you doing today?

Mrs. Mack has raised some very interesting questions about parenting and her observations and experiences lead me to take a long, hard look at my own modus operandi.

I have always had a very easygoing attitude to parenting. My two eldest ladies have been sleeping over with friends from a very early age and it’s almost normal in our house that one or other is overnighting somewhere most weekends or has a friend to sleep over here. I’ve been known to enquire where a or b is and to be told “she’s with x tonight”. The eldest hardly bothers to tell me any more.

My liberal ways are undoubtedly as a result of my own sheltered upbringing and my determination that my children would not be overly cossetted and hence shy and ill at ease in various situations.

I am the only girl and eldest in my family and of course I was always going to be protected and my desires to succumb to peer pressure severely curtailed. And predictably I became a veritable monster when I turned about 15 and broke just about every rule there was to be broken. In fact I’m still fond of pushing boundaries in almost every area of my life. It’s second nature to me.

So, in giving my own girls free rein, I believe I am giving them confidence and maturity and independence that I so sadly lacked as a young adult. I hope they’ll feel no pressure to fit in or trail blaze. I hope they’ll feel no inadequacies but rather be happy in their own skins and able to look the world straight in the face unburdened by chips on their shoulders and insecurities.

I prefer the horse that canters unbridled and unfettered through the open field, its mane tossed by the wind, rather than the blinkered creature with the bit between its teeth that pulls at the reins and tries to shake off its rider. I believe that my role is to guide them but not to hamper them or restrain them. I hope I’m right. I hope that they clear all the fences and if they fall that they can pick themselves up and carry on. And I hope they return to the stable of their own accord because they’d like to have their noses rubbed by a friendly hand, a sugar lump and some warm hay in which to bed down.

Would you believe that my Darling Son was so full of his own independence today that he decided to have a second sleep over tonight, with his other cousins!! He is obviously enjoying it even if my sister ‘is very nearly strict’ as he told me this afternoon between sleepovers, and between admiring his new fancy dress costume and asking for a change of clothes for tomorrow. He is going to my brothers tonight.

Did I mention that I was at my mother’s? This is possibly why I am not able to distract myself. She has been clucking around me saying that ‘I have you all to myself, this evening’. Granted, that is novel for both of us to be fair, but I’m not sure how it makes me feel. She even had an emotional moment this morning telling me that she and Dad always thought I was special, mostly because I survived all their parenting inadequacies being the first child and all that. Ramblings, tinted with guilt. I can only imagine that I was a very good natured baby and my parents were very incompetent by their own admission. J.

But what is going on here? It is usually the children’s entitlement to judge their parents in hindsight of course and not the mothers role to chastise herself especially when the end result didn’t turn out too wrong even if I say so myself. Irish mothers, maybe?

And where does that leave me with my DS? It is different for us, he is an only child. In some respects it is less complex although on the opposite side of the coin the relationship can be more intense. He is the eldest, the baby, the son the daughter and most of all he is everything; the sun, the moon and the stars! Mr. Mack and I have him all to ourselves, all the time and hopefully we will be happy to share him when the time comes.

Maybe the other idle wives and mothers of many may have something to say? Do you love your children more or less or maybe just differently? Is this based on your own competencies or the nature of each child? Will you be able to share them? When they are forty something, will you have some emotional ramblings for them?

I can hear the protests from here. Am you mad? What am I talking about? To explain myself, I suppose I am looking for an unconscious answer rather than a conscious answer. It’s like our children are with us for such a short time.

It’s been a long hard day’s night! My Darling Son went on his first official sleepover, sort of. He has stayed at his Granny’s before without me or Mr. Mack but that was not usually of his own accord, if you know what I mean.
Last night was different. This time he went to stay over with his cousins, without his Mum, at the ripe old of seven and a half and it was of his own accord! The plan had been on foot for a few days but I really thought he would baulk and change his mind at the last minute. I even expected a phone call all evening to say come and get him. And if I was being totally honest, I wished the phone call had come.
It was a long day’s night because I did not have a plan to distract myself. I had no immediate use for this night of freedom and I really really thought the phone call would come. So how did I spend the evening you may ask other than wrestling with my separation anxiety?
Well, to start with, I went to the supermarket with my mother to buy wine, i.e. get in some supplies for her. ‘Shall I get some Chilean wine’, she said, reading the label in earnest ‘omg, mother, no!’ as I still have bad memories of the pain inflicted by some Chilean merlot in 2000. Next, I had to dissuade her from buying two bottles at five euro fifty….an okay bottle at that price would be luck, buying two of the same and it being okay would have about the same odds as winning the lotto.
Our next pit stop involved me spending time going through Halloween costumes for DS. He is away from me only three hours at this stage and I am still spending money on him! But guess what? I found a roman solider costume, which was just what he had wanted. Nice one!
After dinner, I phoned a friend who did not answer and I checked my email (nothing exciting) and then proceeded to google flights for imaginary weekends away. I You tube-d and Facebook-d and still no panic phone call from Darling Son.
Now, next morning, with one hour left before pick up, I can’t wait to hear how he got on, on his twenty two hour sleep over. All twenty two hours! What am I like?

I was reading something recently – probably on some fabulous parenting website for fabulous parents – about the fears that some parents have for their children in the future.

Of course there were the usual ones that we all worry about, health, happiness etc.. Some parents worried about career and money but none seemed to mention one of the huge fears that I have.

How will my parenting affect my kids in the future?  What about my psychotic pre-menstrual outbursts? or the rules that I implement that are probably doing no good at all.  None of these fabulous parents seemed to worry about the affect of their shouting at their kids and that’s probably because they’d never dream of raising their voices, particularly if it wasn’t anything the child had done but simply because the Mother was on the edge of insanity!

I do know thankfully that I’m not fully alone, (having actually spoken to others in the same situation – yes there are some!)  and while this doesn’t lessen the worry, at least in the future I can join with these other parents as we share the stories of how our grown up kids are getting on with their therapists as they go back and blame everthing that’s wrong with their lives on their childhood and their crazy distracted Mother.