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.

‘Have you ever wondered why you had kids?’ my - older, recently married, very generous – sister with no children asked on the occasion of our return to collect our kids.  Big Sis and her husband took over our parenting duties for the weekend, while my Husband (Dear) and I got away from it all.  ‘Frequently’ I answered  ‘but fleetingly’ I added quickly and chuckled so I didn’t sound so . . .  candid ! 

BS had apparently had a bit of an ‘all too much’ moment the previous day when our three cherubs were being very enthusiastic about something and the question had struck her.  

In the meantime, we – Dear and I – had been having a lovely, relaxing time of it just lolling about, reading books and going for sun-filled walks in the country.  !!

 Then there was lunch spent in a beautiful restaurant, with a gorgeous vista of vines and olive trees set amongst softly rolling hills with art installations dotted around here and there.  A wonderful three hours I can tell you now.  Yes – three hours.  With absolutely no interruptions!  Well, we did have to look at the menu from time to time to choose our next delectable morsel and our choice of wine to accompany it.  Then there was the adult waiter to confer with about exactly which morsel would best suit our needs at that particular moment in time. 

 But best of all was spending three hours just talking with my Dear.  And we did just that.  We didn’t at any time run out of things to say.  We laughed, were thoughtful and spent time just catching up on the last few days, weeks, months – since we last had time to just talk.  Bliss. 

 Thank God and all the universe for weekends away with your loved one.

 Then we returned to the cherubs.  

 I love them all dearly and actually like them too – most of the time.  It was great to see them again and they were very very excited to see us.  Once back home, there was that fall back into reality and routine which isn’t all that bad really, it’s just not a three hour lunch . . . 

 So yes, getting back to the question, I have on occasion wondered why we had kids and I expect you can imagine the sort of occasion that might be.  I can’t exactly say why we did, but all in all I’m very pleased we did.  The ups and downs of life with them is a rollercoaster ride – exciting, fun, fulfilling and eventful.  I imagine we’d be very bored without them (well maybe). 

 And then there’s the love we have for each other.  Well actually, the love we have for them and they have for us and just maybe, on the very odd occasion, the love they have for each other !

 Plus, I can’t think of anything I’d want to swap for a big bear hug from a very special cherub – possibly not even a three hour lunch !

Apparently I am a bit weird. The graphic designer that I have working on a prospectus told me that mine was the last e-mail that he received at 2 a.m. and the first that he received at 8 a.m. Did I sleep, he wondered, ever? I told him that I had been up finishing off my beef stew (oh, yeah, I’ve abandoned the French. Yes, I’ve been slagged enough today). I told him that if it could be sent via e-mail, it would be on his desk by now. He deserves it.

You see, in the last little while, I’ve been making a lot of mistakes. I don’t make mistakes very often or at least I didn’t up until I left my job over a year ago. Somehow the routine of work kept me on the straight and narrow and the fact that little mistakes could cost thousands focussed me on the job at hand. But this football thing has my head very messed up. And these mistakes keep being noticed by other people before I notice them. I don’t like that one little bit. If I f*** up, I like to find out before anyone else does so I can fix it before anyone else grimaces disapprovingly in my direction.

I was in particularly foul form a few days ago after having several mistakes pointed out to me and really not in the humour for two of my children to behave as though I was a piece of furniture rather than their mother. I lost it, spectacularly, and said I was off. The older one continued de-stalking strawberries for her smootie and the younger shrugged her shoulders. As I stormed from the room, the older one directed the following utterance at the food processor “don’t you think you’re a bit old for that kind of behaviour”.

Am I? Does one ever grow out of throwing a strop that a gay fashion designer would be proud of? Or am I really as self-obsessed as one of my good friends keeps reminding me I am? The friend, aka anyone else, of the mistake-pointing-out. The same one I delivered a little package of beef stew to earlier today, apologising that the potatoes were floury when they should be waxy.

I had the table set for dinner before I went round to my friend and I admit to feeling very virtuous as I told everyone to take their seats at the abnormally early time of 6 p.m. (we eat late in this house, a consequence of my anti-social football schedule) opened the oven door, celebrity chef-style, and proudly carried my creation to the table. My youngest doesn’t mince her words. “I hate it” she pronounced. The other two were more vocal. So, having been marched upstairs to spend the evening in their bedrooms without dinner, eldest has since returned to the kitchen to apologise for not giving my dinner a chance. Too late of course. It’s been devoured by myself and their father. And so she busies herself making macaroni cheese (her favourite). Note to self – do not eat all the dinner when the kids say they hate it. They’ll be back.

And so I send e-mails in the wee hours and first thing in the morning because I’m determined to make a better fist of it and to be on top of things and because all I really want is approval. After all, an idle wife doesn’t really want to be reminded that maybe that’s all she should be. Am I being a little hard on myself? Maybe, just maybe, 5 hours sleep isn’t enough anymore and maybe, just maybe, those floury potatoes won’t be so offensive because the beef is so good.