DEMOLITION SQUAD

This week has been a lesson in not minding. Strictly my lesson, you understand, not the children’s. They learnt the one that if you wind your mum up a lot she’ll shout and be in a bad mood. They probably knew that one already. I have had to swallow hard and put a brave face on things, while the sweet cherubs destroy everything around me.

That is a bit of an exaggeration, but doesn’t it feel like that sometimes?

Like buses, breakages come in threes. When the first treasured object hits the deck, you say with remorse - “Don’t worry, it was an accident.” When the second thing comes a cropper, you say, rather irritably, “Do try and be a bit more careful.” But when the third goes for a burton it comes as a major blow and you began to believe in conspiracies.

They’re not doing it on purpose, I know that really, and it’s Bobby who has been the main culprit. Poor boy is going through rather a clumsy phase. He also finds it hard to admit to his mistakes. It’s like living on the set of ‘The Vicar of Dibley’. Is it Frank who begins every sentence with a ‘No’ when he means ‘Yes’? Well that’s our Bobby for you.

Question: “Bobby did you break this?”

Answer: “No, no, no uh yes.”

And so it goes on. Until, of course, I become hysterical.

This is when the children know they have overstepped the mark. I’m not just pretending to be cross for their greater and better good. I really am force-nine furious and likely to explode. They creep silently upstairs, knowing it’s best to absent themselves until the storm has blown over. Suddenly the ‘Guinness Book of Records 1993’ is the most interesting book in the world. All three of them pore over it discussing how many baked beans they could eat, given the challenge.

Somehow after the baby years of endless stains and upsets, you hope that the period of destruction is over. Teaching children to look after their things as well as ours seems to be a hopeless quest. Gentler, sweeter friends reassure me that I’ll look back at these times and long for the children to be young again, happily stampeding and trashing their way through the house. I grunt in reply.

As usual it’s all about money. Buying things only to throw them away seems to be a fairly pointless activity and somehow I need to make this clear. Some people have a system of pocket money privation, but how do you do that when the broken CD player will cost £150 to replace and they only get a £1 or £2 a week? That would be the end of pocket money for a very long time.

I have a friend whose children argued so much over turns on the Playstation that she threatened a year without it if they continued their squabbling. They didn’t heed the warning and were duly banned for a whole year. I admire her enormously for carrying this through. I know I would give in on the first rainy Sunday. So, once more, it’s all about parenting. Having the strength to lay down the rules and then stick to them is possibly the hardest thing. I don’t have the easy solution, I wish I did.

Life in the Slow Lane is written by Clare Kent. She has three children - Max is nearly eleven, Flo is nearly eight and Bobby is six and a half - and lives in Wiltshire.