Mother in Law: Let the kids get messy

'I love it when we can let her off the lead,' said Deceptively Angelic Child no.1 the other day when we were walking the Enormous Puppy. As we let her off, as usual, it was immediately as if she didn’t have any aches or pains (Reader, I’ve been writing this column a long time and she is now, actually, far from a puppy) and she frolicked like a spring lamb through the fields. The instant joy as she bounded around the fields, just for the sheer hell of it, lifted the perpetually highly strung and anxious DALC1 and, really, anyone who may have had the good fortune to have seen her.

The thing is, though, it is February and this was not some scene reminiscent of Theresa May leaping through fields of wheat in her youth. It was boggy. She might not be a puppy anymore but she is certainly still enormous. That’s a lot of mud coming back into our house every day. But you know what? We bought the dog. We want the dog to frolick. So it is fine.

When I picked DALC2 up from school last Friday, she looked like she had been in a bog herself.

'What the hell?' I said loudly, before remembering you’re not supposed to say that sort of thing at a church school.

'I played rugby at lunchtime,' she replied. Rugby? Really? Is that where we are now? Have girls, they said.

'Your ears will end up like cauliflowers,' I told her.

'No they won’t,' she said, laughing at me.

'They LITERALLY will,' I said.

Anyway. I had some PTA jobs to attend to for about 20 minutes after pick-up and during that time eight mums came up and told DALC2 off for getting so dirty. Four of them then told me off for not being stricter, or seeming to care at all, really, that *shock* her uniform was going to have to go in the washing machine on a Friday after school.

If someone has ever told off your child in your presence, you will know how I felt. By the seventh or eighth telling-off, DALC2’s chin was quivering as she tried to keep up the 'ladz ladz ladz' bravado she had walked out of her classroom with. 

I had to bat away eight lots of 'I’d be very cross if you were my little girl'/'You’ll never get that mud out'/'You’ll have to take her pocket money to buy some new uniform' with 'I’ll stick it in some bleach'/'I think it is an old shirt of DALC1’s, not to worry'/'I’m just pleased she had such a good day'. Eight times.

This is, of course, not to mention the fact that half of the boys come out looking like this most days and don’t get ripped apart by the Persil Mums.

So my message this week is this: if you are going to have kids, or dogs, and not allow them to get messy, maybe you should be spending your wild and precious life with a stamp collection and one of those Sphinx cats instead.

And watch out - because if you happen to be the next person to tell off one of my kids in front of me, when I am perfectly capable of telling them off myself if I so choose, we might really have to take our dialogue outside of the church school gates.

Some facts and identities have been altered in the above article