Smooth or Crunchy?

As parents you try to do the best for your kids.

It can be difficult alongside that quest to achieve the perfect life balance of work and family which from my own experience is a bit of a modern myth like increased leisure time and a paperless office.

When starting a family of your own you should not underestimate the impact of facing situations and challenges in child rearing that are new and also a little bit frightening.

The first born is always firmly swaddled and protected against any germs, draughts, wayward bugs and particles of dust and it is not until you drop them for the first time, wholly accidentally and without harm, that you begin to relax a little bit and become a better parent for it.

The second child, or in our case the middle child, benefits from the amassing of knowledge from the earlier arrival and things are less fraught and riddled with angst and stress.

By the time the third arrives on the scene why not just go for it!

There is an overwhelming sense of confidence, maturity and well being.

So, there we found ourselves in our late twenties and as early thirty somethings with a larger than post-nuclear sized family unit.

That took a bit of gearing up in terms of financial income, housing provision and mode of transport but we managed it thanks to a multitude of blessings and the support of those around us.

We also had the luxury of plenty of time to devote to our three children from simple playing and reading to going out to interesting places and sampling different lifestyles and cultures.

Of course we could not think about anything like an overseas holiday until some years in the future as costs aside we could not work out the logistics required to do this successfully.

There were plenty of UK destinations for us from a beachside caravan to a lochside cottage, a borrowed house to a log cabin.

I forgot to mention that we also had two dogs, in fact they predated the arrival of children and on reflection were ideal training for their subsequent arrival. Many a time we would find a coagulated single entity curled up asleep on the living room floor comprising two dogs bodies and small infants in perfect harmonious existence- until that is we discovered that worms are easily passed from canines to humans. That sort of infestation is only really trumped in parental shock by the presence of hair lice.

Schooling was good for the developmental skills of our three and they were in the system from a very early age with a local pre-school play group.

Evenings and weekends were taken up with driving to and from the usual activities of ballet practice, brownies, friends' parties and functions but all character forming and therefore well worth the effort as parents to get them suitably clothed, equipped and on time at each of these.

We were not disappointed or disillusioned as one by one our children did not settle into these traditional activities as we could see that they were finding their own way in the world.

Looking back now those years were on a constant fast forward pace and it was not long before our three were teenagers and then into their twenties.

We do get some occasional feedback, or as I call it customer ratings, from them which is heartwarming.

Perhaps we could have done things differently and better but our three have become good citizens with a social conscience and sense of justice which suggests that we ticked a few boxes in the upbringing discipline. That sounds like they are conformists and a bit dull but nothing could be further from the truth than that.

Then, just as you feel a congratulatory self slap on the back is in order there was the shattering revelation, just this week, by our middle child.

It came in a dreaded text message, that purveyor of glad and ill tidings.

It turns out that middle child had just found out about the indulgent delights, at the age of 26 ,of eating peanut butter straight from the jar with a spoon.

I cannot explain how this rite of passage was omitted from her developmental years.

As parents we must have taken our collective eye off this fundamental life affirming experience, one  of the joys of childhood.

Can we ever be forgiven for this lack of care, dereliction of duty and negligence?

We just hope so.