THAT IS SO NOT FAAIIRRRR!!!

That is so not FAAIIRRR!!! is something we all recognise as parents.  We all agreed that my youngest son should move into his older brother’s room whilst he was away at university and at the time it was equally agreed that when he came back for holidays (because invariably he had his girlfriend with him) he would get his room back. This seemed like a brilliant solution until we realised quite how many holidays he had and so it became quite disruptive frankly all round. Now, the Easter and Summer holidays are looming and then quite possibly my eldest child will move back in to find a job. In the meantime, my youngest has thrown a wobbly that he doesn’t essentially have a proper room and that he should now get the big one because he is the only one living at home and it’s so not faaiiirrr that he has to keep moving out and all his brother’s shit is still everywhere….

I’m not sure what to do. Is there a code? I lost my room when my parents moved back from HK. I’m not suggesting that I never move so that the kids can feel like they’re back in the womb, but the third bedroom is literally the “size of a meatball” (as my niece described it) or a small cupboard so it’s going to be a massive problem for my oldest to move in there. I appreciate this is a first world problem, but not sure if it should be a given that the youngest takes over the space when the oldest moves away and then proprietorially refuses to leave it when he comes back or that rooms should be saved as otherwise you can massively put out a child and traumatise them forever.

I just want to do the right thing by all the kids and I’m never going to win this one unless I buy them a new house, which isn’t obviously going to happen. One of them is going to be very pissed off and then they will need life long counselling and immediately forget about all that effort I put into childrearing and blame me for their alcohol problem in later life. You know that invisible badge we all wear that says “it’s all my parents fault”? Well I blame all my disasters and unattractive traits (too many to mention) on the fact that my mother refused to buy me a pair of black patent shoes to wear to parties. All my friends had them. I had found the pair I wanted, had even offered to pay half (I seem to recall) and they were FLAT – it’s not as if they had six inch heels and I was going to fall over or worse turn into the wrong sort of girl overnight. There was nothing wrong with them. They were perfect and I wasn’t allowed them. It was as bad a feeling as not being able to marry Donny Osmond. Since then I don’t really remember any of the parties – except the one where the guinea pig wee’d on me and my mother had to come and collect me. BUT WHY COULDN’T I HAVE HAD THEM? What harm would it have done? It would have made me very very happy.

I suspect we all carry that sense of injustice against something unreasonable that our parents did. Whether it was denying us something or simply enforcing rules that did not make sense. To be honest, they still don’t make sense. NO SWIMMING AFTER EATING was difficult as we lived in Hong Kong and so I’m sure I spent most of my weekends sitting about waiting for my parents to wake up or sober up enough to let us go in the water so that they could then pretend to watch us not drowning from some bizarre cramp that was to develop as soon as food + external water + vague activity occurred. NO GOING OUT AFTER 10.30PM – was another one. This was hugely traumatic as I was 16 and had a boyfriend and all my friends were allowed to stay our way longer than I was. This resulted in my boyfriend sleeping with one of my best friends. So that trauma that still haunts me today is totally their fault. NO CHEWING GUM because I was going to swallow it all and end up needing a massive operation to remove a football sized object. NO NUTELLA – that was only for my mother to eat when she thought we weren’t looking… and so the list goes on.

This is the reason that I try and buy shoes for my children when they want them, which unfortunately means that I seem to be encouraging some sort of shoe fetish in my youngest son, which is a little alarming – but hey he’s going to have to blame me for something, so why not that. At least I’ll be able to explain it and he’ll feel sorry for me and understand.