Tigger mum

Date: 8:00am, 01 Feb 2012

I've finally got round to reading the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother on the rare occasions I get to read something that isn't about Floppy or Cherry the Cake Fairy. It is a great fun read and has almost inspired me to sign the girls up for violin classes, if you can get violins off freecycle.

I have been going around reading the bit about no sleepovers ever to daughter three. "Would you like me to be a Tiger Mum?" I asked the sleepover queen.

Daughter one has been being very complimentary about my lax parenting style of late since I hinted that Tiger Mums don't in any way allow children to have mobile phones and BBM their mates all day long. She claims it is "educational".

I also intimated to daughter two that I am pretty certain that TMs don't do creative play after I found her floor completely covered in glitter the other day. She had been making a lavish leaving card for her favourite ever teaching assistant. Apparently the teaching assistant has told her she is leaving for a job at Claire's Accessories. I think this is a joke, but daughter two is very impressed, although heartbroken. The card includes a maze in which the TA has to get to Claire's Accessories without being stopped by a sobbing daughter two.

A propos of nothing in particular, I was interviewed the other day about bedroom sharing, something I should think TMs are in favour of if it encourages younger siblings to work harder [I fear this is not the case in our house]. Daughter two used to love sharing with her older sister, but then her older sister kicked her out, declaring that she should be made homeless because she was too annoying. Daughter two now says she prefers her own room since daughter three has moved in with daughter one. Keep up. In any event, she is preparing to usher the baby into her room and thinks this will be "fun". As someone who currently shares a room with the baby, fun is not the first thing that springs to mind.

Daughter one is now moaning bitterly about having to share with daughter three. She told me that she had read that it was "against the law" to force children to share with their younger sisters after the age of 10. When I questioned this law and brandished the Tiger Mum book at her, she backtracked and started lavishing me with praise. "I think we should be home educated for the winter by you, Mum," she said. "We would learn so much more."

I told her that she could only be home-educated if the lessons were based around her doing my work for me, eg, English could be writing an article about why working mums need more than five minutes to have a bath; maths could be doing my accounts [the word accounts suggests there is some sort of organisation involved rather than just tipping out the contents of the drawer where I stuff all receipts]; home economics or whatever it's called nowadays could be coming up with a range of non-pasta based meals [she complains we have pasta every day...It's easy and quick. What can I say?].

Tonight we have one of daughter two's friends coming round. She has quite a narrow range of food that she eats. It basically consists of fish fingers, chicken nuggets or something called "butter sandwich". The girls are really excited because I bought chicken nuggets especially. Apparently it's Harry Styles birthday as well so it's a double celebration.

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Related tags: Parenting