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Puppy Mummy

 

Are you a cougar / tiger / panther parent? (What is up with the felines names?) To be honest although I swerve from one to the other on a near daily basis, over all I am the ‘please just have it if it will make you smile and be quite’ mum which I guess makes me more of a Puppy Mum than an all-powerful tiger.

Don’t get me wrong, there are moments when the pushy, bossy mum comes into force, for instance Princess has decided she doesn’t want to go swimming. What she really means is she doesn’t want to wake up early on a weekend morning to go swimming and truth be told, I don’t want to either. Now, Puppy Mum would roll over and tell Princess to go back to bed, enjoy her (my) morning lay in and forget about the lessons that have already been paid for. Obviously on an occasion such as this, it’s all about channelling the inner Tiger Mum, telling a little white lie (the law says all under 10’s must go to swimming lessons…) and pushing her towards the door with a towel in tow.

Swimming is for her greater good, it teaches discipline, is a life saving skill, helps her keep active, is proven to help with asthma and gives her a chance to socialise with people outside of her normal school circle. Granted, there is something in it for me. I get to sit in a warm place sipping a latte for 30mins in relative silence thanks to the lessons being so early in the morning that the parents are equally tired and quite appropriately avoid all forms of conversation.

Yes, part of me does have Olympic fever and wouldn’t mind bragging (in a practised humble fashion) about the hours of pool sessions I mercilessly took Princess to in order to have her win those 3 gold medals but even if she never gets further than our local pool it will all be worth it . I think her real talent lies in her singing and acting skills anyway. I probably will take Princess to acting lessons when she’s a little older and possibly gymnastic lessons in the next 12 months. But that’s more about the Puppy Mum surfacing its cute fluffy head and wanting to keep her happy and relatively quiet rather than trying to push her into greatness and flashing camera lights. She has friends who attend both classes and wants to be with them after school, because you remember how it is to be young(er), seeing your friends all day for 8 hours just isn’t enough!

So I’m a hybrid of parenting styles depending on how the mood takes me, how trivial the matter at hand is and most importantly how much sleep I’m having in any particular week. But isn’t that the case with most parents? Surely your attention span is far too short to stick to one style all of the time?