Yes Darling, You Can Always Live With Me — and Other Tales We Tell Our Children

I find my daughter endlessly funny and entertaining. Every day she comes out with something either incredibly insightful, or weird, or knowledgable, or all of the above.

At age 7, she is very sure that she will always, always live with me and discussing otherwise brings about buckets of tears (hers, not mine). She is determined that she will never have children “because it hurts”, and she doesn’t quite understand that her dad will always be her dad, like I will always be her mum, because “it’s your belly that I came out of” (hence a very brief conversation about a seed that daddy gave mummy – I don’t think we’re ready for an attempt at the IVF conversation yet…).

It’s so fascinating the way their minds work at this kind of age. She is desperate to be a grown-up even though I tell her it is a lot harder than it looks; she wants to be as tall as me and to be able to make her own rules and watch Netflix for as long as she wants and go to bed when she damn well pleases. But she also never wants to leave home, or get married (other than to her best friend) or have any offspring of her own or tidy up after herself. Although I’m with her on that last one.

She suddenly seems so grown up, and yet, she can switch from happy and well-behaved to crying her eyes out in two seconds flat and throwing herself on the floor. I mean, I guess I can be the same and I’m nearly 35 so it’s fair enough. But it’s such a sharp contrast.

Sometimes I hear her talking and think ‘how the hell are you only seven?’ and then another time I realise that she is waiting to kiss her ‘boyfriend’ goodbye after school before she will come out to me, and I am flashed forward in time to her being sixteen and I am terrified.

How can this be happening already? It feels so wrong and so early, and yet, I remember being about 5 and following my ‘boyfriend’ around the playground asking him who his girlfriend was over and over (I’ve clearly always been needy).

It’s funny the stuff we tell our kids to avoid certain conversations, or to keep the excitement about something alive for as long as possible. I know some people have a problem with telling children any kind of ‘white lie’ at all, but I don’t see a problem with it.

I do completely understand that it’s important to generally be open and honest with them and we should do it in an age-appropriate way. But when my daughter is crying her eyes out because she’s overtired and wants me to promise her that she will never, ever, ever have to move out of my house, I am not going to tell her the truth: that she will bloody be moving out on her 18th birthday and taking any siblings with her to be their new mother now that she is an adult, and I will be going off round the world to celebrate my new found freedom, thank you and goodbye.

But seriously, I am obviously going to tell her that OF COURSE she can always live with me, because telling her that she actually won’t always want to also brings on buckets of tears. I think it’s fine to not always tell your children the truth and I will continue until the time is right in her life to be honest about each of them.

It’s such a funny and interesting age – she is so wonderful to talk to and have fun with and can seem so grown up and can give me such attitude and be very hard work. But she is also still my baby and quite often acts like it too! I love spending time with her and she’s such good company; she feels like my little buddy when we’re out and about together, or doing some housework with music blaring and we dance and sing together. I really love this age.