The Birds and THE BEES

Sharing her parenting skills online to benefit less-efficient mums was a great idea, wasn’t it?

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Alexis didn’t like to criticise other young mothers. Parenting was hard, the hardest thing a person could do. All the books about parenting said so on their opening pages and all mums needed the benefit of the doubt. It was all about having a little understanding.

But in the five years since Poppy’s birth, Alexis had seen some feeble efforts at mum-and-child groups. She had seen inconsistent rewards, and threats not carried out – both rookie errors. She had seen mums losing their temper without good reason. And the food! Alexis would let hardly any of the stuff she’d seen past Poppy’s lips. She and Connor gave a great deal of thought to every interaction they had with Poppy and they made detailed joint decisions.

‘You could write a book,’ Connor told her.

‘I was actually thinking about a blog,’ Alexis said. ‘I could call it How To Be A Mum, by Someone Having A Stab At It.’

Connor kissed her nose before taking Poppy’s hand. They were going to the park for exercise.

‘Perfect!’ he said. ‘That’s exactly the right balance of confidence and humility.’

They were a great team.

Poppy was asking a lot of questions these days, and Alexis had studied, in-depth, the right way to respond.

‘It’s not rocket science,’ she told her friend Rachel. ‘In essence, we should simply give the child as much truth as possible without making them feel anxious or overburdened. I can lend you the best book I have on the –’