Sleeping arrangements

OK, and while we are considering family guidelines, let’s refresh our memories on how to handle sleeping parents:

Let them sleep

A sleeping parent is a beautiful thing. Consider how peaceful and undemanding they are in this state. Consider also how much unpleasantness may be avoided by allowing them wake naturally. Some crucial wonderings should remain in your head and not be verbalised before the alarm. These include things like:

• Can I have hot school dinners tomorrow?
• I have nothing to do
• I can't find the iPad charger
• Noodle has no pouches/cat biscuits left
• When is it my birthday again?

Conversations that begin before 7am with any of the above opening lines will not go well.

Very occasionally it may be unavoidable to disturb a sleeping parent, but I reiterate, these will be rare situations that demand an urgent response from a grown up (well, me or your dad). Examples are:

• Blood loss
• Fire
• Vomiting

In between these two extremes lies another, less clearly defined group of scenarios. These are instances which are more pressing that the lack of imagination or cat food, but do not involve haemorrhaging. In these 'in-between' cases, may I suggest you first assess the situation to establish that adult intervention is absolutely necessary, then approach the bed quietly and in darkness and whisper to get our attention. Examples of such situations here are:

• Nightmares (I admit, monsters are deeply afraid of our warm double bed and never bother us)
• Pain (Please pick up the Calpol on your way in and I'll do the fiddly child lock thing once my hands wake up)
• Christmas Day (After 7am. And bring me a cup of tea to sip while we look through your stocking)

Thank you for doing life with us. Please re-familiarise yourselves with the above to maximise the good bits. XXX

Monday morning

I wake up to much shouting downstairs this morning. From under my duvet I can hear raised voices. The children are having breakfast. Apparently there has been a large cereal spillage. My eldest child is (loudly) attempting to coordinate a clean up operation with assistance from the youngest. She is (loudly) unwilling to give it, and stating their strategy should be to proceed upstairs and inform me. He (loudly) states that they can handle this situation without my help and as she was the spiller, she should contribute to the clean up. They argue (loudly) about their strategy for many minutes, but are unable to reach a consensus.

I do not handle loud noise in the morning. I mutter under my breath as I stumble downstairs and into the kitchen. They stop arguing as they see me appear in the doorway. I walk into the kitchen and give both a 'bad mark' on their pocket money chart before saying good morning.

Eldest child leaves the room in tears of righteous anger. Youngest is also tearful but apologetic. Middle child calmly looks up from his weetabix and asks, 'Mummy- can we have a private chat when I've finished this please?' I perform the clean up while middle child scrapes his bowl clean, before following him into an empty room. He closes the door behind us and whispers loudly 'You're being a weeeeeeeeeeee bit stressey this morning...'