Dear LPG.

I think that I read somewhere about the importance of treating your children equally fairly, and I remember trying really hard to make sure that my twin boys were aware of my efforts to do this all through their respective childhoods.  I no longer drive but try to make the time to visit each of my sons and now, even though they have grown up and forged themselves lives of their own which include work, wives and children, and in spite of the fact that they both live some 40 miles away from me, and about twenty miles from each other, I find that making such visits keeps me up to date with what is going on in their lives in a much more detailed way than talking on the phone or computer video calls will ever do.

They are now in their early forties and consumed with the obligations that their young families have added to their lives, but I have found it really sobering when I realise how similar they were as children and twenty-something young men, and how different they are now. 

They are too far away for a one day visit and so I find myself packing an overnight bag and facing an overnight stay, but I have to say that the house rules never cease to amaze me.  Their house rules are quite similar and include ‘take  your shoes off at the front door’, ‘rinsing tea cups and putting them in the dish washer as soon as they are finished with,  and a complete ban on soap operas.  I have to admit to having had house rules myself when they were children. The rules were slightly different but they were my children and I considered the rules I put in place to be a part of their social education.

I need to explain that their rules appear to be the result of joint efforts and influenced by very different daughters-in-law.   I have concluded, after many conversations on the subject, when talking to my friends, that I appear to get on surprisingly well with mine. 

There is one overriding difference though and that is in one of my children’s homes examples of acceptable behaviour are laid out on arrival while in the other they are shown with comments like ‘this is what we do but you don’t have to Mum’  and a visually hinted-at example.  In the former my grandchildren are now at University while my other son’s children are some six years younger. 

Now I look back it occurs to me that all the house rules I had in place gradually got relaxed when they left home, so all I have to do is wait a few years for things to improve in house number two although I always take my tablet so that I can watch ‘corrie’ in the guest room.

It is a little unfair though, they do drive when they visit me and have no need to be there overnight, but even so, they never observe the rules that they grew up with.  Would I change things? I would, but I have more time to tidy up after them when they leave I suppose.

…just an observation… 

  RN, Brockley