Mother in Law: Growing up too fast

The list of things our children have asked us to allow them to do or have before they are at an appropriate age is huge. Deceptively Angelic Looking Child 1, in particular, is always seeking to be older than she is. I could work full time if I hadn’t spent so many hours (researching as necessary) and negotiating over: 

• Salty, branded snacks
• Cropped tops
• Chewing gum
• Curtain bangs
• Sleepovers
• Nike Pros
• Pencil skirts
• Apps like Kinzoo to allow messaging on tablets
• Then, inevitably, phones
• Then, inevitably, Whatsapp, TikTok etc
• Thin tights
• Friends (the TV show)
• Constantly later bedtimes
• Tanning drops
• Stranger Things
• The Good Girl’s Guide to Murder

There is more of this to come as we navigate sex, drugs and rock n roll in years to come (or at least alcopops). I’m not only navigating this alongside my husband, but in parallel to other parents who are navigating exactly the same things and often coming to different conclusions. Parents who don’t care if their kids look scruffy in Nike Pros, for example. On top of that there are the kids that aren’t quite honest: saying they have a phone but it is actually an old broken one, or saying they go to bed late because they did once.

My dad always says he tries to remember what he was doing at their age, because we have a tendency to think our children are younger than they are. Well. I’ll tell you what he wasn’t doing aged 12: reading A Court of Thorns and Roses series, which is what DALC1’s friend is doing right now.

I’m not a prude and think everyone should read everything. Heavens, I take my kids to the panto every year, despite the smut that won’t be going over their heads for much longer. They’ve watched Friends, which is a lot spicier than you might remember. I’ve actually taught them to appreciate the impact of a rare and well-timed curse word.

So DALC1 wanted to read these books. These Young Adult books about fairies. Her reading age is the highest the test goes to. We all know she was born with the maturity some 35 year olds are yet to have. Her friend is reading them. They sound a bit like Twilight. Just to do my due diligence, I asked my friend if she thought they were suitable. The first red flag was that she sent me photos of some of the pages as one-time-view photos.

These Thorns and Roses books use 'C' words to describe parts of the anatomy, as if those are the dictionary terms. Imagine a mash-up of 50 Shades of Gray and the Tinkerbell films. It wasn’t so long ago that DALC1’s favourite song was 'Shut Up and Dance' because it was rude to say 'shut up'. As if my brain wasn’t already about to explode with all the new term routines, clubs, homework, which of them now has a doorkey, running a team of solicitors (the easy bit), molluscum contagiosum on DALC2, requests for bento boxes rather than sandwiches and all the rest of it, I now have to worry about very inappropriate fairies. 

What it does seem to have in common with Twilight is that it is utter tripe and therefore DALC1 is not missing anything. Turns out I don’t believe everyone should read everything after all. Now just to explain to DALC1.

Some facts and identities have been altered in the above article