MONEY LAUNDERING

I've been nagging Marcel for weeks (years?) about his inability to remember to put his laundry in the washing basket or the washing machine. Tonight once again I tried crossing his room only to be ensnared in three very large dirty bath towels, last Friday's uniform and five odd socks. I brought them down, as he was visiting his father, and stuck them in the basket in the downstairs bathroom. Meanwhile, I went to empty the tumble dryer, and came across a £10 note. I knew it wasn't mine because I have no trousers with pockets that currently fit me. Thomas had no recollection either of losing a tenner. I knew where my bet would be, so I put it in my purse and waited... Marcel returned at 8pm. About ten minutes after he went to bed, he came running downstairs in a panic. Where is the washing I left on my floor? he asked. I pointed at the laundry basket, though had a vague notion, I could already guess what he was searching for. I left him to hunt. Ten minutes later, he asked if I had found a tenner lying anywhere in the house, or my car over the weekend. Funny you should ask... I said, because I happened to find one today in the tumble dryer after I washed and dried the clothes. It must have been in someone's pocket. He visibly paled Did the ink run? Did it shrink???? As I fished in my bag for my purse, I tortured him with stories of possibly shrunken, visibly wrinkly notes. I'm evil I know but you have to get them to empty their own pockets when there are so many people in a family, or you could spend you life emptying pockets (just ask Thomas about his hankies!) and I figured the shock treatment might do the trick. Of course Marcel's tenner hadn't shrunk. It simply looked rather comically wrinkled. Marcel decided to iron it just to be sure it would look authentic when he tried to spend it. I guess this is money laundering at its most basic. Hopefully, the lesson will have been learnt now... and if not - at least I had a laugh!

DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO PARENTING

I have noticed that parents, or at least the ones I know, seem to fall into two categories. The first group seems to try to fill junior's every waking hour with fun activities and sports and their parent runs around like an exhausted taxi driver skipping meals to get them from A to B. In my experience, this type looks rather blank when you ask how junior ever fits in helping around the house. The second type tries to give junior an insight into the life that will soon be upon him while still trying to make sure childhood isn't all boring chores. I have several friends who roll their eyes in disbelief when they hear me ask the kids what they want to cook on their respective cooking nights, or when I ask Marcel if he's ironed his shirt for school. Tonight Lots made homemade meatballs in bolognese sauce and spaghetti, while Léon and Anna helped to peel the garlic and pick the parsley in the garden. Of course my kids may bitch when they are older that their mother was a slave driver and their friends were all out learning tennis, but I would prefer to think that on their first night alone in their own flat they won't need to ring me, as one student friend did to me back in 1987 when we left home, to ask how you cook a cabbage because her parents had never taught her to cook...

A STRANGELY ANNOYING COURSE

The kids came home from school the other week with a leaflet from East Renfrewshire council child psychology department saying they were running some free Parenting Workshops. Given the world has changed a little since I was a teenager, I thought it might be a wise move to sign up for some free advice to keep Marcel, in particular, as he is the oldest, on the straight and narrow as life throws some new challenges at him. Thomas decided to come too. We went to all the hassle of arranging babysitters on a week night and dashing out just 15 minutes after Thomas comes home from work to a 2 hour session. The psychologist told us straight out he would offer no advice and give no opinions, he was just there as a facilitator. The course basically consisted of couples being split up, so they were no longer discussing relevant kids, but instead were discussing child management with a stranger who randomly had a kid of a completely different age. Given we received a course book, I am tempted to simply take it to bed and try the role plays and discussions with a more relevant adult about 4 more relevant kids... Let's see how that strategy goes before committing to another dash across the back road to Barrhead in the pouring rain still chewing on my dinner...

IS IT THE WIDMANN GENES?

Back in Stansted
Originally uploaded by PhylB

Last week I was discussing the genetics of baby Anna's motor skills. This week I am more interested in the differences in her character.

Since I became a mother I have often felt vaguely puzzled by the age indicators on toys - I mean the Not suitable for the under 3s classification. The reason being that none of my kids has ever put anything unsuitable in their mouth - I could leave any of the others in a room with the floor literally covered in nails, age 3+ lego, coins, marbles, you name it and they'd have picked it up, looked at it and replaced it on the floor. Pudge spent his crawling months in Thomas's flat navigating between screws, Stanley knives and electric saws. Anna on the other hand has explained to me in the space of 2 weeks what the 3+ thing is all about. This annoying little person picks up everything - foam, leaves, stones, bugs (probably wasps for all I know), sticks them in her mouth and chews on them happily for hours until either an adult pulls the things back out or she chokes to death - whatever comes first.

I am left with no choice but to either supervise this one - God forbid, or invent some device to suspend her from the ceiling about a metre above the floor until her 3rd birthday...

BABIES WIPED

I used to think baby wipes were a great invention. If you've ever changed a baby's pooy bum, you love baby wipes. But I think they could be creating an OCD generation!
As a photographer, I love nothing more than leaving my kids, the smaller the better, with mucky food and waiting for the photo opportunity to develop.
The other day was a wonderful example. I left the dining room to answer the phone leaving Marcel, Lots and Pudge eating Heinz tomato soup. Unknown to me Marcel and Lots finished and left Pudge alone. I returned to the dining room where Léon had dipped both his hands in the soup and was gleefully squelching the soup between his pudgy fingers. I remained hidden. He then did two handprints on the wooden table and started covering the table in soup from end to end squealing in excitement. I appeared in the doorway, Léon jumped in fright, knowing that he'd made a huge mess. He held his arms outstretched and said I think I need to give you a sorry hug! Sweeeeeeeeet! I wasn't mad with him - I'd watched a simple joy of childhood - the discovery of texture - messy play.
Kids are meant to be dirty. :-) They aren't meant to be wiped between every mouthful of yogurt in case their clothes get soiled. In this day and age with washing machines and tumble dryers it is not hassle to wash dirty clothes so why tell a kid it isn't meant to get dirty? They learn through investigating. Just watch Léon in our vegetable patch discovering how potatoes grow, where worms live etc. I hear kids in the summer saying 'I'm not allowed to get wet'. Why the hell not? - childhood is about getting wet with water pistols, playing in the mud. It's adults putting their own adult hang-ups onto their kids. By wiping the babies from birth we are subliminally telling them being dirty is bad, so getting dirty starts to freak them out. We are the ones making the kids hate being dirty, they aren't naturally against dirt.
Sadly the message they are really getting is Grow up too fast - being a child isn't allowed! Sad :-(

ROUTINE

As a parent, you often hear about the importance of routine for your baby. Get it into a routine as soon as possible. With fewer and fewer extended families people are getting their parenting skills from books rather than watching others, and sometimes rather than common sense.
It does help with a small child to have a bath, story bed routine at more or less the same time every night. But I think 'more or less' is where it should stop. I know so many people who think that means a rigid time for each of these things that must never be broken. Instead of using the routine to make their lives easier, they use the routine to make their lives a nightmare. These parents, instead of taking junior to the odd activity that would mean disrupting this routine, arrange babysitters, or worse still call off all other activities until junior reaches 10. Of course the knock-on effect is that the annual family holiday becomes a stressful nightmare instead of a relaxing time because you have to find flight times to accommodate junior's bedtime and meal times. They don't realize that by breaking the baby's routine - skipping his bath once or twice a week as a baby, shifting his mealtime by as much as an hour, not being able to give him a nap at the correct time, they would actually be creating an adaptable child who could cope with what real life will throw at him.
I got to thinking about this after yesterday's travel fiasco. I know so many people who'd have cracked under the pressure of potentially being stranded 4 days at Stansted with a 7month old, a 2.5 year old, an 8 year old and an 11 year old. And I know so many kids who would not have been able to cope with dinner being suddenly moved from our usual 6-30 to 11pm, bedtime being falling asleep on a bench in Stansted at 1am after no bath or story, the lights on all night, check-in for the new flight being 4-30am and a subsequent 6 hour 4 train journey.
My kids are adaptable, calm little human beings in a crisis not because of routine but because of the lack of rigidity in their routine. They have a set dinner time, bed time etc but these can be moved when necessary, and often enough that they are not freaked out when they need to be moved. This has been the case since babyhood - if you leave introducing this concept till they are old enough to understand, their routine and expectations are already too rigid for them to cope with the adversities of real life. Not only will my kids always be copers in life but they will know that some times even adversity itself can be fun.

HOW MANY KIDS?

All my kids in Largs
Originally uploaded by PhylB

Time and again I find myself being asked how many kids I have. My answer often shocks. On a Friday, for example, I take the two wee ones to Mother and Toddlers, and I am often asked things like - How are you finding it now you have 2? Last Saturday Charlotte and Léon were invited to a party so I took them and Anna, leaving Marcel to play golf with my dad. Again I was asked by strangers if Anna was my 3rd baby. Always when I reply 4, people look stunned and invariably, because they have one or two kids themselves, ask How do you cope? I started to analyse it. Obviously I have experience of having an only child - I did that for 29 months. I have experience of having just 2 - that lasted five and a half years. I have been mum to 3 - for nearly two and a half years. And now I'm trying out 4. My experience ironically, given the average number of kids people have, is that the hardest number of kids to have - by a mile - is actually 2. When you have 1, you have to entertain them more but there is no niggling. Personally, I'd rule out 1 as being too high maintenance. When you have just two, especially when they are within a few years of each other, their main pastime, from they learn to talk until they leave home is fighting, arguing, winding, niggling... There is no one there to distract or change the focus so the two kid family is sibling rivalry all the road. When you throw a third wee baby into the mix, 1 and 2 still fight but they are distracted several times a day by this bright shiny new sibling. It brings out their protective instinct - the 2 fighting sibs suddenly find themselves on the same side admiring number 3, loving number 3, playing with number 3. Number 4 simply strengthens that position. It gives more reasons for the older ones to help, love and be on the same side. I think the mistake many people make these days is to get to two, feel tired and stressed and assume coping with any more would just be too hard. I would suggest, given that childcare for 2 is now so expensive many women are giving up working anyway, that more should at least try out a third - just to see if I am right!

A CAGED GENERATION

Children in Cage
Originally uploaded by Mr. Guybrarian

I like to watch Child of our Time, given that the 25 kids it is following were all born within days of Charlotte. I generally like the psychological tests and know instinctively whether or not Lots would have conformed to the general outcomes. When they were analysing how the kids conformed along gender lines last week, I just knew Charlotte, if left to her own devices, had she been chosen for the study, would not have come out the changing room in the mini-adult pink sparkly dress all the other girls chose, for example.
This week was interesting on many levels. It followed 24 hours in all 25 8 year old kids' lives. The statistics it gave were dreadful. I felt more and more smug as the programme went on because I realized I was actually doing better than most of the families.

The first surprising statistic was that only 3 of 25 kids ever sat at a table with the rest of their family for an evening meal. The majority ate quick foods in front of the TV on the couch. In some families the mum ate at a table with the kids while the dad came home too late. The last and also popular scenario was one where the kids were fed and sent to bed before the adults even started to think about their meal. Twenty two of the twenty five kids had no concept of a family meal. That in itself might not seem important but the dinner table is a place where families talk about their day. It is a place of communication. Communication between partners but also as your kids get older and want to spend more time with friends or in front TV, a small chance for you to have relaxed communication with your child. Having spent years married to a man who came home and checked the microwave after we'd eaten every night, I set that as one of the rules for my new life. We'd have a meal at the table every night at about the same time and it would only be moved or cancelled in exceptional circumstances. There are 2 more rules in my house: no toys at the table, no texting at the table. This may annoy the kids but it means the family meal is just that - a family meal. I sat gobsmacked watching kids play, read, text, even play play station while eating alone. They did everything but eat and talk.
The next astounding statistic was the number of hours kids watched TV or played PS2 (and the likes). Ask my kids, I am the first to rant constantly that they are turning into zombies, that the TV has to go off and I jump up and down like an irate lunatic. So I was worse than horrified to find out my kids actually were at the low end of the TV hours scale. There were kids watching 9 hours in a row on there!
Next, but no surprise to me were the hot house kids, as I like to refer to them. I see them at my kids' school every day. I mean the kids that are enrolled in so many afterschool activities that they don't actually get a minute to draw a breath. They run from school to football, to piano, to chess, to karate. They have to buy a takeaway and eat it in the car as they don't actually get home till bedtime and their parents are always moaning their kids can't fit in homework. And the parents, of course, never see each other! I sat in horror watching a crazy mother driving her kid to tennis lessons 4 times a week over an hour's drive from home, returning all 4 nights at bedtime. The 8 year old cried a tantrumed in such a dangerous manner beside her in the car from exhaustion, that I genuinely think she should have stopped driving as she couldn't possibly have been concentrating on the road. What benefit is this regime to an 8 year old? I have nothing against the odd afterschool activity - My 2 big ones have tried several: football, martial arts, badminton, swimming, tennis - but an hour, 2 at most a week, never 4pm-8pm every night. Let them have time to relax, play, use their imagination!
Finally, and worst of all I sat with my mouth hanging open as the parents discussed the freedom they allowed their kids. I thought back to 8 - I was allowed to walk to school, walk to a friend's house, walk from my granny's to the corner shop and buy Saturday breakfast - rolls, eggs, juice and a few added extras. I could play in the field behind my house, in neighbours' gardens and generally wander about my estate. By 9 I was cycling to school on the road with no helmet! I can't remember the exact numbers but I know only 1 child in this study was granted the freedom I had at that age. Two, perhaps three more were allowed to play outside their garden but within sight of their parents. They weren't allowed to walk to school either. The most shocking was the fact that many of the kids weren't allowed in their own garden, none were allowed to the park. This wasn't because of traffic levels, which are much worse since we were kids but because people actually believed kids were so likely to be kidnapped or abducted that they wouldn't allow them out. Time and time again parents said they preferred their kids alone upstairs on a PS2 because they knew where they were! Don't people realize that abductions hit the headlines because they are uncommon, not because they are common? How are these kids, caged till 16, going to cope when they are thrown out into the world? When they are forced to leave home to go the uni or whatever, before they have even learned to cross the road alone. What damage are these people inflicting on their kids?
I let my kids cross the road and go shopping alone. Charlotte can go see granny just as Little red riding hood did many moons ago. They can go play football out of my sight in the field. Lots is allowed to go cycling up and down the pavements round the corner in neighbouring streets away from my line of vision. I have given them mobile phones so I can contact them. I am not 100% happy when they are out of my sight, no parent is, but I am 100% sure I am better preparing them for adulthood than by locking them in a bedroom alone. What will these kids remember of their childhoods? What life skills will they lack? How will they know how to parent themselves?

THE UNEXPECTED QUESTION

7 Green Bottles
Originally uploaded by Sean Stayte

One of the best bits about parenting is the unexpected questions. You've known something all your life, you just accept it. Then you tell your child and they ask you something really wacky.
Today I was feeding Anna so all I could do to entertain Léon was sing. Fed up with Incy Wincy, I tried Ten Green Bottles for a change. Léon listened, smiled a bit and when I stopped singing he asked seriously: What was in the bottles? Now there's something no one ever told me!

SIBLING RIVALRY

Poor Pudge
Originally uploaded by PhylB

Sibling rivalry seems to be starting earlier than I remember from my Marcel and Charlotte days. I was in Tesco with Léon and Anna in a trolley like this one today. Anna, as always, was waving her arms and legs excitedly. Léon whined a little - Anna no hit Nénaw, Anna no hurt Nénaw, Mummy Anna's hiiiiitting me! Gimme a break! I explained she was simply trying to pat him on the head because she loved him, which seemed to pacify him for an aisle or two anyway till it all started up again! I guess I should get ready for fireworks once she can crawl!

A SHITTY AFTERNOON

Léon and Gordon playing together
Originally uploaded by PhylB

Amanda invited Léon over today to help teach potty to his wee cousin Gordy, 3 months his junior. Gordy had had his first nappy-free day yesterday so Amanda is fairly housebound - there are only so many people who want you visiting with a nappy-free, un-house-trained toddler, there aren't many places you want to drive to either with a nappiless child in a carseat.
We arrived at 11 and things didn't start too well - both had got up too early so were overtired. We got half an hour of 'mineminemine' and 'gimmegimmegimme', with a bit of crying and stamping thrown in. Half an hour in, things calmed down and they decided to be best buddies as usual. Phew! Gordy had used the potty a few times when his mum had asked him to before our arrival, but after, playing with Léon was too much fun to bother with potties.
Around 12, Léon asked to go to the toilet so we thought this was a great opportunity to show Gordy what to do. Léon did a pee and a poo. We asked Gordy if he wanted a look - so he looked down the toilet, and seemed impressed. Amanda asked if he wanted to try: No! Gordy walked to the living room and promptly peeed all over the floor. I tried to keep Léon from walking in the swamp while Amanda mopped it up.
After lunch Léon managed another pee and poo, again I showed Gordy, again he peeed his pants! While Amanda and I chatted in the kitchen the boys played in Gordy's bedroom. Amanda went to check after two minutes. I heard her say - oh you've had a wee accident, don't worry. I assumed it was another pee but it was a poo. Amanda suggested to Léon he leave the room while she cleaned the carpet. Léon drove out on Gordy's tractor, Amanda waved him goodbye - maintaining an amazing level of calm - I remember potty-training stress all too well from January. Anna started crying for milk. Then Amanda realized Gordy hadn't done one poo, he'd done two poos - the one she was picking up and the one Léon had just driven over with the tractor and was squelching into Gordy's green bedroom carpet, the patterned - hard-to-see-poo-on - hall carpet, the wooden living room floor and the beautiful, expensive hand-woven wool rug (also various rusty shades) in the living room. Of course the offending tractor was immediately flung in the shower room and both Gordy and Léon's feet were checked for poo - negative. By now a lesser being would have been hysterical and on the floor but Amanda ran around with a basin of soapy water while I removed chunks with baby wipes and left lego blocks as markers on the rugs denoting where needed shampooing. Anna started screaming for milk. I sat down to feed her two minutes. Amanda finally finished the task in hand, stood up and walked into the hall in time to see Léon driving up the hall on the tractor he had retrieved in the shower room while Amanda crawled about on all fours. The tractor was re-flung in the shower room, the carpet was re-shampooed, the boys socks were re-checked for poo.
When I left at 2-15pm, after just 3 hours, there was a pile of 4, maybe 5 pairs of wet pants, a 25 metre trail of shampooed carpet and a very authentic looking tractor, complete with manure-covered wheels, two happy boys and two very stressed, tired mums.
Amanda must have been so glad Léon came round to share his wisdom with Gordy!

COPYCAT

Anna has started copying us! At first she stuck her tongue out when we did and now when we make clicking noises she copies those too! I know parents are always biased but she does seem to be a bright little thing.

THE MOST PROFOUND QUESTIONS IN MY UNIVERSE TODAY

Why exactly has Anna decided to feed every 2 hours during the night since Monday? Why exactly did Léon decide 6am was the optimal time to get up on a wet miserable day like this? When can I go back to bed again?

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?

What the hell is this?
Originally uploaded by PhylB

Today I decided that despite my cracked nipple and general hatred of expressing milk, I needed to make a start on Anna's initiation to drinking my breast milk from a bottle if I was to stand any chance at all of going to the Collins dinner dance next Friday.
It didn't start well. Apart from the obvious cracked, and aching boob, I went through the drawers and found all the bits of my much-detested Avent Isis breast pump - I loathe it with a passion - except the pumping handle, rendering it absolutely 100% useless. So I had to drag myself up to Asda at 9pm in the pouring rain and stormy wind. They had a new Isis for £18, which I knew would be the easiest manual pump, as it is actually the only one I have ever grudgingly got the hang of, but given how little I intend to use it, I figured the Tommee Tippee £10 pump was probably more sensible.
I came home, sterilised it, and sat for 20 minutes producing a pitiful 30ml. I figured that although that was very little, it would be enough to test whether or not Anna could work out how to suck on a bottle, given exclusively breastfed babies are notoriously stupid when it comes to bottles, lapping at the teats but not sucking and getting nowhere fast.
Half an hour and a whimper or two later Anna has got nothing out of the bottle except a great deal of frustration.
She's tired and very unhappy and considering seriously how to learn to shout 'Bugger off, dad!
The steak and haggis on Friday night looks like it might be hanging in the balance!

LITTLE LEECH

Too much information I am sure, but don't worry, no photo attached...yes I have got cracked nipples for the first time ever. That little leech has totally destroyed the right one and partially grazed the left. Odd - the others never did that. Mind you, I have noticed recently she's not been opening her mouth widely enough but rather sucking it in lazily past her gums. My mistake was not to correct her, assuming my battleworn boobs could cope with anything the little people could throw at them. Wrong! Ouch!
I now have the challenge of trying to express milk - something I am not particularly good at and I hate doing with a passion - for next Friday complete with wounded boobs, as Thomas and I had intended to attend HarperCollins annual dinner dance for the lovely meal. And however much I enjoy a free meal at the Marriot, I am not willing to compromise my 'not a single mouthful of formula before solid food' motto that I have rigidly stuck to always as I hate the stuff with a passion and all it represents. I guess if the boob continues to ache, I could always wear something loose and hide her inside just till the meal is over ;-)

...lucky for me Thomas happens to have a tube of the antiseptic cream Danish farmers use on cows with sore udders...what?! Cultural differences between close European countries never cease to astound and perplex me!

BABY SNOT

Snotter
Originally uploaded by http://www.flickr.com/people/42225166@N00As you know our very own Banana Girl is now 4 weeks old. This phase of babyhood, I find, is marked by snuffliness. Tiny babies, probably up to 2 or even 3 months, from what I remember with the others, have such tiny nostrils, that their airways get completely blocked on a daily basis. They get anxious when they try to breastfeed as they can't breathe properly and eventually they end up sneezing out lumps of snot that even a fully grown builder would be surprised by. I have found from Marcel onwards, that you can loosen the snot and make them sneeze it out by dripping sterile water or saline solution up their noses and massaging olive oil or baby oil into their nose at the same time. I am forever astounded though that I have never seen baby snot mentioned in a single baby care book. I know it isn't a nice topic, but most first time parents must spend weeks at a loss wondering how to help their little cherub breathe and eat. I think I am going to start a Baby Bogey web help page ;-)

WHERE POTTY TRAINING MEETS FARCE

Pudge has well and truly got the hang of the potty now, so there are no more accidents, no more missing the potty accidentally accidents anyway. Picture this... (you'll be glad I am not uploading a photo with this posting.) Léon did a large, smelly poo in his pink potty. He picked it up and brought it round the coffee table to show me. I had just ascertained I needed to go to ASDA on my way home from the schoolrun, so had just turned on my laptop to email Thomas and ask if he wanted to add anything to my shopping list. I praised Léon and suggested he should take his poo to the loo. Instead of walking back the way he had come - that is to say the shortest, most direct route to the loo, he took an unexpected step backwards, tripped over my laptop cable, fell bum-first into my open handbag, bum still all 'yucky' and stood up with my purse glued to his buttocks with the protruding poo! Yeeeeeeuuuuuuuch! I think I want a new purse for my birthday suddenly.

Thought I had to blog this one in brown!

POTTY ABOUT HIS POTTY!

At last! After a week of clueless pee and poo everywhere around the house, in pants and everywhere else, followed by a week of pee and poo in the wrong places but at least accompanied by an embarrassed look, Léon has finally got it! Completely. He says potty, he uses it, he pees over and over looking very proud, and wants to carry it by himself to the loo and even waves it goodbye as he flushes it away! And he poos in it too - hurray! We're definitely on the right side of the hill now - a week from now, I estimate, we'll even manage ASDA in a pair of pants - what a clever wee man :-)

POTTY TRAINING - THE UPDATE

Today's potty training didn't seem any better. Today Léon managed one pee on Charlotte's back, while playing horses, one pee on his aquadraw - making for an interesting shape, and one poo in a nappy during a trip to Tesco :-( So much for the nice new Bob the builder and Thomas the Tank Engine pants...

BEBO, FACEBOOK AND SOCIAL NETWORKING

Marcel and his pals are all majorly into Bebo these days. As far as I know you are meant to be 15 to be able to get a Bebo account, but just as us 80s kids sat reading Just 17 at the tender age of 13, today's kids want to be 15 at 10, so are creating pretend dates of birth to get on to Bebo.
I have a Facebook account myself, though I don't use it much, but Bebo is definitely aimed at a much younger audience, I feel - it's bright, it's messy, it's noisy and trendy - in short it makes me feel old. I mentioned Facebook to Marcel and he looked blank - I logged in to show him it. He looked for 2 minutes and concluded - oh Facebook is a tidy boring Bebo for adults! I actually find it quite strange Bebo is pretending to be enforcing a 15 limit, given Marcel and many of his school friends have not only uploaded photos, showing they are really just little kids, they have created groups like 'Kirkhill primary' group - primary? A sure giveaway you aren't 15 if you go to primary school, no?!
Anyway, as is to be expected - the Bebo pages are full of little kids trying to sound all grown up using pseudo swear words etc. I figured my best bet, instead of heavyhandedly banning its use, was a bit of supervising, and threatening to check up and actually creating a Bebo account of my own, linking it to Marcel's so I would be notified of any updates he makes, and logging onto it periodically. At first it seemed to gain me some 'cool' Brownie points - a mum with a Bebo account! Within 2 hours of creation, I'd had an email from his 11 year old friend Kristian asking me to be his 'friend'! Sweet! By the time Marcel got in from school, however, I think the cool factor was wearing thinner - he asked me to log in so he could create a profile for me, complete with photo and a background of red roses chosen by Charlotte - I think my bare bones Bebo was starting to embarrass them. By tomorrow they'll have attached some dodgy Youtube clips, a gif or two of Homer Simpson farting or burping and no doubt some stick dogs shagging!
I have to conclude I am way too old for Bebo, I can just about cope with Facebook, but am really more of a Bloggy Flickrer myself, sorry!