Some Bad Parenting

It is terrible concern to me that I may already have been disqualified from winning a trampoline, in a blogging competition, for my failure to adequately blog. Already. Week two. I blame the Family Times for their terrible family timing, for picking the busiest time of the year to run the competition, when families are so very busy that time is a JOKE. Which means I declare the Family Times to be anti families, and anti family time. So I am hopeful that I shall slip under the radar and shall blog on and hope for a trampoline regardless of rules for my efforts.

Not only have I been short of time, I have also had the terrible inconvenience of having a seven year old home for the holidays. A seven year old Rabbit who can't keep her little twitching nose out of anything I write, read. or think. She's always watching me. And when I don't watch her I am forever going down in the annuals of BAD PARENTING.

I have been waiting for some time for the question "Mummy, Why haven't you and Daddy been having sex?" because last time I blogged, I made the despicable mistake of LEAVING THE BLOG OPEN. I found my rabbit totally engrossed in reading it. I screeched a little, "what are you doing", she responded "just a minute Mummy, I'm just reading this blog....it's REALLY good". I'm flattered, really, almost enough to let her keep reading to keep up my readership but it's really not a blog designed for her little eyes. I can't possibly handle the questions that would ensue. She's acute, my Rabbit.

In the absence of blog writing I took my small Monkey Boy to the doctors to have his ears checked. In tow was the Rabbit, attitude included. She didn't really want to be wasting an afternoon in the doctor's surgery but her disgruntledness seemed to dissipate when in the exclusive children's area she found a book to take up her interest. I asked her, as I always do, not to enter the bug ridden area for other people's hideous, diseased children. But she ignored me. And wee Monkey Boy followed her in, quite determined to pick up as many bugs as he could to go with his sore ears. I was relieved when we were called in to the GP's rooms. The baby and I were followed by the Rabbit, undisiturbable from her reading.

As the Monkey's ears were checked thoroughly, my seven year old climbed up on the bed and buried her head in her book. As a terrible parent I didn't think to check what she was reading The book was found,  after all, in the area exclusively reserved for small sickly people. I could have taken more notice, in retrospect. When it came time to leave, the disgruntled at being at the doctors seven year old whinged and whined. She didn't want to leave. Her book was too good. The helpful GP suggested it would be fine with the clinic if she took the book home with her and returned it another day. "Just tell them at the front desk" she said.

To be clear, neither I, nor the GP, nor the front desk checked to see what it was that my seven year old was reading. I knew she found the bug ridden material in the contaminated space for disgusting ill children. I knew it had a bright yellow cover and a cartoon on the front. I would suggest maybe that while they were cleaning the coughed and spluttered on toys they could have checked whether the items in the buggy area were actually suitable for the infantile invalids at all. But they didn't. And so I came to be sitting in a car with a small, just turned seven year old reading a book entitled "Who Flushed My Toothbrush Down The Toilet? On closer look, my baby was reading a comical look on "What it's REALLY like Being a Dad". Which turns out, as it were, to really be about how a father can never, ever expect, ever again for the foreseeable future to dip his penis in his wife, let alone get sucked off by her.

A simple reminder that I am a terrible parent.

I did, having seen the extended title of the book, whilst driving along ask if really, the book was suitable for little girls. She assured me it was. I kept an eye on the road but kept enquiring what exactly she was reading. She advised me that it most definitely was suitable. That while, as it turned out, I had told her how babies were made (I didn't, SHE told ME...), there was A LOT of information I had MISSED OUT. I hadn't expected a man's need to look at internet pornography in the last months of pregnancy was one of those things I had neglected to mention. Nor had I anticipated my not advising her on the contents of the chapters: 'B' is for Bonk, 'Exercising with Whales' and 'Remember Sex' would come back to bite me. I was unsure whether to be pleased or horrified when she closed the book before I crashed, eventually declaring that there were in fact things a seven year old should not know.

I know. I. Am. A. Terrible. Mother.