Since my daughter reached the ripe old age of 9, I’ve been doing my best to fully empower her and to facilitate a greater sense of independence (which can also read as ‘get her out of my way every now and then so that I can crack on with my own stuff.’)
One way of doing this is by setting her up with her own email account. This means that she can email relatives and friends and also get in a wee bit of spelling practise. Normally I breeze in and out of the room when she is using email, but today, given the fact that I was busy burning rice in a pan, I had to ask her to go and sort herself out on her own with the email. “But I don’t know how to do it on my own!”she protested. “Of course you do!” I told her. “Just google Hot Mail. And you know the password and everything off by heart.”
So she toodled off. But then kept shouting downstairs phrases such as, “I can’t do this!” “I’m sure that this is wrong,” and “Can’t you come and help me?” No, I couldn’t assist her I’m afraid, I was wondering how the hell I was going to pretend that I hadn’t ruined my husband’s favourite enamel pan (he is rather too fond of his pan ware, if you ask me…)
Eventually, I couldn’t ignore the wails of frustration any longer and I went to see what the shrieking and howling was all about.
The problem was this. My daughter was not faced with a chatty email from Nanny in Spain. My daughter was faced with a screen full of beefy looking men, all pouting at her in their pants.
“I told you that I couldn’t do it, mum!” she groaned. “I keep getting these stupid pictures of men with hardly no clothes on!”
After grabbing the mouse and closing the window down, I asked her how on earth she had managed to find the site. It turned out that she had typed into the google search bar the following words… ‘HOT MALE’.
So, in answer to the title of this post – “All we want for Valentine’s Day is….”
Daughter: An improvement in her spelling abilities (and a less distracted parent)
Me: A husband who can get round to installing an internet family-friendly filter and;
Husband: A new pan. And a less sarcastic wife.
