There’s no perfect time to be a parent (and no perfect parents)

A FRIEND of mine is debating whether to have a baby. This is a bit like stopping to think before you jump in the sea.

The water looks clear and blue, but you’re not sure if you’ll like the temperature and is that a jellyfish down there? You’ll never know what it’s like until you take the plunge.

As any parent knows, there is never a perfect time to have a child. However easy it is to try to convince yourself that now is the right time, or not, there can be few parents, experienced or new, who don’t occasionally think “help, I’m not prepared for this”.

My children are now 20, 18 and 15, and I know I often don’t get it right.

If this was a career, I could be sacked for being so uncertain after two decades.

Every new phase of parenting takes you back to the drawing board.

Just when you think you’ve nailed it, the kids (or baby) will have moved on, leaving you three steps behind and trying to catch up.

It took me at least six months to realise when my (then) eight-year-old daughter had gone past having everything in her life pink and my son, who will soon be 16, laughed when I expressed surprise that he was shaving.

Quite rightly he asked, in wilting tones, whether I’d failed to notice his voice was now somewhat deeper and he was at least six inches taller than me.

There was I, still imagining he liked Fireman Sam. Well, he does still have an ink drawing of his childhood hero on a shelf, but that’s because it was penned by the original illustrator and given to him as a present (a long story, but take it from me, most creatives love to hear from their young fans).

It’s not that I live in the past or want them to stay babies for ever – in fact I found the baby and toddler years grindingly hard to navigate with three under-fives at one point threatening to eclipse my sunny disposition. It’s just that I genuinely can’t keep up. A year is a lifetime of changes for a teenager – and even for those in their early twenties.

The trick is to explain to them very clearly that you don’t always get it right, but want to try to understand.

This is not always easy, especially at challenging hours of the morning when a teenager has lost their key and once again wakes you at 4am and asks so loudly the neighbours can hear why you answered the door with only a pair of knickers on.

The answer is because you were half awake and didn’t realise three teenage boys and five teenage girls would be standing on your doorstep needing a floor to crash on for the night. And how can you say no when it’s raining and they all appear to be garbed in swimwear despite the date being March and the thermometer on freezing?

I’ve lost count of the number of times I have used the coconut door mat as an impromptu covering when faced with a gaggle of expectant faces through the inner glass door.

If the teens object, they can return the 25 pairs of pyjamas and 10 dressing gowns they have stolen from me and lost during years of sleepovers – when they probably did not use them anyway as sleepovers are, in fact, as all parents know, wakeovers.

Many experts have researched why babies and toddlers cry at night, depriving their exhausted parents of sleep. They may be washed, fed, warm, dry and cuddled, so why the wailing? Is this evolution’s canny way of destroying all parents’ kip so that when the babies become teenagers they are alert to the slightest sound of a key in the lock (or tap at the door when keys are inevitably lost)? This night-time hyper-alert system ensures the safety of the next generation to some degree.

Sleep, whatever stage of a lifetime’s parenting you are at, is key.

Unless you follow the school of parenting where you leave babies howling themselves to sleep (it never worked for me, my babies were way too strong to have their spirits broken by “SuperNanny” methods), you will spend the first few years of your baby’s life trying to get them to sleep and the teen years trying to get them to wake. Both involve attempts to have everyone safe and snoring through the wee hours and up and alert at breakfast time. Somewhere in between your baby wanting to stay up all night with you, and your teenager wanting to stay up all night with someone else, there are a few years when everyone gets to catch up on some much-needed shut-eye. No parenting manual explains this properly, and as I was three steps behind, as usual, I only just noticed what a halcyon snooze period it was when it was gone again.

Giving no warning is another of Mother Nature’s tricks to keep you on your toes.

If we knew what was really going to happen, we might never embark on the glorious craziness of being parents.

So you may as well throw away the parenting manuals which claim to have all the answers. The truth is you aren’t in control and never will be, you just have to keep the boat as safely and lovingly afloat as you can.

There’s no perfect time to become a parent and no perfect parents. That’s the fun (or not) of it.

Oddly, the friend asking my opinion on whether she should have a baby does not seem appeased by this. That’s another thing about being a parent – there are few straight answers to the many complex questions.

The only certain thing about having children is that you will learn to snatch any opportunity to sleep.