This mum was right to let Iris run riot on TV
The GCSES may be hogging the headlines, but for parents of younger children, there is only one big debate du jour: where do you stand on Iris Wronka?
Not literally; this tow-haired angel in Start-rites will take you down if you so much as attempt to confront her. Which, I believe, is why her mother Lucy made no attempt to do so, even as the two-year-old went rogue on ITV Lunchtime News.
Mum was talking to Alastair Stewart about the challenges of bringing up children who have milk allergies, her four-year-old George sat peaceably beside her, when Iris went walkabout.
She ended up on the desk, clambering across in her pretty summer dress, and stealing the show.
Lucy, who made no attempt to intervene, has been predictably pilloried on social media for allowing her child to run feral on prime-time television.
She was, many concluded, the sort of entitled middle-class woman too precious about her offspring to think of others.
Couldn’t she have restrained her? Contained her? Taken her firmly by the hand and quietly insisted she sit nicely and comply?
In theory, yes. In practice, Iris would have roared, punched and possibly lain
down on the studio floor and kicked, showing her knickers.
Anyone casting stones and indeed aspersions has clearly forgotten what it is to be subject to the sweetly monstrous id of a determined toddler.
The interview would have ended in shambles, tears of rage, and Lucy would have been castigated for her heavy-handedness.
As it was, she made the sort of calculated decision that letting Iris be was the only viable option. Which it was.
Lucy had obviously warned the producers what might happen because Stewart graciously pointed out that “delicious Iris will do whatever she chooses to do over the next couple of minutes”.
Everyone probably assumed she’d wander off sideways rather than climb upwards. It wasn’t ideal, but it was authentic, everyone survived and nobody cried or showed their knickers.
And when you have two children under the age of five, that’s about as good as it gets in public. Large glass of wine for Lucy, please.