MODERN FAMILY

IT’S official, Mother really does know best! It is just that we don’t actually realise it until the age of 26.

A new poll has found that nearly half the population ignored the advice their mum gave them as they were growing up, only to look back and agree that it was actually good sense after all.

As the mother of teens, this is a poll that rings all too true.

There are so many times when midsentence, which is usually a rant or command that will be ignored, I am stopped in my tracks by the realisation that I sound like my own mum used to nearly four decades ago.

The wind is taken out of my sails as they roll their eyes in the exact way I did when getting told off for not keeping in touch while on a night out, waltzing home in the early hours of the morning without a care in the world.

No matter how late at night, or early in the morning, Mum would always be there to greet me at the door. Cue more rolling of eyes with mutterings about why she hadn’t just gone to bed and not worried when everything was fine.

Now, I am the one not sleeping and pacing the house until they are home and safely tucked up in bed – at least there are mobile phones to keep in touch.

My parents didn’t have that luxury. We would just go out with some vague details about the plan and shout back “see you when I see you”, slamming the door behind us.

Now, I am the one in their position, finally understanding exactly how they were feeling.

According to the same poll that found we don’t really listen to our parents until we are in our mid-twenties, nearly six in ten say they only fully appreciated their own mothers when they had children themselves.

More than a third said they wished they had listened to their mums more, while a fifth say they have turned into a younger version of their mothers, with 31 the average age when this happened.

I am not sure how they work this out, but the average mother will pass on 41 ‘pearls of wisdom’ to her children. Most commonly heard tips include ‘Always try your best’ and ‘If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.’

Treating people as you would like to be treated yourself was the advice most often mentioned, cited by nearly half of the people polled for this latest survey.

I am just holding on to the hope that as adults they will come back to their mum for all that wisdom and advice that was passed on from my own parents.

It’s the little nuggets of information which we hold dear, and which get passed down from generation to generation that can be so important.

Those pieces of advice might be small, but the very fact they stay with us for years on end prove they hold great weight.