Malone wonders if she’s raising a wild child

People often say it’s always the kids of the strictest parents, the vicars etc, that are the most wild teenagers. The strict upbringing resulting in rebelling against their parents. My own parents always let me do whatever I wanted. Which wasn’t much. I felt I could do whatever I wanted so I didn’t want to do any of it. I was the most unrebellous non-wild child ever. To be honest that was probably me rebelling as my parents were pretty wild and ‘kool’. Maybe being a goody-two shoes was my way of sticking two fingers up to kool. I’d go to parties at 16 and spend the whole evening in the loo with a guy not snogging but smoking resin in mutual silence. I would leave the party paranoid; everyone else would leave pregnant. My parents said I could smoke at home, as they’d rather I did it safely at home rather than having to covertly spend time behind metaphoric bike sheds with unsavoury characters. I was allowed a boyfriend to stay if I wanted, but I’d left home by the time I got a boyfriend at 19. (Hey, during my teenage years I only spoke to boys to ask them for Rizla.) Like many teenagers I was awkward around the opposite sex and the smoking just cemented that introversion into a beautiful chastity belt. When I finally got a boyfriend instead of being upset by his daughter’s march into womanhood, my father celebrated “bejayous was thinking you were a lesbian!”

“It was all just about love for cake, not six year olds discussing ‘boyfriends’”

It’s not easy now this person is a parent herself. I worry I am coming across like Mary WhiteHouse to some of the mums at school. A friend invited my six year old to a Valentine’s Day party and I felt passionately that that day is for adults, not children. A day to let our beloved know we love them like Saint Valentine and Saint Hallmark. My parents were out there, but they never gave me a Valentine’s card, so to me that’s for grown up love. I guess my understanding is it’s a day for lovers, whereas people that celebrate it with their kids feel it’s a day for showing love to all their loved ones. I didn’t really want my child to go to the party as I wanted to impart my understanding of what Valentine’s is, not other pick up other people’s opinions. I guess in my daughter’s upbringing though there will be many times (er, like her whole life) where I have to hope I’ve given her a basis of information and opinion to base her own ideas on about life. She went to the party as all her friends were and I couldn’t say no, I had little to worry about as it was all just about love for cake, not six year olds discussing ‘boyfriends’. I really need to loosen up or I might raise the wildest teenager of them all…