The Yummy Mummy’s Family Handbook. Liz Fraser

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СКАЧАТЬ to fire off a text than walk to the post office and send a letter. This is a shame: if even some of these basic manners were re-introduced and taught to our kids, things would be a lot more pleasant out there. See page 248 for more on manners.

      

Bring something for kids to do. This applies to cafés, restaurants, aeroplanes and anywhere else where kids might get bored and start to be a nuisance. Nobody normal expects kids to behave perfectly and remain silent all the time, of course, but letting them rip up paper napkins, scratch tables with cutlery, kick the back of other people’s chairs or throw their unwanted carrots under the table is unacceptable. If you are going to take a child into a child-unfriendly place, always bring a book or a notepad and pencils and try to keep the little darlings happily occupied.

      

Leave. If everything fails, including the notepad and pencils mentioned above, and you start to disturb other people in the room, then leave before you do any more damage to the already dented and scratched reputation of families everywhere. Why should two people have their Sunday morning coffee ruined by a bunch of noisy, drink-spilling, bickering members of a family?

      

Do a good turn. Help old people across the road, offer to do some shopping for a neighbour who can’t get out easily, write to grandparents just to say “hi”, or bake some biscuits for the lady next door who’s had a hip operation. In our self-obsessed lives we quickly forget other people, and this teaches our kids to be selfish too. Anyone for a flapjack?

      This is a very small list and there are hundreds more examples, including not farting in lifts, and not spending twenty minutes in a public loo checking out your eyebrows in the mirror when there’s a queue outside. I’m not suggesting we all behave like little prissy, nineteenth-century society gals, but a modicum of decent behaviour wouldn’t go amiss.

      The Family Uniform

      One of the things I have found it hard to get used to, since morphing from young, child-free babe (or something…!) into my role as ‘mother and member of a family with kids’, is having to wear the Family Uniform. What exactly this uniform consists of varies enormously according to where you live, what kind of friends you have and what your daily life entails. If you work it is likely to be much as it was before, because you’ll be in work, not ‘family’, attire during the day. But when you don’t you’ll find yourself in full family swing, and this, for most busy, playground-frequenting mums, means dressing down.

      I live in jeans or casual trousers, trainers or flats, some kind of pretty but unfussy top and any jumper or jacket I can lay my hands on that doesn’t clash with the bottom half. I also come moulded to my bicycle, which has two child seats and a large wicker basket on the front. My hair is rarely anything other than swept back into a child-friendly but unsexy ponytail and my make-up consists of moisturiser and some blusher. In short, it really is as unglamorous as you can get.

      As somebody who wears clothes to both reflect and dictate my mood, and devours several fashion magazines every month—despite the fact that I cannot afford to buy any of the stuff inside them!—this is something of a problem for me. Wearing the required Family Uniform day in, day out means I can almost never get away from ‘Mumsy, family me’ and become the stylish me I know must be lurking somewhere under all the stained tops and out-of-date jeans (if I look hard enough…). But wear it I must, not only because I would otherwise stick out like a sore, overdressed thumb on the school run, but also because I would break my ankles trying to chase my son around the playground in high heels.

      Wherever you live, whatever the ‘norm’, it’s almost certain that you will conform in some way, and this can become restrictive and boring after a while. So…

      

Dress up on top. If pushing a pram or chasing children around the park restricts your bottom half to flat shoes and sensible trousers then try to keep the top half pretty, and use accessories like jewellery or scarves to add colour, individuality and style.

      

Dare to wear. Not all mothers live in tracksuit bottoms all day, thank goodness. I occasionally stray into the very daring world of skirts and pretty shoes, but when I do I’m generally asked what the special occasion is. If I reply that I just fancied wearing something nice for a change, my effort is generally welcomed, not laughed at (at least, not to my face…).

      

Vary your look. It’s far too easy to slip into wearing almost exactly the same thing every day. Try to avoid this monotony by forcing yourself into a different look every other day: jeans, then a long skirt, then something sporty, then some smart trousers, and then start all over again. Your kids will appreciate this too, as will your husband!

      

Having a job helps. One huge advantage of having a job is that you can be somebody else for at least a few hours a week. Whether you go to work in suits and heels or just something a little smarter than usual, it gives you the chance to legitimately dress up, or at least dress differently for a while. Many of my friends find this to be a lifesaver.

      Don’t Mind the Mess: Simple ways of making it look tidy

      The entrance hall is the first real room people see in your home, and it’s where they form their first impression of what sort of person you are, how you live and whether it will be safe to have a cup of tea without giving the rim a quick wipe first.

      A quick glance around my hall today leaves any visitor in no doubt at all as to my life and personality: a pram (currently with a sleeping baby in it), a plastic fireman’s axe, a trumpet made of a plastic milk bottle and a cardboard box, sunglasses lying on top of a pile of wet children’s socks and trousers after a puddle-splashing session this morning, a pile of half-opened mail, a sticker book, five coats hanging off the banister, three pairs of shoes at the bottom of the stairs (despite there being a virtually empty shoe rack three feet away), a selection of toys, hair bands and bits of my jewellery waiting to be taken upstairs, and three sweet wrappers. It is, without wanting to do myself down too much, an absolute disgrace, and it screams: slightly hectic working mother of three who knows how she wants her house to look (the entire Elle Deco back catalogue visible in the lounge is a dead giveaway) but is fighting a losing battle on account of her own and her family’s inherent slobbishness and inability to put anything away where it lives, ever. There it is—my family exposed in one room.

      The good news for anyone like me is that with some clever tricks and new habits, an entrance hall can be transformed from something that looks like a car-boot sale, to a space belying you as a balanced, well-behaved, orderly family. I don’t suggest for a minute that you stick to this at all times—who wants to always be orderly and well-behaved?—but I have learned the following from my years of pretending to have it all under control:

      

Clear the decks. Get rid of any surface where things can be ‘put’. Until very recently we had a hall table. This looked like a jumble-sale stall most of the time, as every member of my family dumped whatever they couldn’t be bothered to put away on it. Keys, water bottles, apple cores, hats, hand СКАЧАТЬ