My goodness

My parents were lucky to have me.

I don't mean that the way it sounds. It's just that I was by all accounts an easy baby, an obedient and approval-seeking child, and a bookish and non-rebellious adolescent. I'm mortified by how boring that makes me sound, but there you are. I take no credit for it myself, and the more time I spend parenting, the less I believe much of it has to do with my upbringing either: I think that's just the sort of kid I was.

Not that my parents didn't do right by me: I thank them for teaching me to say please and thank-you and excuse me, and to write thank-you notes (or at least feel guilty when I know they've gone unwritten); to hold doors open for people and cover my mouth when I yawn. My mother dedicated long tedious mealtimes to making sure I didn't put my elbows on the table and that I knew what to do with a napkin and where the soup spoons go. (You'd think I'm a model of decorum. I'm not. But it's not her fault.)

My parents also taught me to be independent (whether intentionally or by judicious neglect I'm not sure, but whichever, it worked) - I couldn't understand my classmates whose parents were busy filling out college applications for them and sorting out their portfolios: I certainly wouldn't trust my parents with such important work. And I think they gave me a certain work ethic - though that might just be a tendency inherited from my somewhat workaholic father tempered by my more fun-loving mother: the result being a fundamentally lazy me who knows she should really be doing something more useful.

I wouldn't want you to think that I never crossed the line into bad behaviour. I distinctly recall lying about whether I had brushed my hair when I was about ten. I certainly fudged the truth about just how big the "gang of people" I'd walked home with at 3am from Stradbrook Rugby Club disco was, when really it was just two or three girls, dropping to me alone for the last ten minutes of dark and lonely road. But I was over 18 by then, so maybe it doesn't count.

Thing is, while we all try our best and put a great deal of thought into how we bring up our children, sometimes what they do just comes down to who they are, themselves, regardless of your influence. My cousin ran away with some bloke at 16 and didn't come home for two months; at the same age, I was dilligently doing my homework and wondering how I would ever meet a boy. I'm sure my father's sister didn't do anything demonstrably different in bringing up her daughter than my parents did bringing up theirs - my parents just got luckier, in that particular respect that let them avoid several months of heartache and soul searching and abject terror that my aunt and uncle went through.

So I think we should all lay off ourselves - and each other - just a bit. If you yelled at your son today because he refused to pull up his jeans without help (say) or let your daughter watch one too many episodes of Little Einsteins (again), they'll be okay. You get to try again tomorrow, and we never (or rarely) have a perfect parenting day, but so long as we keep trying, the balance should end up on the plus side. Beyond that, maybe it all just comes down to luck.

Anyway, I'm sure that revenge for being such a boring child will be amply visited upon me by my own offspring when they go through their hellacious schooldays and rebellious teens. Maybe I should just send them to their grandparents.