I let my kids make huge, gigantic messes. I love it. How did I end up this way? We’ll need to go back to my own, crazy childhood…
When I was little if I dropped a single crumb from a biscuit it was the end of the world. There was reprimanding, tut-tutting, I’d be shooed out of the house and I’d be left wondering just how I was meant to eat a biscuit without creating any crumbs at all.
It’s not possible. IT’S NOT POSSIBLE.
I remember our vacuum cleaner. It was as heavy as a car and the cord was always snaking around furniture, waiting to trip us up. When my mum was vacuuming it was survival of the fittest. Get out of the way because mum was stopping for no-one. Once she’d gone to the effort of pulling it out of the cupboard and unwinding the cord it was on. Thinking about that cumbersome grey and orange contraption, I can understand her aversion to mess when we were little.
Thankfully, vacuum cleaners are a lot better these days. They look better, they perform better and they weigh much, much less than a car.
Just as an FYI, you should know that this post is sponsored by Electrolux Ergorapido. But all opinions expressed by the author are 100 per cent authentic and written in their own words.
So kids get to make messes. They are allowed to eat a biscuit with NO PLATE and I expect nothing less than a trail of crumbs. I never get mad because mess is a part of life, as is cleaning. And biscuit-crumb-acceptance is just the beginning.
They have been known to convert our lounge room into a secret hideout using chairs, blankets, toys, food products, torches and they’ll stay there for hours playing, using their imaginations, having a ball.
I let them dig holes in the backyard, smear the mud all over themselves (once a day max before bath time), pick up decks of cards and fling them all over the room (as long as they help me pick them up) and use my makeup to put on shows. I let them jump on my bed and wear all my shoes, even the ones that cost more than $60.