‘Oh you just wait’, various parents of teenagers have said to me, ‘Just you wait’. I’ve pressed them on what exactly is so bad about teenagers, but haven’t heard anything that sounds too awful. Specific examples have included: ’They eat you out of house and home’. Hmmmm, better than two-hour lunch-a-thons where you try in vain to interest tot in more than a mouthful of organic, home-cooked five-vegetable spaghetti bolognaise. ‘They’d sleep all day if they could!’ Again, no sympathy – we all know newborns and toddlers would be awake all night if left to their own devices.

Anyway, as night follows day, isn’t it a teenager’s job to rebel against a parent? Look at Saffy in Absolutely Fabulous – the ultra-sensible cardigan-wearer to her mother’s ill-advised hot pants and boob tubes ensembles, muddled together while under the influence of too much Bollinger. At the other end of the scale there’s Katy Perry, chucking her evangelical preacher father’s teachings out of the window, and (according to Dad) following ‘Satan’s path’ with ditties such as ‘I Kissed a Girl’.

I thought that we were supposed to do the opposite of anything our parents get up to, part of an evolutionary rite of passage to ensure that the world isn’t solely populated by Archers-listening baldies wearing easy-iron shirts.

So what’s with Lourdes Ciccone being so darned cool? Instead of designing her own Material Girl clothing range, shouldn’t she be staring at her mother and declaiming, ‘You are sooooo embarassing in those Adidas pants, mum, and what’s with the trilby?’ How come she’s not suing her father, a personal trainer to the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow, for giving her ‘body issues’? And why isn’t she chucking the macrobiotic mung beans out of the fridge in favour of burgers, while proclaiming her right to get spotty?

I tell you, kids aren’t what they used to be. And I’m jealous. Madonna seems to be doing a fantastic job of bringing up her daughter. Lourdes is clearly never going to have a nine-to-five kind of existence, but is, by all accounts, a polite little jet-setter. Judging by her early entrepreneurial streak and her blog, she’s inherited her mother’s work ethic, as well as her sense of style. And she looks fabulous. Mum and daughter are often papped while wearing the same striped top or leather jacket, and you can imagine them swapping style tips over the breakfast egg white omelette.

It’s just not right. Someone should tell them that they’re supposed to be slamming doors in each other’s faces, not partying hand in hand at the same venues.

Madonna, in the unlikely event that you’re reading this, get Lourdes making jam and listening to Radio 4. She’s going to rebel at some point, so you might as well give her something to react to. Otherwise she might surprise you by enrolling in a Classics degree and learning how to tap dance.

Last night, I watched a TV program that’s become an endangered species. Cutting Edge: Four Sons versus Four Daughters was a reality show, but – hold the front page – it didn’t try to humiliate the people it was filming.  What’s more, the people concerned were two middle class families, leading lives of uncomplicated happiness somewhere in middle England. Where was the angst, the secrets, the affair with the tennis coach? Each family had four children of the same sex, and the show swapped parents for the weekend to see how different their lives might have been. 

The show’s producers had obviously been briefed to find the UK’s most gender-stereotypical families. The four girls did hours of dance lessons each week, had a house filled with My Little Ponies,and couldn’t stop painting the fingernails of anything that didn’t move – even big burly dad, the haulage contractor, was regularly subjected to makeovers. Over on the boys’ side, it was endless football, plastic guns and go-kart racing. Both mothers worked part-time, and were very happy with their lot. As were the dads. In short, there wasn’t much of a story. And the story there was could be condensed into: ‘Mums of girls get to go shopping. Mums of boys get to watch football’. As a documentary, it could have been so much more.

I’m a mother of four boys, and was dying to see if I’d watch the program secretly seething with jealousy about life with glorious girls. Perhaps a life policing games of goodies and baddies wasn’t actually as much fun as I seemed to think. However, I laughed at the makeovers and the messy pink bedrooms, though admitted that the girls looked sweet doing their ballet lessons. They were also a lot quieter than the boys, and smiled and chatted all the time. But seven hours of watching wobbly infant arabesques a week? I realised I probably had more in common with the mother of boys who was quite happy to watch her sons and husband hurl themselves around a go-kart circuit, while feeling no need to join in the ‘fun’ herself. There was a moment when the burly dad of girls, who runs a second-generation family haulage business from the bottom of the garden, seemed as though he was going to point to his collection of diggers and trucks and sigh about his daughter’s lack of interest in them. But he admitted that he wasn’t sure he’d have chosen a career in haulage for himself anyway, and really didn’t mind that his daughters were unlikely to take over.

I’m not saying I wanted a fist fight and parents breaking down over their lack of a son or daughter. But it would have been nice to ask the children what they thought of their new parents for the weekend. I’d also like to have got into the issues of education – are boys as backward as generally reported when it comes to schooling? And are mothers of boys more likely to allow their offspring to get away with doing household chores?

Cutting Edge documentaries are generally lauded as watercooler TV. In this instance, I can’t imagine anyone getting wound up by the show’s conclusion which revealed that both sets of parents were extremely lucky, had wonderful kids, and ‘Wouldn’t have it any other way’. On the plus side, we spend so much time hearing about shoddy parenting, and people dashing to the States for gender selection, that it was nice to hear that what you get couldn’t be more wonderful. I’m just not sure we need a slightly feeble documentary to remind us of the joy of parenthood.

Years ago, I visited a heavily pregnant expat friend living in Sao Paolo, Brazil. I was single at the time, and there was plenty about her pregnancy that I found amusing, surprising and occasionally shocking. Number one was the support stockings she wore, those great white whale numbers no less, to try and contain her varicose veins. I also wasn’t so sure about her sporting a bikini bump – surely mothers should modestly cover their bulging fertility in case people looking realised that they had, you know, been having sex. And, this was a pre-mobile phone era, my friend kept scurrying off to phone booths to call her husband about everything she did. ‘Should she buy chicken or pork for supper?’ ‘Teddy or panda bear fabric for the nursery blind?’ And even ‘We’re getting a bus home. Do you think it will be quicker than a taxi’? I laughed and laughed at the behaviour of my usually razor sharp friend. But know better know, and should be better prepared for what’s currently afflicting me.

Basically, if you happen to see my brain, can I have it back?

I’d heard about ‘preggie brain’, but hadn’t realised it sometimes inflicted such specific symptoms. In my case, it’s manifested in a complete inability to make decisions. And it crept up on me with so much stealth that it was only this weekend, when a friend pointed out what a complete ‘drongo’ (her word) I was being about whether or  not to carve a chicken, that I realised quite how hopeless I’ve become. Some stand-out examples.

• During the pre-election frenzy, when the pavements in our marginal constituency were pounded by eager politicos desperate for our vote, our prospective Tory candidate knocked on the door. I am still blushing about looking at the floor while mumbling, ‘You’ll-need-to-speak-to-my-husband, that’s-his-department’. WHAT WAS THAT ABOUT? Oh, and the Tory (quite young and handsome, if memory serves), didn’t win.
• We had friends over for lunch. Kind husband offered to preside over a bbq, but unable to get my head around the food actually needed to go on the flames, I turned him down. And then spent three days dithering over the menu. Having finally decided on what I think my grandmother might have termed a ‘cold compilation’, I spent an entire morning making two different quiches (with homemade pastry), chopping six different vegetables for a cous-cous salad, hand-churning cream and strawberries into ice cream, and whisking mayonnaise for a potato salad. And to think we could have chucked some sausages into bread. The potato salad didn’t even taste very nice. I think I even heard my husband gently sighing, ‘Helman’s’.
• Getting ready to go to the park yesterday, a friend offered to put the children’s shoes on. My mind went blank, and I stood for what felt like hours trying to work out which shoes they should wear. Crocs? Wellies? Well, it might rain. Trainers? In the end, one of the littles ended up going barefoot, while the oldest put on the toddler’s sandals.
• My sister’s  40th birthday present is nearly a week late because it’s taken me six  months to decide  what to buy. And even now, I’m racked with worry about whether I’ve chosen the right colour.

It’s all a bit embarrassing. I usually make decisions, even life-changing ones, incredibly quickly. And now I can barely work out if I want to have cornflakes or muesli at breakfast. How can this possibly give me any kind of advantage when it comes to bringing up another baby? Mother nature, what is it all about? And will normal service ever resume?

Bless. I think. We’re staying with my mother for a few days, and being spoilt rotten with three-course meals and endless cups of tea. But she seems surprised that I know how to use a washing machine, and this morning tried to pour milk for me over my breakfast cereal. Extremely kind, but the cocooning has made me wonder what I’ll be like in a few (gulp) decades time when my tribe have flown the nest. Will I still see them as being prone to falling down stairs? Unable to eat a boiled egg without accompanying soliders, and having the white scaped out onto the plate? And will I ever stop showing off their accomplishments, however minor, to friends, just as my mother does. Only yesterday I overheard glowing reports of me managing to grow strawberries in a tub. In London no less.

It’s not just my mother. Walking down the street with a friend earlier in the week, we were chatting away until she suddenly stopped mid-sentence, pointed to the sky and said, ‘Helicopter’ as a chopper flew by. ‘Fascinating’ I replied, realising she’d forgotten neither of us had children with us. And another friend, a mother to three teens, admits that she still peels the stringy bits of banana off for her eldest, while her youngest (aged 14) has never once used a washing machine.

So once you start, do you stay in parent mode forever? Is a switch flicked that makes it impossible to ever see your children older than a certain age? A sort of parenting-in-aspic approach, akin to deciding in the Eighties that powder blue eyeshadow and stonewashed jeans is your ‘look’, and never experimenting with clothes again. Which I think actually means, am I ever going to be able to let go of my children? I’m trying to equip them for life, by teaching them to cook, and make them mop up their own spills. Only yesterday, I made the five-year-old put his pyjamas under his own pillow. Oh yes, tough love r us. But I suspect that I’ll try and keep them tied to the apron strings as long as I can. Who else could possibly understand the importance of a scraping, as opposed to a spreading, of Marmite on boiled egg soldiers? And not lose patience when it takes 15 minutes of coaxing to get into a swimming pool, when everyone else jumped in instantly?

It might not even be fears about the children growing up and needing me less, but part of a general panic about me getting older. And I don’t want to start obsessing about the merits of Botox et al quite yet.  Anyway, more importantly, did you see that helicopter go phut-phut-phutting past?

If only I’d read the hand-chalked sign, “Quiet, well-behaved children always welcome” before sitting down. The restaurant was in Fowey, a pretty Cornish fishing village packed with places to eat. Some smart looking with linen tablecloths, others little more than ice cream parlours with a table or two on the street outside. We chose somewhere that looked as though it would provide a decent meal, in that all-important laidback family way. Which, to be fair, it did. But it took its time. And after an hour of hanging around, the children were lying on the floor, throwing napkins at each other and blowing lemonade through straws. Anyone walking into the restaurant by the end of the meal would either have walked straight out again, or rolled their eyes at the spoilt brats who didn’t know how to behave. But it wasn’t completely our fault.

I’m not blaming the restaurant because, if you’ll forgive the pun, we tend to make a meal out of it every time we go to a restaurant as a family. But we try, really we do, to make the children behave sensibly. We rarely eat out (what’s the point when the oldest of three is only five years old?) but occasionally needs must, like yesterday when we got caught in the rain at lunchtime and hadn’t yet bought a picnic.

So I’m suggesting a family restaurant charter. Parents will try to prevent children spoiling the enjoyment of others. But restaurants, in return, we need your help.

PARENTS’ PLEDGE To get the children to sit down in one place for as long as possible.
RESTAURANT REPLY Menu will be with you within seconds of you sitting down, and we’ll be back shortly after to take your order.

PARENTS’ PLEDGE To keep the children sitting down. ‘I spy’, ‘Scissor, stone, paper’, ‘Hide the stone under a napkin/in a glass’ all give at least five minutes respite.
RESTAURANT REPLY We’ll get the drinks out in minutes, buying parents a bit of time before the food arrives.

PARENTS’ PLEDGE To get as much food in the children’s mouths as they can. We’ll also order sensibly, so please don’t be offended if we think that two children’s meals can extend to three infants.
RESTAURANT REPLY To be sensible about portions. Parents won’t think you mean if you supply tiny portions for tiny children, as long as you charge accordingly.

PARENTS’ PLEDGE The last thing we want to do is be in a restaurant that isn’t geared up for children. So don’t pretend to like teenies if you don’t.
RESTAURANT REPLY Please don’t be offended if we direct you to a more suitable establishment.

PARENTS’ PLEDGE We’ll practice ‘restaurant eating’ at home, so that the children know what to expect.
RESTAURANT REPLY Staff will be trained in best kid practice – getting a high chair sorted, providing crayons and paper, and doing the order super-quick.

Any other ideas? I’d love to know when I’ll be able to take my tribe to a restaurant without leaving covered in food and blushes.