Writings by me

Yesterday we dropped into our local Costa for a breakfast pick-me-up. Freddie chose a croissant and a smoothie, while I opted for my usual flat white and a flapjack to share with Harry.

Obsessed with finding the right thing for my son, even in coffeehouse form, I started offering other items, ‘yes but have you seen this delicious looking Easter nest and these delicious muffins?’ to which Freddie, sounding more and more grown up every time I speak to him, said:

‘Mummy, when I have decided what I want please can you not give me other options?’

Woah. I must say I was floored and really in awe of his rapidly developing maturity and ability to make his point in a polite way. Freddie, at 6 has nailed a life lesson that it has taken me at least 25 years to learn; too many options is often not a good thing.

Options, options, options; having options is often thought to be essential to happiness. In terms of parenting, whether it’s the variety of food we’re told our child needs, which activities we do on a daily basis and the bigger stuff like where we will live, what school they will go to and what childcare we will choose, having plenty of options to choose from is considered to be absolutely essential to successful parenting and overall life happiness.

However, a major positive that came out of lockdown for me was surprisingly, the lack of options. As someone who struggles with anxiety about making the right decisions and choosing between many things, it was strangely liberating to be told that your only choice of activity was which walk you might decide to take each day. Suddenly the decision of ‘what to do with the kids’ was strictly limited to what we might have lying around the house and ‘what to feed the kids’ was met with ‘well whatever we already have in the cupboards.’

The trick is now, as society opens up and options become endless again, to remember that the only options that really matter are the ones that keep your kids safe, fed and healthy; everything else is just noise.