I’m a tiger mother, believe it or not. That is to say: I was born in the year of the tiger, and I have children. But Amy Chua (the original self-styled tiger mum) would not be impressed by my credentials. But that’s ok because I’ve never aspired to be that kind of parent, mostly cos it’s one helluva committment. But there’s another reason: to be a tiger mother, you need to have tiger cubs. I’m not sure what happened, but I seem to have bred a cross between sloth and mule. There are no words for the kind of mother you have to be to raise this kind of cub. Actually, there are: permanently confused, constantly apologising (to teachers mostly); generally appalled. Because this kind of cub can neither be reasoned with, nor even bribed. He will either do it because he wants to or… he won’t. I’m completely baffled by my kids because it would never have occurred to me not to do my homework even though it was beyond boring and quite irrelevant to the real world. That wasn’t the point, and I understood that. Most kids do. I wasn’t frightened of my teachers but the threat of detentions did motivate me to do my best and do it on time. Slothymules will, at best, do it sloppily, in a manner that clearly conveys how much disdain they have for the boring subject in question. Every year, for each of my children, I get bemused teachers telling me that they simply can’t tell if my child is dumb or lazy. I have to explain that they are in fact stubbornly lazy. Look, I’m not going to lie, I have a low boredom threshold, my attention has been known to wonder and my eyelids have occasionally drooped when confronted with a dull lecture. And I have harboured some misgivings about how the teacher/lecturer in question might have worked harder to keep me alert. You know when they catch you really struggling to stop your head from lolling forwards in a manner that suggests you are not completely focussed on what they were saying… they ask you if they’re keeping you awake, and you fight the urge to tell them that they really aren’t. I guess it’s karma that now, as the parent, I have to apologise to the teacher for my child’s apparent lack of diligence while fighting the urge to tell them that they need to be a wee bit more inspiring. I do, however, tell them that they should give detentions a bit more freely. That’s the only ace teachers have; they should use it. They look at me like I’m crazy. Because I think they believe that if there was more discipline at home, my slothimule would display more virtuosity at school. Here’s the thing, though: I don’t ask the teachers to teach my child how to: load/empty the dishwasher; how to pick up clothes/towels/rubbish from the floor; how to close the shower curtain when showering; how to put clean clothes away; how to be on time in the morning; how to get to bed screen-free at night; how to take the tube; how often to change underwear, how often to shower and what soap is for; how not to waste food/pocketmoney/time; how to be be nice (sorry, less odious) to their siblings, how to spot and deal with toothpaste spit in the sink, and how to locate the toothpaste lid and reunite it with the tube… Those are my battles to fight, and I fight them daily, like a good tiger mother should, using all the aces up my sleeves to (occasionally) get the result I’m looking for. Pocket money has been closely indexed with behaviour; screens have been confiscated, phones have been restricted… Those are my aces; they are finite, and deploying them (against a hardened slothimule) takes unbelievable effort, both mental and physical. I cannot do the homework too. I know this because I’ve tried. I’ve revised for my kids’ tests, which I’d have aced (but they didn’t). I’ve learned poems with them and ended up able to recite them flawlessly (but they didn’t). I’ve done presentations which must have have had all the hallmarks of a parent-standard effort (I hope!) Not only did it make sod all difference to their uninspiring grades (I might have carried on if it had helped) but it created extra reasons for tantrums, an extra mental load for me when I don’t really have enough aces up my sleeves to cover basic how-to-be-a-decent-human training. I can see how the teachers are reluctant to give detentions though: the thought of spending an extra hour with my progeny must fill them with horror! I want to say it gets easier as they get older, but: Firstborn Son is looking set to retake his driving theory test because he hasn’t seen fit to pass his driving test in the allotted time (he is a driven man, driven by others); he will also need to repeat his application for a new passport because at this rate, he will run out of time to send the old one back (he has another passport, who needs two valid passports, right?) Middle child is constantly skint because of aforementioned behaviour/pocketmoney correlation. And Only Daughter has frightened off 2 clarinet teachers due to her complete and undisguised disdain at having to follow the rules of rhythm (she firmly believes it is sufficient to play the notes in the correct order). I refuse to lose hope though. Sloths have honed the art of survival using minimal resources (I’ve just googled them) and mules are (head)strong and are renown for their endurance (just googled them too) so maybe it’s not such a bad combination.