Wakey-wakey

Today

This morning a shared Facebook video came my way showing people trying to heave other people out of bed using mousetraps on the ears (honestly), upending beds into baths and setting Chinese cracker booby-traps,

Pretty nasty, really.

In My Day

Any mother knows the difficulties involved in trying to get their family out of bed in the morning, but I do think that, at some point, responsibility has to be passed on.

In 1983 when we lived at Montfort Close this was the set-up: Paul was working for himself as "Barretronics", I was working full-time and both girls went to the local school.

One morning I heaved myself out of bed and went to wake up my family. Without exception they were grumpy, bad-tempered and even gave me some verbal abuse. 

I thought about this during the day. When I got home I summoned a council meeting. "Listen up," I said with some force, "I don't have to get you guys up in the morning; you're quite capable of getting yourselves up and you all have alarm clocks. If you can't treat me with some manners in future I shall get myself up and off to work in the morning and you can sort yourselves out." There was a shuffling silence.

The following morning when I got up, ready to carry out my threat, I was greeted by a chorus most mannerly: "Good morning, Darling", "Hello, Mummy" etc, etc , delivered with delightful smiles. I even think there was a cup of tea. And they've never given me a bad tempered word on waking since.

As Lizzie likes to point out, it didn't make her any better at getting out of bed, but at least she smiled when refusing to get up.