First comes behaviour and discipline. It's easy with your own child because you know what works (no sweets, no pocket money, having to watch 'Dickinson's Real Deal' on repeat), but what do you do if the guest is misbehaving? I have spent five hours every day, for 40 weeks each year, of the last 17 years of my life with classes of 30 teenagers in front of me, but two mutinous eight year olds can terrify the living daylights out of me.
Next we face the dilemma of feeding them. My son is the fussiest of eaters but at least I know what he WILL eat. I recall one young lad coming to ours for the first time so I thought I would play safe and give them pizza. As I served it up he informed me he didn't like cheese. So, I offered him a mushroom omelette. He said yes, so I made one and he didn't like it. Concerned that the poor boy was going to starve I found some burgers in the freezer and cooked one for him. He began to turn his nose up again when something inside me quietly snapped and I said in my best, calm, teacher voice "Eat it". He did. It turns out he was vegetarian. Not any more he isn't.
Finally we come to bed-time and sleeping. My tactic is normally to keep them up quite late in the hope that they will sleep once they go to bed. This sometimes works but not always. On a recent sleepover my husband and I were woken by two shadowy figures looming over our bed at 1am like two of the four horsemen of the apocalypse (Lord knows where the others were - probably installing the self-checkout machines at Sainsbury's) asking for a drink of water. Armageddon very nearly arrived early that night, but I kept my cool, lay back and thought of the day (or rather, night) when it would be some other parents' turn to return the favour.
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