Are you listening Feis Mammies?

So yummy mummy Kirsty Young has accused us ordinary mums of seeing our children as an extension of our own successes. She thinks that by plonking our offspring in front of Baby Einstein, sending them out to Mandarin Chinese lessons and forcing them to attend ballet lessons we’re trying to turn Junior into the next Sir Isaac Newton, and therefore living out our own failed dreams.
The millionaire mum, who has two young girls, says stay at home mothers are the very worst culprits. Thanks Kirsty.
I’ll admit hovering around the ‘How to Have the Most Brainy Child in the World’ department in Easons and even picking up ‘Quantum Physics for Toddlers’ and seriously pondering a purchase.
So how does one know if one is a pushy parent? I considered the following online questionnaire and have submitted my answers, maybe you should too. I am eagerly awaiting my official Pushy Parent membership badge and bumper sticker in the post.

Question 1 – Do you give options?
No, I just make demands and expect them to be carried out, to the letter, on time, every time.

Question 2 – Do you hear the word ‘no’?
Of course I do, but only when I say it.

Question 3 – Are your reactions appropriate?
They certainly are. I find screaming and throwing a strop to be perfectly appropriate behaviour for a grown up who doesn’t get their own way. Also bashing stuff with tree branches and kicking household appliances.

Question 4 – Have others complained about your ‘pushiness’?
Yes they have and most have found a stay in hospital is often as refreshing as a week-long holiday.

Perhaps I’m not a fully fledge Pushy Parent yet, but as my kids grow I will endeavour to put opportunities their way. I’ll buy violins, drum kits, trumpets. Whatever they show an interest in I’ll encourage. Not because I want them to be an extension of my own obvious greatness, I just want my kids to be the best they can be. It’s their life, their future.
For example, my oldest son seems to like all things medical so I encourage this behaviour by letting him watch Casualty and cheering while he operates on Action Man’s dodgy ticker with a desert spoon. I do this not because I myself tried and failed to be a doctor but because, in my twilight years I quite like the idea of him becoming a medical professional and therefore having prescription drugs on tap to aid my planned hardcore eccentricity.
My middle child wants to be a rock star. I encourage his singing and air guitar antics because in my eccentric twilight years I quite fancy the idea of hanging around rock concerts in my prescription drug-induced blissful state.
My youngest child will hopefully decide to progress from sticking magnetic numbers on the front of the fridge to become a bank manager. Thus funding his old mum’s prescription drug and rock concert preferences.
So there you have it Kirsty Young. You haven’t got all us pushy mums worked out. Try and stick me in a category will you? Well, when you work it out, stick that in your pipe and smoke it. I suppose you’re now going to tell me that letting children under seven smoke pipes is bad parenting too Kirsty?