Smile, please...

If there’s one thing I hate it’s being made to feel like a bad mother.
Believe it or believe it not, it has happened to me before. People judging me – whether that be for rugby tackling my toddler before he lifts a £300 bowl in Debenhams or encouraging a passion for bad 80s music – flings me way out of my comfort zone.
I have my parenting faults – we all do. But I put my all into it. I’ll be the first to admit that I maintain a deathly grip on my ‘fabulous mum’ crown and take great exception to anyone suggesting that I’m not a 100 per cent perfect parent.
This week I was given a telling off by a dentist who appeared to be 12 years old. I had taken the oldest boy for a check-up and was told he needed a filling in one of his milk teeth.
She discussed the matter using fancy dentistry related terms – all primary and secondary incisors this, right-side molars that – and suggested that my terrible parenting literally bored a hole in my son’s beautifully white teeth.
As she examined his teeth she cross-questioned me on exactly how many fizzy drinks the child has in one day.
I informed her that I can count on two fingers the amount of fizzy drinks the child has had in his entire seven and a half year existence – once when he drank a mouthful of cola at a wedding in 2006 and again when he consumed a glass of fizzy orange at his friend’s birthday party. I told her I remember these reckless incidents of extreme parenting as we had to endure the crazy sugar rush and severe grumpy slump afterwards and wished not to repeat them.
I could barely fit my high horse into her cramped dental surgery.
The dentist smiled like she knew I was lying. She wrote in a folder – presumably ticking the very, very bad mother box, and threw professional glances at her assistant who also made a ‘you’re so lying’ face.
They were making me nervous. And when I’m nervous I talk.
I told them that my boy drinks nothing but spring water. Water and milk, maybe, but only on special occasions like birthdays.
She asked me if the child ate sweets. I gasped in a horrified manner, pointed and told her that the child never, ever ate sweets. Never. I covered my boy’s ears and told her that my children were yet to discover that sweets had actually been invented and I would thank her not to mention those sugary works of the devil in my presence.
I told her that in fact I often gave them small pieces of fruit and pretended they were sweets. I told her that there is more sugary content in the Lough Derg pilgrimage diet (as in bread and water) than in what he consumes daily.
She asked me to explain then, with this ferociously strict diet, how he managed to get a big, bad decaying hole in his tooth.
I told her that I was totally bewildered by this development, that I couldn’t explain it. That the boy brushes his teeth 20 times a day. That his tooth brushing actually borders on obsessive and that I encourage this obsessive behaviour by carrying a toothbrush and paste around in my handbag. And that I also have a stopwatch with an alarm – that I never let him go more than 40 minutes without brushing. And that for his last birthday I bought him a supply of dental floss.
It was probably the most uncomfortable half hour I have ever spent. I’ve been in some strange spots before but never had I had to lie more profusely to protect my ‘Fabulous Mother’ crown. I wasn’t going to let some 12-year-old dentist scrape the shine off it with one of her implements of torture.
Truth is the kid eats sweets, like every other kid on the planet. May God forgive me the child drinks diluted orange the odd time. I know these dentist types would have all our kids eating apples and drinking sparkling water the daylong but outside influences – like wicked grandmothers who ply kids with lollipops – do exist. This is the real world.
Hopefully this bump on the road to perfect parenting will pass soon, the kid can get his tooth filled and I can make my way back to Mother of the Yearsville.