At the beginning of summer, when the weather was heating up, I walked into my 11-year-old son’s room to find his windows smeared with something gunky.

What craziness was this? I felt my eyebrows raise and then pinch together. My lips pursed.

Luckily, my curiosity as to what on earth he’d been up to won over my frustration over the mess he’d made.

So I asked him. “What have you done to your windows?”

He replied, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, “I put sunscreen on them.”

My face must have shown the disbelief and even the dismay I felt. He began to falter, noticing my reaction.“Would that not work?” His face fell. “Sorry, Mummy.”

I opened my eyes wider and hesitated for a moment, caught between anger and incredulity. I very nearly snapped, shouted, and made him feel small. Thankfully, in the nick of time, I caught myself, remembered my Parenting Superpowers… and smiled. [Read more…]