Being a nutritional role model for your kids is tough when you're a greedy guts with all the self-restraint of a hungry lioness with her head stuffed into the carcass of a recently downed zebra. I was thinking about this recently as I was hiding my stash. As ever, it was the hard stuff: a bag of sherbet lemons, bars of M&S Swiss milk chocolate and a packet of Mr Porky scratchings. The hiding place is the corner of the top shelf of our walk-in food cupboard. For years it has been the perfect place to hide my filth. I was the only one who could see what was there.
And then I realised: no more. My 14-year-old son is almost my height, and apparently gifted with the wisdom of the ancients. He now knows and sees EVERYTHING. This was confirmed a little while later when he barged in on my wife and me in the living room, as we hurriedly tried to hide the tattered evidence of the chocolate we had just devoured in front of the telly. He didn't even look at us. "I know you've had chocolate," he said. "I know where you keep it." He might as well have announced that he had located something boasting three speeds and made of washable latex under the marital bed.
Tricky business, this parenting lark. We appoint ourselves custodians of our kids' bodies and then keep watch like prison-camp guards: on their teeth, the nutritional intake they need for their bones and bodies. No, you can't have sweets. That glass of Coke is just pure sugar. Get off the computer and go outside and play. I said just ONE custard cream. Step away from the biscuit tin. I said, step away…
We are right to do this. It really is a part of the job description. The problem is that we are the least qualified people for that job. We are like bent drug squad coppers, who bust people for heroin possession only to tie on the tourniquet and shoot up ourselves once we've clocked off. We rampage through a box of Celebrations once the kids are in bed, then hide the evidence if we hear small footsteps on the stairs; we stuff late-night crisp packets into our pockets hurriedly. And yes, I am making the personal a universal. I have to assume I'm not alone in this. I have to assume you are all the same as me, otherwise how could I live with myself?
We do, of course, have a rationale. The mere fact that we have reached the cool, sunlight pastures of adulthood with all our own teeth intact and minus a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes means we have learnt self-restraint. Hurrah for us! Let's celebrate with Ben and Jerry's chocolate fudge brownie ice cream from those pots we keep hidden at the back of the freezer behind the Tupperware tubs of leftovers. Or perhaps with just another glass of that really good value chablis from Aldi.
In truth, that's the reality of most middle-aged parental hypocrisy: we lecture our kids on eating sweets. We keep their hands out of the biscuit tin. And yet too many nights of the week we pull the cork on something eminently quaffable. This, I suppose, is life. And parenting. We do the very best we can, which never feels quite good enough. We feel gloomy about it. And hence we feel the need to comfort ourselves. Oh sod it. The kids are in bed. Just another glass. It can't hurt. Can it?
