My eldest daughter is currently learning about the ocean and has scooped herself the role of the ocean in her up-coming class assembly.

Wirlie 1: ‘I have to wear blue’

Me: ‘Can I stick plastic to you?’

W1: ‘No, just help me find some blue clothes’.

M: ‘With plastic stuck to it’

W1: ‘No! Just blue!’

M: Just so you know, I will be attaching plastic to you’

W1: MUMMY!

Is it just me, or is the temptation to put our mark on everything just too much to ignore? When my children have homework, I must help:

Example 1: Design and create a model of a building in the village.

Child 1 – cereal box with windows and a door drawn onto it accompanied by bits of material pretending to be bricks glued here and there.

Child 2 – Shop made with various materials including a very passable roof and man walking dog.

Child 3 – Lovely house with evenly glued bricks, decorated windows, a garden with washing on the line.

My child – Perfectly proportioned carboard house, with fully tiled roof, individually drawn bricks with a vegetable patch in the garden and handmade model car on the driveway.

Example 2: Draw a picture, or make a model of something that reminds you of your holidays.

Child 1- crayon rubbing of collected shells.

Child 2 – A handmade mobile of holiday snaps.

Child 3 – A painted canvas of their last family holiday.

My child – a plaster of Paris sandcastle with sand glued onto the exterior, actual shells as windows and doors and a flag on the top.

What is wrong with me? 

Don’t get me wrong, my children love the entrance they get to make with their creations, but am I pushing them too hard to achieve perfection?

There are times when my ideas have backfired. World book day for my eldest daughter almost ended in tears before it started when I sent her dressed as the Cat in the Hat.

She looked amazing and happily posed for pictures, but when we got to school the other girls were all dressed as Disney princesses and the boys made fun of her. She’d wanted to go as a princess as well, and I said ‘no, don’t do that, princesses are boring’.

She won the best dressed in her class and got a little prize. But when I picked her up she still had the lines in her white face paint where the tears had slid down her little cheeks.

She can wear whatever she likes now, I never try and change her mind. Maybe one day I’ll take this lesson into the homework section of the parenting manual.