Having three children of the same gender has been an eye-opening experience.

Despite the fact that in not producing both sexes, in society’s eyes, we are in second place to those ‘clever’ parents who spawned both boys and girls. After a third boy, we got used to the head-tilted sympathy smiles and the constant assumption we must be hugely disappointed not to have had a girl. Very quickly we saw the advantages; shared clothes, toys and (naively, now, we realise) interests. One-size-fits-all parenting? How wrong we have been. Our youngest, Charlie, has signs of a slightly obsessive compulsive personality.

We’ve had the horse phase, the Lego phase and are now in the throes of an extended army obsession. Without wishing to generalise, we thought this was normal for a little boy, despite the fact his elder two brothers have never shown any interest. Even the most pacifist parent normally struggles to stop a son turning just about anything into a gun.

With Charlie’s seventh birthday looming and a poor track record remembering to organise birthday parties, we had a genius idea to fuel his army obsession and run his friends ragged while filling them with enough sugar and additives to make their parents think twice about ever leaving them with us again.... So we spent a Saturday afternoon covering 16 boys in camouflage paints and setting them free in the woods with laser tag guns.

The guns were rented from a friendly Lancashire gentleman who assured me they were easy to use and suitable for 6/7-year-olds. Hefty rental fees paid, they arrived with instructions as thick as a pre-Google phone directory. With the party division of labour designated, I was on food duty, with Steve’s only requirement to read the instructions. Herein lay my first mistake.

For Steve, as (I imagine) for many of the male population, written instructions are surplus to requirements. He reverted to the tried and tested method of ‘have-a-guess’. Within five minutes of the kids being dropped off, my respect for teachers increased five-fold; there was screaming before we’d even given them the guns. Faced with an array of bemused faces and guns complicated enough to be part of the NASA space programme, it became apparent the instructions may have been a good place to start. After explaining the basic functions, we told them to run free, shoot whatever they liked and come back in 20 minutes.

What ensued was better than any sociological study.

The class genius, aged seven, quickly planned battle tactics based on Britain’s invasion of Normandy. (Sadly, this was not our son.) The child who really only wanted the spend the afternoon smashing the gun into a tree, and one who must be the origin of the phrase ‘space cadet’ were true to form. One child decided to wait until we had all walked the mile to the woods before letting us know he had left his shoes in the garden.

Charlie, like so many birthday boys before him, spent the first half-hour in tears, from being overwhelmed perhaps, and embarrassed that his parents had no control over his friends.

With energy levels thankfully flagging, we took them deeper into the woods for a Haribo treasure hunt. All bets are off on a kids’ birthday party. There’s always one child who finds 20 bags and then refuses to share. After tough negotiations to redistribute the sweets, we headed home for sausages in the garden just as parents were arriving to deliver us from our torture. Despite protestations from several ungrateful children, I do not buy into the scam of party bags. No child needs a bag full of plastic toot with even more sweets. Mine are still scarred from the time I gave their friends a toothbrush and toothpaste as a going-home gift.

As everyone headed off with a lump of tray bake and and a hearty goodbye, we opened the wine and congratulated ourselves on surviving. I know I’ll miss it when rows over jelly sweets will seem preferable to drunk teenagers’ vomit, but we’re done. It makes a day of dental treatment seem like a walk in the park.

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