Dealing With The Impossible Challenge! - Graeme Urwin

Happy New Year.

I had a lovely break over Christmas and New Year, and hope you did too.

However, there WAS one stressful event. As my daughter was 10 on New Year's day, we arranged her party for the Friday following. "What do you want to do Charlotte, we said"?

"I want to go swimming, have pizza and cake, then have a sleepover with my friends" she replied. Bearing in mind we are talking about a total of 9 girls here, we gulped and said ok.

Well, thank goodness the snow went by the Friday, and 8 girls duly arrived at our house. We got them to the swimming baths where they had a great time, brought in pizza to the room provided, and Charlotte blew out the candles to a roar of 'Happy Birthday'.

Then back to our house for party games, and desperately trying to tire them out. Three hours later they all got ready for bed. This consisted of them all having mattresses and sleeping bags in the lounge. We made sure they all cleaned their teeth (like herding cats) and persuaded them to settle by 11pm.

But my goodness can they talk! Quite incredible! This, together with pillow fights went on and on. My wife Alyson took the first shift, and I got some kip until 3 o'clock, when the alarm clock went for me to take over.

I crept downstairs, and met a haggard looking woman who I presumed was Alyson trudging past me murmering "never again".

Apparently, 4 girls refused to sleep at all, while the rest were flat out, including Charlotte.

The ringleaders of chaos were therefore still chatting and giggling until around 5/6 o'clock, when it went quiet. I went back to bed until the alarm went off at 8 o'clock, and went downstairs wondering what I would find.

Of course they were all dead to the world. Their parents were due for 10 o'clock, and so by 9 o'clock we needed to take action. Loud shouts of "wakey wakey" came from Alyson and myself, and eventually they all staggered into the kitchen for breakfast. This briefly revived them, and by the time the parents arrived and I had gone round finding missing items of clothing/pillows/blankets.

On leaving, they collected their party gift bag and off they went.

Knowing looks came for the various parents as they left, who whispered to us that we must have been mad etc. We agreed, said never again (again), and poured more tea.

As a postscript, the ones who had not gone to sleep until 5-6 o'clock apparently spent most of the weekend in bed! Then it was back to school on the Monday. Alyson reported this with some glee it must be said.

All the best for 2008, and I'll see you next month.

PS: For those of you with younger children - try this, its fun and helps them with their maths