Quality time - just what does that mean?

When I was at home with my children they took me for granted. Mummy was in no way special. I was the one who remembered their PE kit, who washed their pants, who grumbled at them about the state of their rooms and nagged them to do their homework. Mummy was someone who was always on tap and their response to this availability was to abuse this seemingly infinite resource. 

When I turned up at the school gate with the wrong snack, I was in for a severe tongue lashing from my disgruntled children. They were quick to point out any lapse in the high standard of care they expected from me. Should a school project be forgotten, guess who's fault it was? If there were no clean socks in their cupboard.....well you just can't get the staff nowadays. 

In short I was a general dogsbody who had the status in the family of a particularly well worn doormat. Never once did anyone thank me for packing all those swimming kits, for filling out all those slips for school, for giving up my free time to wrap myself in a sheet and pretend to be a Roman woman, for baking endless cakes to flog at the school fair. Nope, this was all part of the basic package when it comes to being a stay at home mum. 

So the concept of spending 'quality time' with my children never crossed my mind. My idea of quality time was time spent away from these tiny tyrants. Quality time was being able to read a whole chapter of a book without interruption, being able to watch what I wanted on TV, being able to go to the loo without someone banging not he door within moments of my bum hitting the seat demanding to know when I would be finished. 

Since going back to work though, everything has changed. Yes I can go to the toilet in peace, I can read my book on my commute, I can pass out in front of the television within moments of sitting down on the sofa, but what I can't do is spend time with my children. 

One of my favourite times of the day used to be around 4pm, when I would hear my eldest's key in the door. He would come in, his skin fresh with the cold autumn air, his tie askew after a long day at school. He would dump his inordinately heavy school bag down, chuck his blazer on the banister and wander into the kitchen demanding food with all the urgency of someone nearing starvation. 

On the kettle would go, out the biscuits would come and soon we would be sitting at the breakfast bar  going over his school day. He would tell me what he had learned in his lessons, we would have impassioned discussions inspired by the topic of his debate club, he would bitterly moan about the indignities of being forced to do a cross country run in PE, I would discover all the funny things he and his pals had got up to at school. If I was lucky I would get a big kiss and a cuddle before he went up to do his homework. 

In short, I was a part of his life. A fleeting one, but one that he took for granted as simply being there, with tea on tap ready to listen to his joys and sorrows. 

When I think about that time now it makes my stomach clench in dismay, as now I miss it every single day. Sometimes he might call me on his walk home from the bus, but invariably I am in a meeting, can't pick up and by the time I phone back he has left his phone somewhere he can't hear it and I have missed my chance to get that tiny window into his world. 

By the time I get home it is dinner time in the mad house and all four boys talk simultaneously at me. I am so exhausted it all washes over me and the last thing I want to do is spend quality time with any of them. A large glass of wine and the sofa are far more appealing, than the chattering company of small boys. 

My eldest will be plugged into Minecraft or upstairs sawing away at his cello or doing his homework. My queries about his day will be met with the monosyllabic grunts of a pre-teen and I soon give up. 

So going back to work has changed my concept of quality time forever. Where once it was five minutes peace, now I can hardly believe I would crave time away from the boys, rather than greedily guzzling all those moments spent with them. The moments that give you a little insight into how things are going, how they are changing, how your little boys are becoming, gradually, yet oh so fast, men are moments of the purest quality. 

Now quality time is me and two of my boys, eldest and youngest, reading an old favourite children's book that transports me back to when my 12-year-old could fit into the crook of my arm and I would read to his uncomprehending baby ears tales of bears tucked up by their loving mums, or of dragons terrified of mice, or of fantastical beasties who roamed the deep, dark woods. 

In short, what I miss most about being a stay at home mum is the humdrum nature of just being around. Of picking up those sparkling nuggets of information your children casually drop in between demands for biscuits or whines about curtailment of screen time. 

I miss being boring old mum who was always there. Now I am a rare treat my boys don't take me for granted, but they don't let me in with the ease that they once did and that is the most heartbreaking sacrifice a working mum is force to make. 

Downsize to buy my children houses? Not on your nelly Mr Peston.

The shaggy haired, ex-BBC economics editor, Robert Peston has called upon a generation of selfish parents to sell their big, family homes in order to fund the purchase of houses for their children.

A strange proclamation from Mr Peston, who is paid £400,000 for his pontifications on all things financial, which even by my far less mathematically expert reckoning means he could probably save up for a couple of months to offer both his grown up sons a pretty decent deposit on a home, even if they want to stay near to daddy in pricey North London.

But that aside, I am still not sure that I agree. Once upon a time I used to think that it was a good idea for parents to flog big houses in order to fund smaller ones for their brood, but that was before I was a parent with a big(ish) house to my name. Now before you think I am showing off, I have a big house for the simple reason that I have a big family.

I grew up in a tiny flat in the centre of Brussels. If I really reached out I could probably have touched a hand to each side of my bedroom, and let me assure you, my arms are not very long. It was shabby, tiny and a million miles from luxurious, but it did the job. There was a roof over my head and I was a short walk from the many dive bars and clubs I would frequent as a teenager.

This left me with a profound lack of interest in spacious, 'show-off' houses. However, I then went on to marry a man who had grown up in a pretty sizeable house (which his parents, now a couple on their own, still rattle around in and have no intention of selling to help anyone out) and proceeded to have four children. This led us down the path, via many well-timed sales and purchases to be the proud possessors of a huge mortgage on decent-sized home.

When I first bought this home I did vaguely think that one day perhaps we could sell up to help the kids set themselves up. But then I had the shock realisation that this would mean that they would leave home, and that wouldn't do at all.

Perhaps I am naive, after all my children are still young, but the prospect of them flying the nest is one that chills me to the bone. The idea of me and my husband knocking around in our big house all alone horrifies me. Yes, it would be tidier, and the fridge would undoubtedly not empty at quite such a pace, but it would be so empty and lonely.

No, far better that my boys stay at home forever and ever (imagine a rather terrifying witch's cackle as the soundtrack to that particular pronouncement). The idea of losing the only people who share my terrible taste in television, who laugh at my jokes, notice when I've had my hair cut and appreciate my cooking doesn't bear thinking about.

So there is no way I am selling my house to make it easier for my boys to escape. Instead perhaps, once they all have jobs, they can help us pay the gigantic mortgage we have on this one, which will still hang like a millstone around our necks well after we have reached pensionable age.

Also, which I am sure would draw opprobrium from a financial expert like Mr Peston, we have no pension fund, so any equity in this house is far more likely to end up funding our years of dribbling in a nursing home, than flash pads for our four boys.