Children are infinitely better than you.

Yes, I know, they are irrational mini hooligans led by their mini ego’s and tiny tummies. But in this list, I’m gonna cut them some slack. Here is how toddlers make up in morales what they lack in stature.

• Until a certain age they can’t lie. Its a short who dunnit film when the protagonist holds up their hand immediately. ‘Did you hit your sister?’ ‘Yes mummy, I done hitting like dis… ‘ Cue crime watch style reconstruction of the event, sometimes even in slow mo and invariably involving another smack on his sisters head. You just got to admire that, quite frankly rather stupid, honesty.

• They say it how it is. Related to their inability to lie is their brutal honesty about what they see before them. Who needs a mirror when you have kids? Think living in a perpetual game of Catchphrase wherein you are repeatedly told by Roy Walker to ‘say what you see’. ‘Mum you’ve got huge red spot right on the end of your big nose’. FYI that is not a catchphrase, but mummy is ‘getting hot under the collar‘  and now she is ‘seeing red’ so if I were you I would ‘run for your life’ are.

• They see all situations and all people as equal. This is my favourite thing about kids. They don’t care if they are in the front row of London fashion week or queuing in the supermarket. If they want to melt down, feel a hunger pang or fancy filling their nappies then it’s happening lady. Be prepared, brace yourself and then question what in God’s name made you think it was a good idea to take a child to London Fashion Week. And their lack of reverence for situations doesn’t end there, they also are unable to be star struck. If, for example, you were to bump into Will Mellor (my schoolgirl crush, Hollyoaks circa 1995) They will NOT act adorable, they will NOT make you look like a doting, young and appealing hot mumma. They WILL repeatedly dosh you on the head with a plastic dinosaur, refuse to pose for any pictures with said hunk and probably say what they bloody see ‘Mummy why are you going red, are you and your spot going to explode?’. FFS.

• Lack of awareness of social etiquette. It’s not big and it’s not clever to shout ‘I done a poo in my pants’ in the local library. But it is pretty frickin funny. (When it’s a child, when it’s an adult- leave library, asap). And there is something blissfully pure about a child before the marketing department of the toy shop has wormed their way into their psyches. They are not born knowing social etiquette or that they are part of a team based on gender which will determine what they wear, play with and eventually become. There is nothing I like more than to watch my son pop on a dressing up dress and pour a cup of tea for his sister (a pretend one natch, I’m not into casually watching risky situations involving boiling water). They are born perfectly unaware of the boundaries that will be placed around them. And perfectly unaware of unimportant differences. And perfectly unaware of prejudice. They are born perfect. Crikey. I think I might like the little buggers after all.

So there you have it. In some (pretty major) ways kids are better than you and I. I’ll try to remember that next time i’m willing them to ‘grow up’ and act ‘less like a baby’. Because, in actual fact, the kids are alright.