But you can't make them drink

Here's a fact every parent of a teenager knows:

"You can't MAKE them do anything"

You can lead a teenager to the water, but you can't make them drink.

You can cajole, you can beg, you can threaten, you can bribe but you can't make them.  They are worse than a toddler in the midst of terrible twos if they decide that the answer is no.

So for those of you with tweens please think very hard about how you would like to try and map the next few years.  I'll give you an example of why:

I was sent some Teenage First Aid Beauty products for trial.  It's good stuff, very good stuff but would COG trial it?  No!  I tried a bribe, I tried a beg, I tried quivering my bottom lip but no is no.

She has a skincare routine.  I drilled it into her quite a longtime ago as I had very bad acne when I was her age and was bullied dreadfully because of it.  I saw her skin type was the same as mine and we worked with a number of products until she has a routine that means if she sticks to it twice a day, every day, she has lovely clear skin.  Miss a day and up come the spots.  'So what' I hear you cry how does this affect me and my teen?

It means my bathroom shelf usually looks like this

But if I had planned in advance it could have looked like this. Why did nobody tell me to think about my bathroom aesthetics as I grabbed random bottles off the shelf at Boots?

I'll give you some other top tips:

Do not under any circumstances allow them to google Jack Wills, Superdry or Converse. Block all of these words at router level NOW, it doesn't matter if they are only 6 years old.

Spend a lot of time investigating the best mobile phone deal you can get because you're about to spend more money receiving texts you can't decipher than you ever spent on infacol or calpol.

Learn how to snooze lightly in the evenings so you don't sleep through the 2am 'returns from' and 'drop offs to' school trips.   They are about as much joy as a 2am nappy change except you have to do it with 100 other tired parents and teenagers.

In fact the best advice I was ever given by currently sleeping blogger Auntie Gwen was

"Gin, my love and plenty of it"