Janet Christie on parenting

Dawn peeps over the horizon and I'm still trying to cling on to sleep, but something is stirring in the house. Through a half-open eye I see a little ginger head on the pillow beside me. Biggie Smalls is still asleep. Aw.

I cuddle him close and return to oblivion but now I'm in the middle of the Edinburgh Military Tattoo and there are pipes and drums at full pelt, blasting out Scotland the Brave. Rain is lashing down and my yellow poncho billows in the gale howling over the esplanade. What a nightmare.

It's Youngest Child! She's playing crazy Scottish music on the computer in the hall, positioned so I can monitor other people when they're online, checking out the inappropriate pictures they're loading on to Facebook, that will be there for all eternity. ("You'll never get a job if your future employers see that," I warn.

"Yeah we will, 'cos our employers will have mental pictures on Facebook too," they reply. Fair enough.)

Youngest is up early checking out traditional music on the computer as she's fresh from a school trip to Bannockburn and is full of the wars of independence.

Now we're on to Flower of Scotland and she's shouting, "That thought and died for (this is the cerebral version), yer wee bit hill and glen …"

All she needs is a claymore and to remember I was born just over the border and I'm a goner.

• This article was first published in The Scotsman on April 9, 2011