The sinks are all gleaming porcelain, at just the right height.  You reach for the soap, under the mirror and over the sink, catch some and then wash your hands under the eco-friendly push button tap, then walk over to the dryer, perched out of the way on the wall.  All clinical, clean, easy to use.  Perfect.  Unless you have children (or vertically challenged), when they are…

Perfectly Useless

The sinks are far too high.

But that’s no problem, surely any establishment with toilets that welcomes families (i.e., isn’t a strip club) will have a step?  A simple, sturdy plastic step costing a few quid from Ikea, to help my children reach the sinks.

Uh, no.  They might have an outdoor play area, a children’s menu and more, but the chances of a step in their bathrooms?  As likely as my daughter getting that unicorn she has on her birthday list.

So instead I have to bench-press my children in some Mission Impossible human trapeze over the sink so they are suspended at just the right height, cupping her body with both hands to avoid her head-butting the sink or taps or soap dispenser with a precariousness that turns ‘let’s just wash our hands’ into a fiendishly difficult trick that would have health and safety experts reaching for a non-conformance report.

Still she’s at the right height now, so job done.

Job Not Done

She can’t get to the soap, even on a step (unless she has arms like ElastiGirl from the Incredibles), and on a dangle, the angle’s all wrong, so I have to manoeuvre her body so she’s hanging from one arm, then punch the lever (right now I want to punch the person who designed this ridiculously common and impossible bathroom) and catch the pink goo single-handedly before blobbing some in the region of her palms.  ‘It slid off?  OK sweetie, let’s try again.’  Now I have one soapy hand which is not making my slippery grip on her any more secure, but at least I am back to a two-armed grip on the wriggling worm that is my daughter.

Water Water Everywhere

She just needs some water and she can get frothing.  She presses on the tap, nothing.  She puts her entire tiny weight through both her hands and onto the eco-tap.  Again, DroughtCity Arizona.  I shift her body against my hip and arm and press the tap to be rewarded with a tiny microsecond of dribble, which her lightning reactions fail to intercept.  Again I press, again a drip, again we miss.

By the third drip, she yells because the drips have turned to a boiling inferno, which the establishment warns us of with polite signs saying “warning: very hot water” as if an A4 sheet makes it okay to provide water hotter than Old Faithful.  Through some knee- and edge-of-the-sink balancing (‘Mummy, it’s digging in’), we create foam in the general regions of the end of our arms whilst splashing water and soap liberally over the sink, the floor, our bodies and down my trousers such that I’ll have to keep my coat done up until my crotch dries.

Drier, Where Are Thou?

I stand her back on her own two feet, with a “chuff” of expelled exertion, confident that at least we’re nearly done, we just need to dry her hands.  It’s almost in reach (if there was a step, which of course there isn’t), but the sensor won’t sense her, so I have to balance her on one uplifted knee, as I swipe my hand underneath with the regularity of a ticking clock so the darned thing won’t cut out.

It’s taken us ten minutes to simply wash her hands and I am drained by the thought that this life-sapping event is likely to be repeated a few more times on this quick trip to town. Then a minute after the door closes behind us and I sigh with relief that that torture is over, she gets a second wind and declares ‘I need a poo,’ after which I suggest she wipes her brown hands down her trousers and we’ll bleach them both later.

I can see why hand sanitiser is so flipping popular.

Disabling Our Children

Why can’t cafes, shops and malls provide a child-friendly, child-tested, child-proven bathroom experience so that a child is able to complete the simple routine act of washing and drying their hands without needing a human hoist with the patience of Mother Teresa?

With this simple act, we empower our children, to be able to do things on their own, without shadowing their every move and nannying them.

Can’t people see that these designs are unfriendly and unwelcoming?  How do you expect me to feel good about having kids when every single item in this room is designed as a spectacular obstacle akin to the lofty hurdles of the Grand National?  When you present parents with a choice between clean hands (and good routines) and doing their back in, which do you expect them to choose?

Why is this world so child-unfriendly?

I want to give my children the confidence and skills to do things for themselves, even if it’s just going to the toilet on their own and washing their hands.  Yes I will sniff and inspect them afterwards to check they have been thorough, but this is about empowering them to do what they can, from the youngest age appropriate, to learn, to grow, to expand.  Yet the moment we are in public, we design rooms, chairs, seats, cutlery, doors, sinks and more that are barriers to them: too high, too big, too long, too wrong for them to use.

I’m not the only mum who must feel like this, so why haven’t things changed?  Why is it that designers and architects, builders and more still continue to churn out toilets that are entirely unfriendly to any child or grown-up who doesn’t fit the norm?

Come on world, you can do better than this.

Where’s My Shoe?

Did you get it out of the shoe box?  Yes

Where did you put it?  Right here.

So where is it?  Dunno

He is standing in the kitchen with one school shoe on and one missing.  We glance around and it fails to leap out shouting “boo”.  It’s just over a metre between the shoe box and where he is standing – how can it possibly be missing? (I ponder, still grasping my scientific logic bubble as if the arrival of children failed to pop it irretrievably).

Bubbles and I both check the shoe box.  We independently conclude that it is definitely not there, nor near it.  We look under his coat and book bag.  Nada.  How can it possibly have disappeared?  He had it just seconds ago.  Argghhh.

The Hunt Begins

We search under the chairs, the table, even behind the bin (he has a tendency to fling). Nothing.  I am both bemused and frantic, for it’s nearly time for the school schlep and the merest hint of being late has me hyperventilating.  I start pulling chairs out, checking the seats and under the cushions, but this game of hide and seek has me well and truly stumped.  How is it that one shoe and two children can outwit the brain that got me my PhD?

‘What have you done with it?’ I ask in exasperation, as if he is simply waiting for me to ask to shed light on this situation.  ‘Nothing’ comes the reply.  There follows some pointless and less than illuminating discussions as my voice rises to octaves only dogs can hear.

Since we have searched our small kitchen floor pretty thoroughly, we now hurriedly look in the less obvious places.  In the oven?  Nope.  The fridge?  Nope.  The washing machine?  Please not the washing machine, as that’s now a frothy, spinning jumble of school clothes embroidered in a mix of felt tip and snot.  Still nothing.

Time Runs Out

I glance nervously at the clock.  It is one minute past our scheduled exit from the house.

‘Here, wear these’ I say through gritted teeth, flinging his non-school shoes at him.  I hate giving up but we need to get to school.  As we half-hurry over frosty pavements, my brain rewards me with a steady stream of increasingly ridiculous suggestions as to where his shoe might be.

I dismiss the idea that a microcosmic bermuda-triangle event occurred between the shoe box and the kitchen, ate his shoe and instantly evaporated.  Whilst the idea of the invisible shoe guzzler at least brings a smile to my face, I am similarly unconvinced.

Where You Least Expect It

When I get back from school, I give the kitchen an expert and uninterrupted (and unhurried) search.  Nothing.  Maybe it was eaten by the Tupperware monster who randomly chomps on the lids that match whatever you have put the leftovers in.  I shrug resignedly and ponder when I might be able to get to Clarks to buy a new pair.

I go into the living room to get my water bottle and what do you know?  It’s there.  Half on the bookshelf.  Abandoned like a rusty car on a back street to nowhere.  I have the shoe but no closure – how did it get there?

I may never know.