I am living with 2 Witchlings at War. So much so in fact that they had to be separated by 60 miles over the last 5 days!

The Witchlings share a small double room and have bunks and (if I am honest) a bit too much furniture and too many toys for their own good.  But is this the only reason they are at each other’s throats all the time?

Years of experience as a parent lead me to beleive the real reason is that they are growing up like chalk and cheese.

Witchling 12 is subdued and quiet and is doing everything in her power to become a teenage ‘emo’ as fast as possible.  She hates sport and is aiming to be a fashion designer when she getts older. She lives in a sort of half daze and can’t be bothered much with anyone or anything that isn’t going to benefit her directly. Her vices are cucumber sticks and anything with sugar in.  She is extremely thin and has elfin features behind glasses that seem always to be slipping to the end of her nose. Witchling 12 has hair like the witch of endor and never looks in the mirror if she can help it. Personal hygeine is an alien concept.

Witchling 10, by contrast, is a chunky, vibrant, live wire of a girl. She is always bubbling over with conversation and has a perpetually sunny disposition.  She DOES cry at the drop of a hat to get her own way, but soon bounces out of her blues and accepts things. She has a grasshopper mind that flits from one thing to the next, assimilating odd facts and titbits of information to spill out at a later time. Witchling 12 on the other hand, will brood about things for hours, or even days, without ever saying a word.

Witchling 10 is on the school football and hockey teams and is a little dynamo. Witchling 12 has a beautiful singingvoice and might join the choir if she can be bothered next term.

Don’t misunderstand me from this comparison. Witchling 12 sounds like a parent’s worst nightmare but she is very thoughtful and sweet at times and is developing a razor sharp sense of humour. She can also speak German almost better than she can speak English.

So what does it all mean? Well it means that the Witchlings spent a greater part of yesterday afternoon cleaning their room and sreeching at eachother, until I intervened and proved once and for all that I can screech much MUCH louder than them.

They may be very different most of the time but my Witchlings are the same in one respect. They know who’s boss in our house and they know when they’ve crossed the line. The rest of Sunday evening was spent very pleasantly. I even survived a trip to the local cinema to see High School Musical 3.  More on that next time!