How often do we give our children mixed messages?

Most people are sound. That’s the message I try to give to the kids, when they see or hear a bad news story or even when something upsetting happens within their own little world. Most people are sound, and incidents which might make them worry to the contrary are just hiccups that aren’t reflective of the majority of situations.

It’s a position that can work quite well with the smaller kids, I think, before the rose-tinted glasses of childhood are replaced with the more cynical and suspicious ones of adulthood, when blindly presuming the best about people can see you labelled as either naive or a dope.

I’m not sure which is the bigger insult.

But my messaging was called into question recently when two of the younger children took the dog for a walk. She’s a very small dog, minuscule even, so no struggle to manage on the lead, but she screams and reaches tones and notes opera singers could only dream of at the mere sight of another dog, cat or even a terrifying butterfly.

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I am that deeply suspect Irish creature, a mother of an only child. It was by choice

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‘Again, my pesky children failed to tell tales on their friends to their parents’

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In the absence of fearsome creatures, she behaves beautifully on the walk and is friendly to all she meets. She is a people dog. And a people magnet.

I think it’s her tiny size and huge eyes. She weighs all of 3.5kg, and most people presume her to be far younger than she is. Like the man who stopped his car and rolled down his window to call out to my two boys, “Is she a puppy?” “No,” they replied, “she’s just tiny,” before carrying on walking their microdog.

Once home, the older of the two relayed the story to me. “It’s her size,” I remarked. “Sure we thought she was a puppy too when we first found her.” The second youngest, who hadn’t gone on the walk, had a different reaction. “Stranger danger,” he replied, frowning on hearing they had stopped and interacted with the man they didn’t know.

Don’t talk to strangers – unless you risk mortifying your parents with perceived rudeness

He was, of course, right. I scolded myself. I’d warned them to be wary of strangers offering sweets, or strangers who they didn’t know claiming I had sent him or her to pick them up from school. I hadn’t prepared them for what to do if someone they didn’t know asked a perfectly reasonable question about their dog. It may well be that the man who stopped to ask the question lives in our neighbourhood, perhaps even knows the family, I’m not sure, but the kids didn’t know him. So, the same rules should apply surely, if we’re to keep them safe?

But how often do we give our children mixed messages? A stranger strikes up a conversation with them in the park asking if they’ve a day off school or if they’re enjoying that ice cream and we nudge them to reply if they have not already instinctively done so. Don’t talk to strangers – unless you risk mortifying your parents with perceived rudeness.

Plus, most people are sound, right?

We’re in the middle of birthday season here. Four birthdays in three weeks and two on the same day – though they’re not twins. One, who had just celebrated a birthday, was saving up for something and so grandparents and parents had gifted him money for the occasion. For reasons known only to him, he brought his wallet to school one day, complete with his birthday donations, and, lo and behold, it came to pass that he left his wallet on the bus.

I shared on social media, just in case someone happened to be scrolling and found it. People generously shared my message, helping to spread the word – because most people are sound

I immediately gave up hope. “There’s no way you’re getting that back,” I said, after unhelpfully reminding him it was madness to have had that money in his wallet in the first place. “We should have just put it on Revolut,” the husband equally unhelpfully said, when it had been me who wanted to place the cash in his birthday card in the first place.

Recriminations abound but no sign of the wallet.

I rang Dublin Bus, and a helpful man, in a calm manner, quite unlike my own, put out a call over their system to all the buses on the route he had been on. He promised he’d ring back if he had any news. But it’s a long route, with many people getting on and off and a wallet with cash just waiting to be found, I hung up despondent.

I shared on social media, just in case someone happened to be scrolling and found it. People generously shared my message, helping to spread the word – because most people are sound.

A couple of hours later the phone rang. It was the calm and helpful man in Dublin Bus. “Great news,” he said. The wallet has been handed in. All the money and cards were still there. I was relieved and delighted, but I shouldn’t have been surprised.

Because most people are sound.