Honesty and the ability to give it to someone straight. Talking around a subject, fluffing it up with watery phrases like, “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about,” or “Everything’s fine… really”, do not help. Not when everything might not be fine.

As a parent, if there’s even the tiniest thing wrong with your child you want to know about it straight away. You want to know the exact cause of whatever the problem is – whether it’s a rash or a limp, a temperature or a delay in walking.

Whatever the problem, you want to sit in a room with a trusted professional “magician” who can soothe all your fears away with clear, no nonsense facts. You want it to be like exam results day, one quick pull of the plaster and Ta-Da! the bottom line is THIS.

Or maybe that’s just me.

What you don’t want is to be told that, “Everything is fine, but you still need to come back in a couple of months, because everything might not be fine after all.”

What you don’t want is to receive a letter, detailing some facts in black and white, with the assumption that you knew this information, that it’s been told to you verbally in one of your many appointments, only to find that it hasn’t.

What you don’t want is to be fobbed off with sentences that don’t actually mean anything, with the assumption that you wouldn’t understand the technical jargon anyway, because you’re just the child’s mother. And everyone knows mothers are paranoid.

Enough.

Just give it to me straight.

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