Parenting: Three boys bring triple the noise

C'mon, feel the noise - meet Mel's family: From left, Jesse, Mel's husband Andy Pilcher, Tom, Mel and Finn. Photo / Getty Images

Patience and earplugs are what a mum to three sons needs.

I belong to a secret club. It doesn't have a definitive title, but we recognise fellow members on the street. We usually have at least two pieces of Lego and something Spidermanny in our handbags, and are blithely going about our business even when the surrounding noise has reached decibel I-can't-believe-you-can still-hear-anything level. When we meet each other in social situations and realise our common status, we exchange knowing laughs, relieved looks and more likely than not a tale or two of mass destruction. Welcome to the Mother of Three Boys Club (MOTBC).

You can't be in our club if you have two boys, and certainly not if you have a girl. Elitist? Perhaps. But we mothers of three boys just need ... something.

When we meet, we don't have to comment on the level of mind-blowing noise three boys can create. We're sisters in arms. We've all got our war stories of that time we stumbled into the bathroom half awake at 3am only to plop down on a seat covered in cold pee, because our boys were "swordfighting" before bed.

We've cleaned that pee off the floor. We've cleaned it off the walls. Heck, once we even cleaned it off the bathroom mirror. (Still trying to figure out how that episode went down.)
Fellow members of the MOTBC just get it.

If I had a dollar for every time someone said to me "Ohhh, three boys, when are you going to try for a girl ...?" Let's just say I'd be living somewhere a lot fancier than a semi-renovated ex-state house and we'd be using $5 notes as toilet paper - even in the boys' bathroom, where they seem to go through a minimum of two bog rolls a day.

The benefit of having three sons is that they are teaching me things my own female-dominated childhood lacked. Such as dirt can become so ingrained in knees that no amount of scrubbing will completely remove it. Or that tackling someone and dropping them actually indicates deep-felt love. Or that it is possible to sit through all of the Transformers movies, including the horror that was Age of Extinction (so bad!), and not lose all of your mental faculties. Or that, yes, you can hide three weeks' worth of school lunches in your bedroom, but it will bring mice.

But what we members of the MOTBC also know is that boys are wonderfully affectionate. They cuddle with abandon, they snuggle at every opportunity. They are little limpets of love. Granted, clothes shopping for them is nowhere near as exciting as girl shopping, but my middle son's love of cricket has helped me develop a mean medium pace delivery and that skill gives me great kudos at the park on a Sunday afternoon.

As for trying for that elusive girl child? No thanks. I feel complete with my noisy, adventurous, affectionate, rambunctious sons. And I'm sure any fellow member of the MOTBC will tell you the same.

Mel Homer is the announcer on Mix 98.2. This is the first of her monthly columns about parenting.