Parenting in Sussex: Adding more chaos to our house with our children's first pet

Balancing work, school drop-offs and pick-ups, clubs, parties, days out, holidays, homework, running a house… sometimes it feels like the tasks are endless.

In the years I’ve been writing this column, I’d imagine managing the juggle that is parenthood has taken up not a small percentage of the column inches.

And so it was with confusion that I found myself walking out of Pets at Home in Rustington on Saturday with a Roborovski dwarf hamster.

Yes, that’s right, we have now added a pet into the family, because apparently life wasn’t quite busy enough.

HAVE YOU READ? My favourite pub in Sussex – with roaring fires, fantastic food and staff that make you feel like family

Getting a hamster this weekend wasn’t planned. We had actually gone to Rustington to go to Dunelm, but after we finished there the kids asked to pop into Pets at Home to ‘have a look’. There was nothing out of the ordinary in that request, as they always love looking at the small animals and fish whenever we go past a pet store. So we said yes, expecting to leave empty-handed.

But then we started looking at the hamsters, and things took a turn… There was this one little guy flying round and round on his wheel, going so fast that he kept flipping over in it and landing in a heap at the bottom. He clearly loved it, as he did it loads of times and was really making us laugh.

I am not really a pet person. I didn’t have one when I was growing up, and rightly or wrongly, I haven’t let my children have one, so far, as I just wasn’t keen.

The trouble is, they are absolutely desperate for one. They have been asking if they can have a pet for months, probably years in reality. I’ve always resisted on the basis I didn’t want to end up being the one caring for an animal as it’s not my bag, and because I wasn’t sure we needed to add more chaos into our lives.

But it made them so, so sad. Having a pet does feel a bit like a rite of passage, and I didn’t want to be responsible for denying them that experience.

In recent weeks, my husband and I had been talking to them about the possibility of getting a pet in the future and a hamster had been discussed. However, no firm plans had been made and the concept was still relatively abstract.

MORE COLUMNS: West Sussex year six pupils offered high school places – and it's an emotional time

Parenting in Sussex: Wishing I'd done at better job at standing up for my children

I should have known, I guess, that Pets at Home might provide too tempting an opportunity. In my naivety I genuinely thought going in there would be more of a fact-finding mission. Had it not been for the hilarious hamster on the wheel, maybe it would have been. It turns out, we just couldn’t leave him there, and even this cynical mum felt a pull towards taking him home.

So, meet Pickles. The latest addition to our home and mine and my children’s first pet! In the short time we’ve owned him, it’s been okay. The staff at Pets at Home have advised not petting him yet, to allow him time to settle into our home for a few days. Instead, he’s been entertaining us by running around his cage and flinging food from his bowl all over the place.

While hamster care doesn’t seem to be too labour-intensive, I can’t say I’m loving the idea of adding ‘cleaning out hamster cage’ to my never-ending list of chores. My children know it’s their job, but at 11 and six they will obviously need supervision.

Thankfully, seeing the joy on their faces when we said yes to getting Pickles far outweighs any of the niggles of pet care. And if nothing else, having ‘hamster antics’ as a rotating option to write about can only be a good thing!