I went to Ikea with my son – and faced my parenting failures | Zoe Williams

I I found my favorite tribe again at a high street store, this time at Ikea. As far as the eye could see, there were middle-aged women trying to choose kitchen supplies for their teenage sons, for whom the next chapter of life, in which they move to another city and never use the kitchen, can’t begin soon enough. I don’t know where all the girls were – did they do everything online? Have they been collecting teapots for years as part of a thoughtful university dowry?

The negotiations began with a cutting board, which my son said he didn’t need or need at all. I said, “How are you going to cut the vegetables?” and he said he would cross that bridge when he came to it, and I said, “Oh my God, you’re going to get scurvy.” Behind me, a woman and her son were arguing about whether he needed a cheese grater, which ended with her saying, “I think you might starve.”

The home improvement store was a unique experience that I realized halfway through and that I was completely unprepared for. This is the moment when you realize how much homemade wisdom you managed to impart. When you are asked a question like, “Can your sheets be washed?”, it turns out that the answer is “No.” I remember walking through a much larger Ikea with my mother when I was in my 30s and my youngest was still a baby, and along the way my mother noticed that my daughter had nits. I say “nits” – it was one tiny nit. “Give her a chance,” I said. “She has almost no hair.” My mother, considering this proof that I didn’t take hygiene seriously enough, tried to buy everything bathroom-related from the store at the top of her lungs. By the third hour there was no one left who did not know about the nit.

There should be a sign at the door of Ikea that says, “Parents! If you’re having this conversation now, it’s too late.” It would probably sound quite melodic in Swedish.

Zoe Williams – Guardian columnist