I have four daughters that go through jewellery like nothing I have ever seen before. My eldest daughter’s favourite trick is to lose jewellery. My next daughter is the stroppy teenage drama queen, one minute it’s sparkly necklaces, the next minute it is jewellery that sticks in her hair. I could honestly recycle her cast away bangles and necklaces into a small eastern European car.

Then there is the seven year old, she is an entirely different kettle of fish altogether. On one hand, she has the access to both her sisters’ lost and found pieces of jewellery, plus her own staggering collection. Of her own collection, most are broken or at least missing bits, hence the reason she raids her sisters’ collections as she is mostly an action chick.

Her particular chosen action chick niche is horse riding, and jewellery and horse riding doesn’t mix very well, as you can imagine.
So what is the secret to my success, the answer is very very easy indeed. My eldest two have a couple of individual items of daddy jewellery, little special tokens that hopefully they will keep forever.

The eldest has a little silver star, with an embedded diamond, which suits her “cookie” hippie chick look. The teenagers, she has some un-assuming diamond teardrop studs that hopefully (I’m praying) never go out of fashion, or at least until about the time she gets married.

The horse rider has a set of silver earrings in the shape of little tiny horses and although she thinks she has been made the same as the elder two, I won’t be too bothered if they go missing.

But, for the rest of it, they simply buy it themselves and as the elder two are both on meagre budgets they buy cheap rubbish from a well known chain of accessory stores. The younger buys her kids jewellery on the meagre funds made available from the bank of dad.

I’m thanking my lucky stars that the youngest one isn’t quite there yet, bankruptcy and a new car could be close.

When it comes to kids jewellery my recommendation would be to have a couple of nice special occasion pieces, but everything else is simply items within your own personal budget that you would really mind being discarded.

There’s plenty of it out there, and most can look quite good if they are chosen with a little care. Or at least my daughters keep telling me that it’s in the fashion, but hey what do I know…….