"What will people think"

This one doesn't get said out loud, so I'll say it. Ava will turn up with her shoes on the wrong feet and her hair done by Ava. Leo's lunch box will have a sandwich in it that's clearly been made by a nine-year-old, and another parent will see it. The bad version is on show, and it's on show as a fact about you.

I'd ask two things. The first is whose standard is being defended. It isn't Ava's. Ava is delighted with her hair. It isn't the school's, which sees forty children a morning and has seen worse. It's the standard of an imagined observer, who exists mostly in your head and who, if they exist at all, is also standing at a school gate with a child and their own morning behind them. I'd only add that the school gate is the most forgiving audience you'll ever have, because everyone there is losing. The imagined observer has a book of their own in this series, Everyone was looking at their own shoes, and it says the same thing about every room.

The second is what the alternative shows. A child whose every visible thing was done by an adult is also on show. It's just that what's on show is the adult. I'd rather people saw the sandwich.

There's a practical answer, too, which is that the showing is temporary. The hair done by Ava is bad for a month and then it's fine. The sandwich is a mess for a fortnight. If the standard of other people's eyes is the thing that's stopping you, then start with the jobs nobody sees, the bed, the plate, the bag, and let the visible ones follow once the go has got good enough. That's a compromise, and I'd make it, because a parent who starts is better than one who doesn't.