Teenagers

It's hard to understand how the human race has survived. I mean, it's hard to imagine Primitive Caveman--who hasn't read any books on listening to teenagers, being supportive, and unconditional loving--not ending his bloodline the first time his 12-year-old mouthed off at him.

Children spend the first two years being completely dependant on you, and the next 20 years expecting you to wait on them. Whilst you're busy trying to ensure they get a good education and have lots of opportunities, they're busy screaming because the shirt they put in the laundry basket 20 minutes ago still isn't clean.

The only consolation is that everyone else has to deal with the same nonsense at some point, even the smug person with plenty of advice will at some point be curled up in the fetal position, crying in frustration and exhaustion.

The only advice I can offer is to remember it's temporary, that children change moods more often than underwear, and that your job is to keep them safe, not make them happy. To paraphrase Nigel Latta, the hardest thing is to make sure their problems remain their problems. You're too busy working, cooking, cleaning and occasionally sleeping to try and fix all of their issues, especially as they've created most of them themselves. And besides, even if you could fix them, your children wouldn't learn very much from them.

So yes, it's very hard when your baby is sitting outside your bedroom door at 10 at night screaming and crying because she's been playing games on her phone for two hours and suddenly realised she needs something in the morning and wants to make it your problem, but remember that if you fix it, you're just ensuring she'll be back next week with the same issue. Make sure her problem stays her problem, and she'll still be back next week but you'll have gotten a little more sleep.

P.S. This was actually supposed to be a rant about me having to go to the supermarket at 10pm last night because one of the kids took the last roll of toilet paper and not only failed to tell anyone, but actually put the empty plastic bag back in the cupboard, so we thought there was more. I'm not sure how I got on this other issue.