Melissa Jeffcott

Let me give you a rundown of my afternoon the other day. My oldest came through the door after school tired and emotional because he felt he was being unfairly picked on, and proclaimed it to be ‘the worst day ever’. Then, when I told him we were having roast chicken for dinner, he put on an Academy award winning performance of such abject despair that it would have made Hugh Jackman in Le Miserables proud (I mean I could have understood it if it was cauliflower soup, but it’s roast chicken!) Miss 9 promptly burst into tears when I had the audacity to suggest to her that she didn’t need to buy a present for the student teacher that had been in her classroom for a whole two weeks- what a crazy mother I was for thinking that a nice home made card would suffice. Then my youngest, confronted with the two other sad sacks, joined in and started crying when she realised that I had forgotten to go to assembly and watch her sing the national anthem with the rest of her prep class- yes, my mother guilt was well and truly activated.

Trying to be the caring earth mother that I like to pretend I am on occasion, I quickly pulled out the dairy free, sugar free, gluten free “ANZAC” biscuits that I had sourced from a wellness blog on the strength of a a good Facebook photo for afternoon tea. Not surprisingly, these were were thoroughly rejected by all (myself included) as taste free (why did I think a recipe by a 22 year old skinny yoga goddess would taste good?) But really, the piece de resistance of the whole afternoon, was when one of the kids yelled out “Mum, Otto’s just pooed out my sock!” Now, I’m sorry if you just spat out your delicious Arnotts ANZAC biscuit, but yes it’s true, our rather large and crazy puppy Otto does have a sock eating problem. Before you ask, we do try not to leave socks lying around, but this dog hunts them down like Kim Kardashian hunts down a photo opportunity!

All in all, it was quite a crazy afternoon at my place, and at the time I really couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry or do both. It was only after I called my sister to vent, that I could really laugh at the ridiculousness of it all- I mean what do you do with a dog like that! Which in turn made me think, that when times are a bit crazy or if everyone in the family seems to be having a bad day, sometimes we just need to take a deep breath, have a laugh with someone, and put it in perspective (maybe with a large glass of wine thrown in for good measure!) So often in these Facebook times we often focus on maintaining a perfect outlook to the rest of the world, and I for one always feel a tiny sense of relief when I know that other peoples kids behave as poorly as mine do sometimes, or that not every healthy snack tastes good or is worthy of posting to social media.

So in conclusion, if you need to feel better about your own family today, please feel free to compare yours to mine, but whatever you do, don’t come around to my house and leave your socks lying on the floor!

I know I’m not the only one- How do you cope with a crazy afternoon at your place?