Reasons I’ll never pass my HMC (Higher Maternal Competence) in Parenthood, number 1,264 – mornings.
When the kids were small they were a nightmare, but I thought they’d get easier as the years went by. Er, nope.
I’ve decided I have no alternative but to take legal action against those cereal companies with adverts depicting a happy little perfect brood sitting around the breakfast table, eagerly discussion what jolly japes they’ll get up to that day.
In our house, there’s more the atmosphere of a COBRA summit ten minutes after Martians have landed and announced plans to take over the world – somewhere between panic and sullen resignation.
Is it just me? Is this the only household in the world where mornings are about as much fun as a sudden bout of salmonella? We’re rushed. Disorganised. Grumpy. And – oh the shame – more than once we’ve been so late that jammy toast has been consumed in the car.
Not one member of my family is a morning person. In my formative years, I was a nightclub manager and I blame those long hours of hardcore nocturnal endurance for the fact that my body still thinks it should stay up until 3 a.m. while planning my future life with Simon Le Bon. No-one has informed my internal clock that I’m now a mother with sole responsibility for getting two boys to consume copious amounts of Shreddies then get them out the door in a clean and organised state.
Sadly, our sons have inherited my genetic failings. At eleven, Low the Elder only talks in grunts before 8.30 a.m., and his normally chirpy wee brother has the demeanour of Gordon Ramsay in a burger van. Even the labradoodle views the alarm clock as a vessel of evil.
It almost makes me nostalgic for those younger days, when mornings involved me chasing them around seven circuits of the house with a face sponge and soap, and loud yells demanding that they stop playing football in the house or I’d confiscate the goalposts: a table lamp and the ironing board.
This week was gearing up to be even tougher than normal, being the first week back after Easter. After a fortnight of late nights and long lie-ins, we were about as motivated as mud, so I called a family meeting on the last day of the break.
‘Right boys,’ I announced. ‘Tomorrow morning we’re going to get up early and leave the house calm and happy.’ They both looked at me with expressions of suspicion. I’ve never before used ‘mornings’ and ‘happy’ in the same sentence.
How hard could it be? I’m the woman who is obsessively organised at all other times. I can arrange a party for 300 at an hour’s notice. I can entertain a dozen bored kids for hours. I can navigate IKEA without getting lost. I just had to find a way to manage cohesive thinking before 9 a.m.
I was determined that triumph would be mine – until I was foiled by yet another bastion of malice: the snooze button. Why were they invented?
After at least six semi-conscious taps of the little silver nub, I woke up half an hour late, and despite my vow to be a serene earth mother, I ended up getting louder and louder until the boys attempted to mute me with the remote control for the telly.
The end result?
Jammy toast in the car.
So fellow parents, I give up. I’m convinced it can’t be done. I’ve decided that we’re the normal ones and all those fictional family breakfast adverts are nothing more than cereal company propaganda.
I fully intend to contact my lawyer and arrange a meeting with a view to suing under the trade descriptions act.
Just as long as he can see me in the afternoon.