When your child complains that their school bag is smelling don’t dismiss it because when you do have a look at their bag for another reason and find a half eaten roast beef sandwich in there from a day or two ago, you’ll realise that is why the bag smells.
After you’ve tipped the bag upside down on the floor and realised that doing that was quite stupid because you have to leave the house in one minute, you get even more cross and start yelling at your child to get a move on and clean the mess up that you created anyway. Your child dawdles, you look at your watch and don’t want to miss the bus to work, so the volume of the yelling goes up even more. This is on top of yelling at the dog for digging yet another hole an hour or so earlier.
You finally get everything organised. The offending leftover sandwich is in the dogs stomach to hopefully take its mind off digging any more holes, the mess has been swept up, reminders have been issued to put any leftover food in the lunchbox, your throat is sore and you’re finally out the door.
When you finally sit at the bus stop, you breathe a sigh of relief and go over ways of how the morning could have been handled so much better.
Oooh – i know that one – except put “banana” in the place of “roast beef sandwich” and compost instead of the dog…
Yep, I recognise the sentiment too. Now that my kids are big and have survived my manic attempts at being both a single full time crazy worker and part time loving Mum, I so wish I’d reversed the order. …and been the dog. It is a dog’s life after all. They neither have to go to work, catch the bus or worry about bacteria in a day old sandwich.
We’re with you Jen. I’m sure most of us will have yelled at our kids at some stage. Mxx