Considering the hundreds of child rearing books out there on the shelves just waiting to be purchased by eager parents to be, I doubt that any of them can truly prepare you for parenthood, at least not for any of the events that have encountered.

As a mum of three and a step-mum to another four, both my partner and I have lost count of the amounts of times we have uttered ‘They don’t tell you that in those damn books!”

Until you have been sat in the emergency room trying to explain why your young son has one of his sister’s beads firmly lodged up his nose you haven’t truly lived. Nothing can prepare you for the looks you will receive from the hospital staff, from the receptionist to the triage nurse looks have ranged from disbelief to the; “Just what kind of a mother are you?” scathing type of look. I refuse to believe that I am the only mother who has turned up for help when all home based efforts of poking, squeezing and attempted nose blowing have failed? And yes, thank you, I know he is only two years old and yes I know these types of toys are inappropriate for his age group, no they are not his they belong to his older sister, yes they are normally out of his reach, yes I do think it was intentional his sister said she wanted to see how far up it would go.

Looking back I think perhaps that my daughter looked upon her younger brother as some kind of interactive toy. When he was around four years old I once found her pinning him to the ground, her knees on his arms so that he couldn’t move around, lipstick firmly grasped in her six year old hand and well, you can imagine the rest, he looked like a twisted little clown from someones nightmare.

Those two little horrors are now teenagers, and I am going through it all again with my four year old son, only this one is more vocal than the other two ever were.”Why has that man got no hair?” and “Why is that lady fat?” or the best one so far, whilst I was in the supermarket; “Are you a lady or a man because you have prickles on your face like my daddy but you are wearing a ladies dress?”

No matter how many times you wish for it, the ground never does open up beneath you and swallow you whole, neither do the comments go unnoticed, no matter how hard you wish for people to be deaf. Children will go on embarrassing their parents and creating events that will stretch you to your limits for as long as they are able, but isn’t that one of the things we love them for, their sheer unpredictability?