London - For one mom I know, it’s the endless search for an envelope before school; for another, it’s the constant demand to put name labels on random items: water bottles, book bags, mittens.
For me, it’s school-trip permission slips.
Everyone is different, but all the mothers I know have a tipping point, something that pushes them over the edge into uncontrollable Mom Rage.
And it’s always the tiniest thing, something so inconsequential it really doesn’t warrant the desperate fury it unleashes.
There is no logical explanation as to why one small request can catapult you - jaw clenched, brow furrowed, eyes prickling with tears - into the outer edges of maternal madness.
I can cope with the more demanding needs of life with school-age children, but for some reason the smaller, less complicated things send me bonkers.
New outfit for World Book Day with 24 hours notice? Easy.
Giant cardboard box and a million empty water bottles for a geography project? Tick.
Plutonium for a science homework experiment? Just give me ten minutes.
Blue pen to fill out school permission slip? Why does it have to be a blue pen?
Step away from the ranting woman emptying drawers furiously. Whatever you do, don’t dare say ‘We must have a blue one, let’s just look for it calmly’, or you’ll only make it worse because we all know the crazy woman in question is about to find a purple one, which is of no use to anyone over the age of five.
Every time I tip over the precipice into Mom Rage I feel a terrible failure, as though motherhood is an assault course where I have conquered the perilous rapids but been brought to my knees by a set of steps a toddler could bound over.
It’s infuriating. Other moms, especially those who are, like me, time-pressured working parents, reassure me that I’m not alone.
If you ask them about the Mom Rage tipping point, a list of ‘little things’ is fired at you like bullets.
‘Pound coins,’ one of my friends rages. ‘We never have any, and the school always wants the exact money for activities. Yesterday we turned the house upside down, drove down the road to the shops and even asked neighbours for pound coins before school.’
‘Cheques!’ another adds. ‘Who even has a cheque book any more?’
The ‘little things’ list goes on: jam jars - few of us keep empty jam jars, but for some reason the school always wants them filled with sweets; a pencil with a sharp point; filling in raffle ticket stubs; finding a pair of socks that match; RSVP-ing to birthday invitations weeks in advance; remembering the exact pick-up time for the last day of term, which changes constantly; and, of course, the dreaded school-trip permission slips.
These drive me into a rage Gordon Ramsay would be proud of. It’s a disproportionate response to a tiny problem. Maybe it is because I have four children and get the slips mixed up. Perhaps my kids are the only ones who pull slips that need signing immediately out of their bags looking like ancient treasure maps that have been buried for 100 years.
They are always covered in a mystery sticky liquid so I am unable to read all the details and have no idea what I am signing them up to do. For all I know, four-year-old Mabel is about to swim a mile for charity and my teenager is going to look at autumn leaves in our local park.
If I won the lottery, I would immediately employ a ‘Head of Small Domestic Details’. An enforcer who could make sure all the simple, but bafflingly stressful tasks are dealt with. I mean, it’s an easy job, isn’t it? Finding a blue pen, signing a permission slip, collecting pound coins.
That way there would be a lot less shouting and exhausted crying behind the locked door of the loo in our household. Now, all I have to do is find that lottery ticket.
* Lorraine Candy is editor-in-chief of Elle magazine.
Daily Mail