Wanted Ad

WANTED: Good home for three lovable but rumbustious kids driving their mother round the bend.

It’s just for the duration of the holidays and then you can give them back – I’m sure I will have missed the ruckus by then.

I bet I’m not the only one who has plotted a wanted ad in my head. What prompted it was a rather painful morning that went something like this:

Master Five teases older brother – check, older brother belts him one – check, Master Five cries – check, Miss Five tells tales – check, times that by ten – check.

Oh but it doesn’t end there – add: “I’m bored” times ten, “I’m hungry” times ten, a mother who’s lost the plot and resorts to putting on a dvd, and all this before 9am – check.

Are you feeling my pain or are you sitting there thinking “Tut-tut – one day they will have grown up and flown the nest and you’ll be wishing for all that back”?

I try this forward-thinking – I really do - but it’s hard to not live in the moment when you’re trying to work from home during school holidays with all that going on around you. Let’s just say, my work days have not been very productive.

But my imagination has been working overtime trying to come up with effective punishments. The kids have been rather lucky this summer with their holidays away and leisure activities. But it’s common knowledge that the more they are entertained in this way the harder they find it to entertain themselves - hence the boredom-induced teasing and lashing out at home.

Because this was getting out of hand I decided every time Master Five teased and Master Seven used his physical force (and vice-versa) they could go into each other’s rooms and choose one toy to play with for the day. This would be greatly upsetting to Master Seven – a hoarder who is very protective of his possessions.

While Master Five, who has no problem with sharing, got a gleam in his eyes, his older brother didn’t like the idea at all: “But all Jai’s toys are dumb – I don’t even want to play with them.”

Then, after some thought: “I know, I’ll just get one of his toys and beat it up all day!”

I could see this punishment was not going to work so it was back to the drawing board.

The fighting was starting up again and I decided to calm everyone down by putting on another dvd. This was when I discovered someone had jammed a dvd in the player, thereby rendering it useless.

It was about this time I began plotting the wanted ad.