Parenting is the only customer service industry where you’re expected to serve all the customers at once, all the time. Never mind that the customer is always wrong – he will get his own way anyway. Just as soon as you’ve dealt with his brother. Giving enough attention to each child is one of the hardest parts of parenting. What do you do when your kids won’t “take a number”? Never Knowingly Under-screamed I love my kids. Just not all at once. You know that scene where you sit on a lounger and your kids run happily through the sprinkler with the sun glinting rainbows off the spray? Entirely in your head, isn’t it? You haven’t got a lounger – what’s the point when within seconds, one child will have stood on something prickly? Possibly a bee, by the screams. While you’re on to that, another child will kick the sprinkler, stubbing his toe and training the spray directly at your caring backside. Bringing up the rear, the baby will be filling his soaking, cut-grass-flecked nappy for your immediate delight. Childcare feels like a case of “who screams loudest”. Hell Hath No Misery Like A Mother Torn If I were an octopus I could attend to my three kids while flicking through Redand sipping my wine. But as I’m not, I have the perpetual feeling that I’m individually failing all of my kids. Of course, school and pre-school take the heat off me for parts of the day and there are times when I can quite successfully ignore all of them in equal measure. But for the most part, I feel torn between my brood. When I pick up my eldest child from school, it’s like adding a sugar cube to Diet Coke. Arguments, accusations and anarchy break out immediately, while I think unhappily about how nice it would be, how different, how Oxbridge-chances-promoting it would be if I could collect him alone, and really listen to how his day at school was. Or if the younger two didn’t spend half their lives in the car. Or if I had a chauffeur. Tears Before, During and After Bedtime The only time that each child gets to be with me on their own (except the baby, when the others are at pre-school / school) is at bedtime. Their one shot of the day at my sole, undivided attention. Yet this is the time of the day when I am least able to give this. They want to cuddle, snuggle, listen to me reading stories, drink in my very soul. I just want to drink wine. They’re tired, I’m exhausted. They want me to stay, I want me to go. So I, eventually, go – and then I feel sad. They wanted all of me, but there wasn’t much left to give. If I were a shoe shop in late August, I could control the madness with a simple ticket dispenser and a firm eye on the big hand ticking to half past five. But I’m a mum. I’m a cross between a triage nurse – whose need is most acute? – and a barometer – if I address this one first, will sun or storm ensue? I feel like I’m standing in the middle of a whirlpool tossing out love, attention and mini Cheddars and hoping they stick to whoever needs it at the time. One day they’ll all be able to take a number for my attention. I just hope they’ll still want to. Readers who read this item also viewed: Kids’ Bedtime – The Last Straw The 7pm-8pm Vortex. Where does that hour go? Playdate Pariahs The more kids you have, the less welcome you are.