“Anger is an all-consuming fire that will burn you and everyone else around you. Where is the justice in that?” - Afeni Shakur.

After a challenging day at work, you’ve just arrived home. There is dinner to be made, your two-year-old needs to be bathed and fed, and the sink is full of breakfast dishes. Your boss needs you to prepare a PowerPoint presentation for tomorrow morning’s meeting and you have suddenly realized that you had promised to make mac and cheese for your six-year-old. With lightning speed, you open the drawer and your heart sinks to the bottom as you stare at the space and find you are running out of macaroni. There’s no way you will disappoint your elder child this time.

No, you don’t wear a super-parent cape, yet you want to pull out all stops when it comes to your children.

You quickly offer apple slices to your toddler as you decide to brave the weather and make a trip to the nearby grocery store. While you attack the dishes, your boss has sent you at least five reminders of tomorrow’s pitch. Sighing and sending an affirming reply, you ready yourself to pull an all-nighter and march to the supermarket with your baby in tow.

Out of nowhere, your little one decides to have a tantrum in the middle of the grocery store when you tell him he can’t have a particular box of chocolate. He throws himself onto the floor, kicking and screaming, and other shoppers stop doing whatever they were up to. They stare at him, or rather you, their eyes questioning what kind of parent you are!

You have had enough. How do you tell them that your child doesn’t throw tantrums all the time, but he occasionally manages to push your buttons? And you are not a terrible parent, but then there are days like this when everything just goes wrong no matter what. Nger