We had an extremely uncomfortable situation last night. This may sound a little bloggish at first, but the reason I am writing this is because there is a moral to the story, and I am hoping that some other people can benefit from it.

So heres what happened:

I was tired and cranky, my fiance was just physically exhausted from running around after the boys all day, my eldest has just started school so he was nackered after a hard days slog, and the middle two just werent in the mood to go shopping as they were over tired. You know the kind of over tired where they get this energy burst out of nowhere, cant sit still, yet their eyes are nearly hanging out of their heads, and they are cranky as all hell? Yeah, that one. The only happy chappy was our nine month old. (there is a god! - can you imagine if he were screaming as well?)

Anyway to cut a long story short, we went to Woolies and tonight of all nights, we were running low on everything so had to do 'a big shop' which means, we basically bought everything in the store. The kids were running a muck, screaming and carrying on, running all over the store, despite my best efforts to be in 3 places at once, keeping them into line while my fiance pushed the trolley. We tried to be as quick as possible, which made us forget all the important things we needed, even though our trolley was still over flowing, and by the time we got to the freezer section at the end of the store, you can imagine the state we were in. Out of nowhere, things went  from an 8 to a 10 on the richter-scale, (this is all the kids at once mind you, it wasnt just one of them chucking a tantrum) and me and my fiance did our very best to get the hell out of there pronto.

Then, just to top it all off, (as if it could get any worse) this old woman whos kids had obviously grown up back in the stone age, and had obviously forgotten what it is like to be a parent, pipes up a very nasty 'oh my god' whilst looking at me with a look that could kill because my kids were misbehaving. I felt like grabbing her by the ear and locking them all in a padded cell together, and seeing if she could do a better job of getting them to calm down. Stupid woman. Its not easy trying to tame lions you know!!!

Anyway look, the point of my story is, next time you see a family having a rough time when they are out in public, chances are they are having the worse day ever, and its not just that the parents are incompetent lazy people who just let their kids run wild for the hell of it, some of us have really tried to their wits end to calm the kids down. There are a million and one reasons for a child to throw a tantrum, and chances are their parents have tried to rectify the situation to the best of their ability but the only thing that can help sometimes is just to go home!

So next time, rather than being the straw that broke the camels back, by saying something nasty, have some consideration, and say something sympathetic, like, 'dont worry, we all have days like this' or even better, ' can i give you a hand with something?' chances are the parents will say 'no thankyou im fine,' but at least you tried to help, rather than say something nasty and make them feel even worse.

Thankyou for listening.