Those of us who are blessed with children know how quickly feelings of adoration and undying love for our offspring can switch to exasperated rage.
And that switch gets even faster and more frazzled as soon as they get to secondary school.
Rachaele Hambleton, who lives in Torbay, Devon, runs Part-Time Working Mummy - a blog dedicated to giving parenting advice, and sharing her stories of life bringing up five children.
Last week, she posted on Facebook about the trials of getting your children prepared for school after the Christmas break - and it's since gone viral.
In the post, Rachaele posted the events running up to her daughter's first day back at school after Christmas. She described how her daughter, Betsy, had told her at the start of her Christmas break that she didn't have any homework at all.
She goes on to say Betsy "miraculously" remembers a project she has to do the night before she goes back to school: "She has to do a full homework project on Henry the eighth. She isn't sure exactly what the project has to cover; but considering she managed to cock up her last one when she had to research one of his wives & she chose Anne Boleyn, only she did absolutely no bastard research so managed to write up a full 8 page project on 'Amber Lynn'.
"Anyway, she tells me she took a picture of the whiteboard in class so the homework instructions were on her phone, only she got a new phone for Christmas and updated it all so she needs ME to find the homework picture 'in the cloud'."
Rachaele desrcribes how incredulous she was, and wondered how she was supposed to find the image. She also writes about how her daughter has recently adopted the traditional Indian culture of wearing bindis, which she has told Betsy not to wear to school the next day. Betsy also had "disgusting purple chipped nail varnish", had lost her new phone case and was told to prepare her P.E kit and new school uniform.
On the morning before school, Rachaele wrote that: "At 6am her alarm goes off, everyone in the house hears it - apart from Betsy - I have no idea what tune she picked but it basically sounds like a rave with Haddaway.
"She wakes when I go into her room, turn it off and excel myself in the shit parenting stakes by absolutely losing my mind by seven minutes past 6 half naked. She rises, the rest of the house has another hour left in bed...but she basically sounds like a hand grenade so by 6.18am I am up, wide awake rage mopping the kitchen floor and necking cups of tea that are burning my throat."
Rachaele then describes the drive to school: "I'm roasting her the whole way about how she needs to sort her life out and I've decided its a 'new year new me' so I am not putting up with it any longer... she continues to look at her beautiful self in the passenger mirror at her perfectly curled mane not giving a shit as we both know I repeat myself every January with the same lecture, meanwhile I'm trying to remember if I've put a bra on or remembered my debit card as my fuel gauge is on empty.
"As she gets out the car I notice she hasn't removed the horrific nail varnish, she has a sparkling bindi in the middle of her forehead and is strutting into school thinking she's the mutts nuts with her brand new iphone in her hand with no case on... I drive off whilst continuing to lose the will to live to myself and she starts calling me; I answer and get her bellowing through the handsfree 'Hi Mum, I promise I listened to everything you said and from tomorrow I will sort my life out but I've forgotten my PE kit, any chance you can you drop it in quickly before you go to work?'"
Oh, Betsy!
Speaking to The Sun, Rachaele said that parents on Facebook could really relate to her tale, proven by the fact that it's now been shared well over 8,000 times: "Very few people would never openly admit to homework not done, arguing with the kids over breakfast, constantly forgetting things; basically not being the Waltons. I hope that through my honest accounts of family life, it shows that none of us are perfect and this is actually real life - it doesn't mean you are failing as a parent, it’s just life."
We've all been there!
Can you relate to Rachaele's Facebook post? Let us know over on Facebook or Twitter.
Like this? Now read these:
Mum’s brutally honest post about how relationships change after kids goes viral
Mum’s Facebook post goes viral: ‘Once a month my 6-year-old takes me on a date’