There comes a time when, whatever it is you do, you have to call upon all the skills you have ever learned in your field to overcome a particularly tricky problem.

Maybe you’re a newly qualified doctor and have to administer CPR for the first time in real life. Perhaps you’re an accountant and the Inland Revenue decide to audit one of your clients. Or you might be a firefighter coming up against the worst building fire you’ve ever seen.

Today was that day for me. I encountered my first ever Big Test as a parent. It required quick thinking, clever tactics and the ability to draw upon everything I have learned in my life thus far. 

The Big Test came after a day of arduous parenting. Exhausted after a night of little sleep (these gale force winds, this stinking cold and that rain) and an early morning run (my first in three years), I was already on the back foot.

I muddled through the pre-school drop-off without arriving late or forgetting Frog’s packed lunch. Driving back to pre-school for collection time, I congratulated myself on not eating any biscuits on my first morning back at my desk working. Considering the lack of sleep and this stinking cold, I was doing pretty well, I thought.

Then there was a huge tantrum. And I’m talking H-U-G-E. In the middle of the street huge. With people watching huge. And no free hands to try to pick my screaming three year old off the pavement huge.

The gale force winds and torrential rain did not help. Neither did the fact I was wearing a dress that kept billowing up to reveal a post-Christmas wobbly backside stuffed into a pair of less-than-flattering tights. As I hopped desperately from foot to foot pleading with my child to “GET UP NOW!” a fresh gust of wind would bare my flesh, moving in ten different directions, to the gathering crowd of teenage spectators enjoying the impromptu lunchtime entertainment.

So you can imagine, by the time I was to face The Big Test, I was not in the best frame of mind.

It didn’t arrive until teatime. Sitting happily eating her pudding, my three year old chirruped, “I love chocolate ice cream Mummy” before sucker-punching me – BOOM! – with, “Oh yes, and why do people die?”

I mean really? REALLY?!

Lulled into a false sense of security over the ice cream comment, I was caught totally off guard. I countered with a stumbled, “Because they get very old or poorly or have an accident – and we can’t all live forever”. To which she replied, “But why can’t doctors save them?”.

“Doctors don’t have the answers to everything,” I tried to remain calm, smiling reassuringly. Mother knows best, and all that.

“But Aunty Lizzy’s a doctor Mummy,” Frog looked up at me earnestly. “She makes people better. She is clever.”

And with that one comment I had the situation back under control.

“That’s true. But she can’t make EVERYONE better because she’s not THAT clever.”

If in doubt, just blame it on your sister. Works every time.

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