For Mother's Day, I had originally planned to share some of my favourite mummy-baby storybooks, such as Deborah Guarino's Is Your Mama a Llama? and Amy Hest's Kiss Good Night.
Then my mind wandered to last Mother's Day. Around that time, my elder daughter turned from a sweet, easy-going toddler into a difficult malcontent.
According to my husband, the problem was our temperamental child. According to me, the problem was our differing views on how to deal with and raise our child.
If a stranger were ever to give unsolicited parenting advice, such as 'You need to control your kids' or 'You shouldn't scold your child like that', I would feel quite confident that they were wrong because they knew neither me nor my child. However, when my husband said to me, 'Our daughter is out of control and you're spoiling her', I got defensive and exasperated. Not only had he misunderstood me, he had also completely misunderstood our perfect angel of a child.
Joking aside, his statements forced me to contemplate the possibility that the man who knew me inside out could actually be making a more accurate assessment of the situation than myself.
My low point came during Mother's Day lunch last year. In the middle of yet another discussion about our differing views of our elder daughter's temperament, my mother tried to interject with her own comments. I inadvertently snapped at her and made her cry. Yes, I made my mother cry on Mother's Day.
That's when I knew that I needed help. So I invested in some parenting guides.