13 things that make parents' lives harder and give us the s***s

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“Mum, can you please open this?” my five-year-old daughter asks me in the car.

She hands me a Chupa Chups lollipop and I groan internally. As I wrestle with it for a good 15 minutes, I give up and ask my nine-year-old son to try.

When he has no luck, I tell my daughter she’ll have to wait for my husband to stop driving, so that he can have a go at it. Eventually, he cracks it and tosses it in the boot, conceding he’ll buy her an ice-cream instead. 

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Yep, the old Chupa Chup wrapper. It’s just one of the many things that make parents' lives unnecessarily harder and give us the shits.

So, what else makes the cut? I asked my mum friends to share and they were happy to oblige. 

Here are a few of our least favourite things

1) Bento-style lunch boxes 

They may be a fun favourite with school-aged kids, but bento boxes with heaps of tiny, teeny compartments are tedious to fill up in the morning, and a nightmare to wash at the end of the day. 

It means you end up having to prepare a tapas-style menu five days a week. Bring back the standard sandwich + one fruit lunch I say. 

2) Toys that are hard work

Toys with complicated assembly drive me up the wall.

If they’re battery-operated but don't come with the batteries, or require obscure batteries we don't own, they won’t last long in our household.

Image: Supplied

3) Pets that you, as the parent, end up caring for

We don’t own any pets, but my dear old 76-year-old mum reminded me of this point – pets that you, as the parent – end up caring for.

When I was 8, I begged my mum for two Siamese fighting fish, then quickly lost interest in them after a week. She ended up cleaning the fish tank every couple of weeks and feeding them daily.

When our cat eventually scooped them out and ate the fish for breakfast, needless to say my mum didn’t shed a tear. They were doomed from the start.

4) Playgrounds that are poorly designed

Playgrounds without shade cloths for the hotter summer months do my head in, as do those with massive 3m drops from turrets.

You end up becoming a helicopter parent while your toddler dangles precariously close to the edge. It’s exhausting! 

5) Shoes that are a pain

Fiddling with shoes with teeny tiny buckles is the worst. My daughter’s tap shoes come to mind.

Also, who puts laces on toddler shoes? Seriously. Newsflash shoe makers: those two are mutually exclusive!

Image: Melissa Noble

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6) Fancy kids menus 

When restaurants try to get a little fancy with the kids menus, it can backfire. 

Stay in your lane, chefs, and stick with the kid-friendly bacon and eggs, not the mini eggs benedict, thanks.

7) Sand. Full stop.

There's nothing worse than when the kids come home with 1kg of sand in their shoes from daycare and dump it on your carpet. 

Kersplat! There you go, mum. 

8) Buttons on baby onesies

I tried a few of those buttoned up onesies with my first-born child, but honestly, who has time for that madness? 

To any expecting parents out there, go with zippers all the way for those middle-of-the-night newborn days.

9) The child locks on children's medicines

We know, we know. They're a safety function, yes.

BUT when you just need to dish out some Panadol, wrestling with those caps at 1am can be a mind field. 

My friend once had to drive to her husband's work to get him to open up an antihistamine bottle, so that she could administer the medication to her son. Hard work.

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10) Extra sticky stickers

Don’t you hate those stickers with backs that come off on cupboards or windows? 

I don’t know how many times I’ve had to scratch the residue of a unicorn or fairy sticker off my Nissan windows. Painful.

11) Plastic crap 

One of my least favourite things about going to McDonalds is that we end up with some sort of plastic crap – that I know is inevitably going straight into landfill. 

I hate those Happy Meal toys they dish out, but unfortunately my little girls love them. Happy girls. Unhappy mummy.

12) The Elf on the Shelf

Why, oh why, did I ever commit to this? Once you do commit to it, it’s for at least 10 years of your children’s lives.

Every year, when the elf arrives on December 1, I secretly wish he would head back to the North Pole indefinitely. Maybe he’ll have a plane crash on the way. Sorry, elfie!  

13) Ridiculously tight Chupa Chups lollipop wrappers

And that brings us to the final item on the list, those damn Chupa Chups wrappers I mentioned earlier. 

I swear you need a bloody engineering degree to open those bad boys sometimes. 

I wish the confectionary company that makes them would engineer a better design, for my fellow parents’ sanity levels and mine.

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Originally published as 13 things that make parents' lives harder and give us the s***s