My daughter seems to have got two speeds…slow and even slower! Ooooh it does drive me mad! She has the attention span of a gnat, and whilst cutting out pictures to stick into her art project, she starts curling up the leftover strips with the scissors! Aaaggh! This has to be in tomorrow (she has had 2 weeks to do it though) and she is faffing about, playing with scraps of paper! There is no sense of urgency with anything at all, least of all homework!

Getting ready in the morning is nothing short of an ordeal for me and Mr Grump (when I am there as most of the time I am already at work).We are both very organised; we get up in plenty of time to get ready. Not so Miss Hap!

We wake her up, she mutters;we call up to her, she grunts;we tell her that she now only has 15 mins left and to hurry up! She gets stroppy; the front door bell rings, she clomps down the stairs like an elephant with hobnail boots on! She’s gone, and our nerves are shredded! Thank God for breakfast Club at school, as God knows how long that would take at home!

You would think that having us for parents, she might have picked up some of our habits, like for instance, packing the stuff we need for the next day, the night before…no, why do that when you can get the school to phone whilst we are at work asking us to bring in her dance kit/science book?

My daughter has boundless energy and is always dancing, skipping, shuffling and generally running around except when I ask her to do something for me. She then seems to go into reverse (probably a ploy so I don’t ask again)! How long does it take to make a cup of tea?!! God help me when I decide (soon) to get her to help me with the washing up!

Maybe it’s me?… perhaps I am the one who should relax more, instead of running around like a blue-arsed fly, getting het up, in my haste to get things done on time!

After all, I’ve lost count of the times I have been somewhere way too early and have had to sit twiddling my thumbs waiting for everyone else to turn up! Or I have got ready so early for a function that my outfit has got creased from sitting about in it for ages, and my make up got smudged!

There must be a happy medium!