Watch out Tina Turner....

Having four kids is tough going. Perhaps lack of sleep has rendered me super-paranoid but when they huddle in the corners of our house talking I imagine my children are not discussing Monster Trucks or Spiderman but are secretly scheming to create a synchronised timetable of parental torture.
I’m sure they have worked out a plan to ensure that every minute of every day and every night is consumed with some random demand or another.
I was at a birthday party at the weekend. Not your average one, mind, this one was for my grandmother, Susan Sweeney, who celebrated her 99th year on this planet surrounded by her family and friends. The party was held in the old folks home in Donegal and as a party piece she belted out the ‘Isle of Inisfree’ and another few numbers over a microphone, accompanied by a band. Tina Turner had better watch her back, I think a future in the entertainment industry beckons for my Granny.
I had the baby with me and a few of our family friends asked me how things were going. I whined for a bit about the hard work four kids can be, that I was knackered, blah, blah de whingey, and whiney blah.
One of the lovely ladies sat nodding sympathetically (hello there, Grace Gallen from Rathmullan). This was a woman had nine children, her sister had nine also. I felt like a bit of a wuss complaining about my mere four. Clearly they made women from much stronger stuff back in the day. These girls raised their kids, ran houses, tended to farms and businesses, cooked and cleaned and it never took a wrinkle out of them.
Here was me with half as many kids and not half as many woes, whinging about being run off my feet. We don’t know we’re living, to steal an old phrase.
Whenever I feel like our house resembles the monkey enclosure of the zoo rather than the peaceful haven of tranquillity I wish it was I head on over to the Discovery Health channel and laugh at those poor parents who have a few more kids than myself.
Jon and Kate plus eight have, you guessed it, eight kids – a set of twins and four-year-old sextuplets. They have to travel around in an actual minibus the same as we used to travel in for school trips.
Then there’s ‘19 Kids and Counting’ over on LivingTV. The Christian Duggans – Jim Bob and Michelle – are the proud parents of nine girls and 10 boys. What is amazing is that they all have a name beginning with the letter J and wear polo shirts every single day. TV is banned in their house – dear God why, I ask myself, Mister TV is the finest babysitter in town – and their teenagers abstain from most types of everything, including any physical contact except ‘Christian side hugging’.
What is more amazing is that their kids are incredibly well behaved. In fact I have stopped watching this programme in recent weeks due to the fact that my four children make a bigger din and a messier mess than all of their 19 kids put together.
I have since made a rule to watch programmes that make me feel better about my noisy, messy family and not worse. I don’t want to see mothers of eight wearing make-up and with proper, actually brushed hair. I do not find it entertaining to see a mother of 19 smiling and coping effortlessly while dishing up a healthy, nutritious dinner for 21 people. It just makes me feel bad about serving my kids beans and toast for the fourth day in a row.
I prefer to tune in to a programme that is more a reflection of my own family situation. So it’s back-to-back Simpsons from now on.