Parents of young children, listen up, this is the ONLY piece of parenting advice you need.

When you go above and beyond with your children TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS.

You know all those activities that are messy, time-consuming, challenging? When you go to the effort of making them happen it is really important that you retain evidence.

Because one day your children will be grumpy teenagers, who fail to remember anything other than the time you were the last mum to pick them up from kindy, the fact you spent a lot of time on the computer and the way you yelled at them when you were getting them ready of a morning.

At that point you whip out the photo album, the home movies (or the blog) and show them you were all HAPPY and you did lots of STUFF because you were a GREAT MUM!

See, here you are finger-painting. It was a REGULAR THING. Well OK we did it once. There was the shopping for the necessary materials. It took 20 minutes to set it up, you played with it for 6 and a half minutes and then it took 40 minutes to get you bathed and shampooed because you were covered in paint from head to toe, not to mention having to hose down the back patio, which also wore more paint than the specially purchased butcher’s paper.

And what about the kites? We MADE THEM FROM SCRATCH and not just once but TWICE. Out of garbage bags and dowel we fashioned a magnificent piece of equipment. The whole family traipsed to the footy oval. First time we got literally three minutes of use out of it before the Hippie Child broke it. The rest of the experience involved mother and child running madly around the field dragging a limp kite along the ground. She had no idea the thing was supposed to fly so she was happy. At the second attempt, Princess Child was old enough to demand a turn of holding the string. This time it was actually WORKING. It was up in the AIR. Stamping her feet the youngest screamed and yelled until her sister handed her the string. Sixty seconds later the kite was flying free, the child had let go. We watched as it flew high up into the air and out of sight.

We baked. It took FOREVER to make a packet cake because both children insisted on helping. They struggled with the concept of having to wait for it to cook in the oven. Then when it finally came time to eat it they scoffed the icing and mashed and squished the actual cake over their faces rather than actually consume the damn thing.

Water play centres involving every piece of Tupperware we owned, making play doh only to have it turn up weeks later, rock hard in the lounge cushions, chalk murals on the driveway, we did so MUCH.

So many hours devoted to these type of activities and the little blighters don’t REMEMBER. That’s why you must always have a camera on hand so you can prove the effort you went to, trust me you are going to thank me for this vital piece of parenting advice.