It's just one of those days . . . Her dogs won't stop barking, there's wet washing drying on a clothes horse in her home o ce and she's just realised she's double-booked herself and should be in a meeting with someone else.
"It's my attention de cit disorder," Vanessa Raphaely groans about the scheduling mix-up. "And menopause doesn't help."
It's a scenario many frazzled members of her popular Facebook parenting group, The Village, can relate to – the endless juggling and multitasking, the days when balls get dropped.
During her time as editor of Cosmopolitan magazine it might've sent her into a spin but now, older and wiser, Vanessa (59) just rolls with it.
All the chaos is quickly forgotten as she ops into a chair next to a blazing fire in the lounge of her beautiful home in Higgovale, Cape Town, her dogs settled at her feet and a copy of her new book, We Were Perfect Parents Until We Had Children, on a table beside her.
Written in collaboration with author Karin Schimke, it's a compilation of the best advice shared by the 60 000 members of The Village and covers just about every parenting dilemma under the sun, from setting boundaries and getting kids to help out with chores to how to cope with issues such as cellphones, vaping and dating.
