She had a full day of work ahead of her and didn’t want to be disturbed so she left this note. She posted it on Facebook with the caption 'When you've two teens home sick and one not in work till two and busy day lined up at work!!! #notinthemood #motherofteens #shoppingdaytomorrow'

We chatted to Kay and she told us has three teenage boys, Danny 12, James 14 and Pete age 17. 

“I had three under 5 at one stage, and funnily enough I thought that was going to be the hardest part, but since teenage years have rocked in I’ve been rudely awakened.”

She was having a busy day last Thursday and said she was just pre-empting text and phone calls when they were all at home, “So I left them a little note just to remind them that although tomorrow is shopping day, there is plenty of food in the presses.”

“Laziness isn’t something in them” she said “but when you’re a teenager you live very much in the present moment and stopping to cook pasta for 20 minutes is very devastating.”

“They didn’t starve, and they even deviated from the list.” said Kay. They made burgers and jambons “So I have to give them a little bit of a pat on the back for their initiative.”

She is the Meath county coordinator for Involve Youth Project Meath “My profession is teenagers, which doesn’t make you any more prepared to be the mother of teenagers.”

She works with kids between the ages of 7 and 18, many of them are from the travelling community. “I love it, my job is the type of job you can’t be in unless you love young people and get something form them”

“I’m actually about to complete my second degree on working with teenagers” and she said she still doesn’t know it all.

“I could be dealing with 40 to 60 young people in a night and then coming home to three.” She said it is a lot. “Sometimes you do feel like just walking in the door and going hiding in the bathroom for ten minutes.”

When asked if she had any advice for parents starting off with young teens, she said the main thing was to not be so hard on yourself.

Kay said she’s happy the post was doing well and it was all a bit of a laugh but she also said “I think at times it can be a lonely road, because there is a lot of pressure on us to get it right.”

She also thinks it’s important to be able to apologise to your kids “I think young people need to understand that adults make mistakes and they need to hear that from you” and also to remember to be the adult in a row, which is very hard sometimes.

Kay put the post up because she felt it would be relatable to other parents “There’s conversations you have with other mams and your kind of like ‘Yeah does yours do that too’?”

She said the years are flying and she can’t believe her eldest is 18 soon, “The days are long sometimes but the years sure as hell are short.”