With 3 boys under 5, there’s never a dull moment. Certainly never a quiet one…
This week J (4), B (3) and S (1) all get eggstremely cross.

It's very nearly Easter. The shops have been heaving with gaudy eggs for weeks, the kids are bouncing off the walls with serial egg-hunt induced chocolate overload and I've just endured two Easter hat parades on the trot. More fluffy chicks and tissue-paper daffs than you'd care to imagine in a couple of … cold … sittings. Oh and another Cadbury's Creme Egg each at the end of proceedings just for good measure.

On top of all that I've also got a houseful of hot cross sons. Is it because end of term is nigh and we're all tired and gagging for a chocolate detox, or are they just teed off at being frog-marched round the school playground in soppy and admittedly ridiculous-looking hats?

They've every right to feel hacked off of course. Being shoehorned into daft clothing must rank fairly high in the 'what makes 'em really mad' stakes. But aside from the inflammatory Easter bonnet walk of shame … which, let's face it, must be the pits if you're a boy in a lemon-yellow straw hat … there's a whole range of other stuff that makes them fly off the handle.

Take S, he gets angry at the drop of a (Easter?) hat. Or usually the picking up and removal of a hat … or an elastic band, a tiny piece of Playmobil, a felt-tip pen or one of the other innumerable things he's found and thinks would make an ideal chew-thing. Or … the injustice of it … when he himself is extracted from a scene of impending danger. But how's this for one-year-old logic? Instead of hotfooting (hot-crawling?) away from the chief party-pooping interventionist (me), he also goes ballistic if I'm too hands-off and take the liberty of walking out of eye-shot. Damned if you do, damned if you don't then.

S shows his anger the way that only a small guy could – lobbing things petulantly any which way, violently kicking his legs and shouting 'nooooo!' at the top of his lungs. This he does in a voice reminiscent of Les Dennis doing his Mavis off Coronation Street impression ('well I don't really knooooow'). And then if all else fails he resorts to the timeworn method of antsy infants through the ages – wailing from the rooftops with a loud and much more effective 'waaahhhhh!'.

He's not the only crosspatch in the house; B's a terror at flying into a rage. Try to make him wear something apparently distasteful at your peril. And woe betide should you serve him a lunch that doesn't cut the mustard. Or bestow the coveted Pooh plate onto another brother. Or put on the left shoe before the right. Or try to brush his hair or clean his ears. Or … or … .. well, you get the picture. Is he belatedly still crawling out of the pit of being terribly 2 or is he permanently doomed to be a crabby kind of fella?

Hopefully not as I'm unsure I could handle another 15 years of floppy-body refusals, peevish 'bang bang!' battle cries and knee jerk hit-the-nearest-person-in-sight fits of temper.

J's chief bugbears, meanwhile, are being jogged when doing his homework or being beaten in a race (all the time then … short legs you see). He comes over all bad-tempered when you suggest he's a slow-coach (which he is) and he blows into a rage when he feels he's been unjustly done by – eg. when a sibling saboteur’s ruined a game or annihilated a favourite toy. Or when B's taken a swipe at him in a fit of pique. I take his point on this one.

Anger in J shows itself in pink cheeks, tummy aches or a flood of tears. Or if it's really gone pear-shaped then he might stomp off upstairs by himself.

Luckily, we only reached rosy-cheek levels of resentment – or was it just flushed excitement – at parading round the playground in a pound-shop Stetson with cork-style hanging eggs and an outsize daffodil sprouting up top.

Ah the photos are priceless. Bet the future girlfriends will love them too. Now that'll make him really cross.

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