Editor's View: Thanks to mums everywhere

If you were to write a job description for the role of mum what would it include?

The list of must have skills would be endless.

Think of a mix of nurse, cook, chauffeur, teacher, social worker, cheerleader, diplomat, add a substantial dose of patience and an endless supply of love and you’ll be on the right track.

To many modern multi-tasking, task juggling mums, running a company if not the entire country would seem easy by comparison.

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And yet society - and sometimes their offspring - often under-value and take for granted these wonder women.

Being a parent today, and particularly a mum, is one of the toughest jobs going as well as one of the most rewarding.

New mums often think that the early days, months and years are the hardest; the endless round of nappies, sleepless nights, toddler tantrums. But each stage of a child’s life brings its own challenges and demands that mum and day upskill, to use the workplace terminology.

Helping a teenager navigate his or her way through a life lived out on social media is a 21st century parenting problem. Warnings about online grooming, over-sharing on facebook and twitter trolls have replaced the “ you can’t go out dressed like that” mantra of a previous generation of mums.

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When the kids leave home you think that mum duties will reduce - until they come boomeranging back and you find yourself slipping back into mum/teenager mode.

It is true that most of us don’t truly appreciate our mums until we necome a parent ourselves. Then we are very grateful for all they did - and squirm a little at the spoilt brat/ truculent teenager that we once were.

Today we feature a lovely take on Mother’s Day with Ruth Adams telling reporter Nik Farah abot her slightly unusual family life.

Ruth keeps up with her three children and grandchidlren who are scattered about the world largely by Skype.

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Geography may keep them apart physically, but theirs is a close family.

Ruth puts that down to parenting style; she and her husband wanted to bring their family up in a different way to the strict regime they’d had as children. Times change.

So, alongside a more relaxed attitude they adopted the mantra “give them roots to grow and wings to fly” and they literally did, safe in the security of parental love.

Happy Mother’s Day to all those women lucky enough to be one.

To kids of all ages lucky enough to have a mum, remember you’ve only got one so treat her well, not just with flowers or chocolates today, but every single day.