REAL, NOT PERFECT

How life, loss and running the popular Facebook parenting group The Village made former Cosmo editor Vanessa Raphaely a better mom

- JANE VORSTER

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 office and she's just realised she's double-booked herself and should be in a meeting with someone else.

"It's my attention deficit 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 flops 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.

As the mother of Milla (24), Max (23) and Leo (17), Vanessa knows all too well what a minefield the teen years can be.

She doesn't sugar-coat it in her book: adolescence is like "a wrecking ball" she writes.

All parents can do is make sure they're there to help pick up the pieces.

WHEN she launched The Village her own family were trying to pick up the pieces from a devastating loss. The death of her stepdaughter, Alex (24) in 2013 had left Vanessa, her husband Simmy Peerutin (67) and their kids reeling.