Colin Sheridan: The Sunday night parenting crisis you won’t see on Instagram

Faced with a forgotten summer camp booking and two overly prepared children, Colin Sheridan chooses panic — and then improv

'Your children have decided that they cannot wait for this particular camp. The Camp of Camps. The Camp to end all Camps. The Coachella of Camps.' 

There is anxiety, and then there is the very acute anxiety only a parent can feel on a Sunday night in the middle of July. When you can't find the confirmation email for a summer camp for your kids that you may have booked in March. 

It's a big maybe, and it's getting bigger with every mention of this camp by your children who, out of absolutely nowhere, have decided that they cannot wait for this particular camp. The Camp of Camps. The Camp to end all Camps. The Coachella of Camps. A camp, it turns out, you definitely discussed with their mother, but perhaps that discussion was as far as it went.

They say no man is an island but on nights like this, you are Rockall. Uninhabited. Bleak. A disputed territory that is so bereft of resources that those who should be disputing over you really couldn’t be bothered to dispute at all. It’s performative disputing. 

You realise this because you are all alone and the clock is ticking. It’s Sunday. The camp is on Monday. You search your email again. You forensically comb your bank accounts for a particular transaction. You audit text messages, typing in keywords hoping it’ll trigger a response that will save the summer.

But all you’re doing is chest compressions on a dream that died the moment you didn’t follow through on something you absolutely said you would in March

The children don’t know it yet. You couldn’t get them to wash the dishes for the last six weeks and suddenly they’re preparing their bags and lunches like they're deploying to South Lebanon for a tour of duty. You’ve never seen them so motivated. They even suggest — for the first time in their innocent little lives — going to bed early.

You need space, time to think, so you head to an Aldi carpark on the outskirts of town. There’s always a chance that another dad, who is in just as tight a spot as you, will be waiting in a Skoda Octavia scrolling through his emails, searching for salvation. 

Maybe he booked the wrong week? Maybe you could do a trade? All that would need to happen is your kid goes to the camp under an assumed name. 

Not only has it been done before but you’re damn sure that if an ICE style raid was ever conducted it would reveal flagrant identity theft across the GAA fields and community halls of Ireland

You don’t want to go down the route of being a whistleblower but it’s 8pm now and the children — suddenly angelic and obedient — are already in bed.

You remind yourself of all the tight spots you’ve been in before. The time you went to the wrong airport but still made the flight. The travel through Europe on your brother's passport. The confusion you caused when you picked the wrong Grace up from your kids school to bring to a party. 

You go deeper, tapping into a reservoir of peacekeeping in conflict zones that tested you more than any parent at the school gate could ever know (there is a reason that the Balkans, the Middle East and Afghanistan are so peaceful right now, and that reason is you). You hit yourself a slap in the face and put on some 'Pink Pony Club' and decide on a plan.

The plan, as such, is not so much a plan as a prayer. You gamble that, instead of breaking the hearts of the kids at first realisation, you play along with the pretence that they are in fact subscribed to a summer camp they not in fact subscribed to. A camp, by the way, that the internet tells you is full as an egg. 

Not only do you play along with it, you double down, offering to bring other kids to the camp, friends who are already signed up and guaranteed their place. This is a critical part of your strategy, because it projects an absolute confidence that you believe your kids are going too.

The final part of Operation Obfuscation is the most important. When you arrive with a car full of happy children oblivious to your asphyxiating anxiety, you need to choose very carefully who you approach.

Ordinarily, one flash of the baby blues from yours truly is enough to win over any woman with a clipboard, but this is a kids summer camp Goddamnit, not facepainting in a public park. Disorganised dads, usually goofy but charming, are kryptonite to summer camps. 

Do not approach a woman who looks like organisational labour is second nature. They will never understand your stupidity and hate you forever

Instead, you must identify a dad with a bib. He will be just as flustered as you, and though he will hate you for the grief you are about to visit upon his life, he will understand, because last year he arrived at Girona airport thinking he had rented a car for himself, herself and the five kids. Instead, they all ended up on a bus to Cambrils at midnight. 

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That man will see the genuine fear in your eyes, and he will register your two children manually, on the spot. You want to hug him, but to do so would make public your shame. Instead, you nod the nod of a man whose life has just been saved.

You walk back to the car lighter than Barry McGuigan. You pledge major reform, promising yourself that next mid-term, it will be different. You take a breath, close your eyes and silently marvel at your calmness in crisis.

You resolve that you are in fact a genius.