There comes a time in every girl’s life when she learns there’s such a thing as too much leopard.

For my 8-year-old daughter Cienna, that time was Saturday.

She burst from a dressing room and proudly said, “Look at this outfit!” Leopard-print leggings had been tragically paired with a leopard-print blouse, and my eyes grew large with pain.

I didn’t want to break her proud heart, but there was no way I could or would ever let her leave the house like that.

“Isn’t it cool, Mom?” she said.

Um, no.

“I can see you like this, but I think we should make another choice,” I said.

She didn’t like my response and looked at me like I knew nothing about fashion.

“But, Mom, this matches! The top and the bottom are the same color!” she said.

I shook my head in disapproval, and she marched back into the dressing room.

“This is just like when you made me change because I had two different kinds of black on,” she said.

The dressing room door became a barrier between right and wrong, and I suddenly envisioned a future of similar, unpleasant, back-to-school shopping sessions. In all of these imaginings, she was aging like wine, and I was aging like beer.

A nearby rack of clothes seemed like a great place to hide for the next 10 years, carefully trying to avoid discussions of what matches, what’s appropriate, what’s overpriced and what stores land on a list of places I will never spend my money.

She’s only going to third grade. How can this possibly be starting already?

“Cienna, please don’t be upset. You are right that it’s the same color. But it’s too much of the same color. It’s OK to wear some leopard print, but it’s not OK to look like a leopard,” I said.

Though her top and bottom had matching hues of brown, black, camel and rust tones, they provided a teaching moment entitled, “Good Leopard vs. Bad Leopard.”

“I want to clarify leopard print involves big spots. The smaller ones are cheetah prints. In the course of your life, you will meet both. And you’ll meet zebras and giraffes, but let’s not involve them today,” I said.

Please.

“You need to keep your animal to one thing–wear it on the top or bottom or as an accent, but never all together,” I said.

“Then why do you let us dress up as animals and things at home? Why do we get to play dress up and wear old Halloween costumes,” she said.

Now, Cienna, you know the way our family acts at home is rarely how one should act in public.

“Because that’s creative play. I wouldn’t send my daughter to school in a Minnie Mouse costume, unless it was Halloween, and I won’t send my daughter to school in head-to-toe leopard ever,” I said.

You will have plenty of days when you’re 70 in a casino to do that.

“It’s a much better idea if you’re wearing a bold print like leopard to understate everything else. Likewise, if you’re wearing a plain, understated color, it can be nice to add a bold accessory like a leopard bracelet or earrings or scarf,” I said.

“Hey, can I get a leopard bracelet and scarf?” she said.

How does my advice always end up costing me more?

We left the store with both leopard pieces and an understanding they will never be worn together.

And our drive home offered a confession, supplemented by a visual aid at home, of what I wore when I was bound for third grade. It was a tragic combination of spandex pants, a cotton sweatshirt, jelly bracelets, lace gloves inspired by Madonna and really big hair.

“Wow. What is that, Mom?” Cienna said.

“Aqua Net and the ’8Os.”

At just six days old, Cienna was barely more than 6 lbs. and rarely made a peep.

Since then, my talkative 8-year-old girl has more than made up for her quiet infancy, but it hasn’t erased my memory of her sleeping serenely the first time I had to say goodbye.

Various circumstances ensured I had to work, so three days after we returned from the hospital, I was back in a newsroom.

And it was a great newsroom, full of great people. But it was hard to reconcile having a heart caught up in both black and white and a bassinet.

I spent 45-minute car rides to and from work crying and exhausted, still reeling from three hours of sleep the night before (and the night before that).  And once I was home, I held Cienna in a rocking chair, reading to her, singing to her, turning my favorite Beatles’ songs into her favorite lullabies.

But, honestly, the hardest part of being a working mother was having stay-at-home moms judge me for it.

 They said kids were better off having a full-time mother. And I thought they sat around on computers and phones all day, gabbing with their friends.

I eventually learned we were both wrong.

Almost four years after I had Cienna, my oldest son Ty was born by emergency C-section.  I was laid up a little longer than expected, which ended up turning into an unexpected eight-month maternity leave.

I was ready for the pace and camaraderie of a newsroom, the witty exchanges and foul language.

While I loved having time to bond with my kids, I missed the refuge of my desk chair—even if it was simply because it wasn’t near a basket of laundry.

I had also achieved an up-close view of being a stay-at-home mom. With Cienna in preschool, I met many other moms like me. And I was sure of one thing: being a stay-at-home mom is harder.

By the time I had my third child, Dimitri, I took a typical three-month maternity leave. And when I resumed working, I mainly worked from home.  To my surprise, working from home was even harder than being a stay-at-home mom or working mom. It was the worst of both worlds.

When you’re a work-from-home mom, people think you’re not working. They invite you to do things, wonder why your house isn’t clean, and your neighbors will find it odd that you go onto a patio in 20-degree weather to take business calls.

But convincing my three young children the importance of remaining quiet while I interviewed school board members was a fruitless effort. So they got the living room with a kind neighbor, and I got the cold patio.

I remembered those days this week. More importantly, I remembered how I survived them.

Here are some of my tips for braving those busy days:

-Have a plan. Plan out your work day. Make a schedule for both you and the kids. Have set nap times and meal times, and take on your most important tasks while they sleep.

-Pack lunches. Have all of your lunches ready to go the night before. If you were on the clock in the office, chances are you wouldn’t have time to stop and cook meals for all of you. Don’t do it if you’re working from home either. It will take up an hour of your day. So, keep it simple, and brown bag it. If you really want to make it fun, go to the store and let the kids pick their own lunch boxes. With back-to-school sales going on, this is a great time of year to do that.

-Make reading corners. Have your children pick a favorite corner in the room where you often work. Decorate that space with pillow pets, blankets and their artwork. During the moments when everything gets a little too loud, tell them it’s time for their special reading corners. Let each of them pick a few books and guide them to their spaces. My kids often fell asleep in their reading corners. But on the rare days they didn’t , I asked them to draw me pictures that would show what happened in the stories.

-Become friends with their favorite TV shows. I’m not suggesting you use a television as your babysitter. But it’s OK to maximize the time while they watch their favorite shows. In our house, those shows were “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse,” “Phineas and Ferb,” “iCarly” and “Spongebob Squarepants.”

-Clock out. When you work from home, it’s easy to forget the day is over because you never leave your workplace. But you have to pick an end time.

Oh, and wine helps, too.