You're Not The Boss of Me Now

Sometimes my life could be an episode of Malcolm in the Middle…

As lunch was coming to an untimely and messy end I turned to Minion #1 and said “I am going to say words, I want you to hear MY words before you say YOUR own words. IF you let me finish my words I have no doubt that you will be pleasantly surprised. O.K.?”

What he heard was “I am going to say something terrible that you are not going to like. Whatever you do, do NOT allow me to finish and by all means interrupt me as soon as you hear the word Walmart”

So, following my first statement, our conversation went a little something like this…

“O.k. Mommy.”

“I have to go to Walmart..”

“aaaawwwwww idon’twannnagotowalmart…”

“O.k. here is the part where you Let. Me. Finish. IhavetogotoWalmart. Wait. Butyoudon’thavetogo.”

“What do I have to do for you instead?”

(Smart boy)

“Well, I was thinking…”

“I could clean the living room!”

“Yes. You will clean the living room. Now let me finish. Your room needs…”

“aaaaaawwwwwww idon’twannacleanmyroom! I want to play Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiii”

“Right, so, here is what I was thinking. You have been very helpful and mature lately” (obviously I was not counting this conversation) “so if you clean the living room now, and promise that as soon as I get home you will turn off the Wii without complaint and clean your room…you can play Wii the whole time we are gone.”

“O.K. MOMMY! Sounds great! I’m getting right on that! Here, let me take your bowl to the sink. Want me to help load the dishwasher?”

It could only go downhill from there.

The little minions and I loaded up and went to Walmart which, as always, took longer than any human could possibly imagine. And of course, I did not accomplish the task of buying #2 a backpack which was the main goal of the trip. But while we were there I was nice enough to call #1 and describe a few shirts to him so that I could buy him a 1^st day of school shirt as I had promised.  

Then there was an incident with #2 and an extremely haughty overly concerned shopper that is clearly a better parent than I am, but that is a story for another blog post.

Just before we left the parking lot I called #1 and gave him a heads up that we were on our way home and reminded him of our deal.

“O.k. Mommy.”

As soon as we walked in the door I got “I’m in the middle of a level, please can’t I just finish it? Gawd!”

“Yes, finish that level.”

10 minutes later, “Hey, buddy, shouldn’t that level be over by now?”

I can always count on #2 to rat the other two out, “He died on that level two times, he’s playing it again”

ERUPTION from #1

So I walked over, turned the t.v. off and pointed up the stairs.

Oh…..the……freaking……drama…..

Went…on…for…evvvvver….

The phrases “You don’t understand me.”  “Why do you hate me.” And “Nothing good ever happens to me” were a few of my favorites. And he did turn to his brother at one point and screamed “YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!!!”

I tried to talk to him and throw a little reason his way. I reminded him that he did NOT have to go shopping, that I bought him the exact shirt that he wanted, that he was supposed to clean the living room and there were pillows everywhere when I got home, but none of this mattered. What did matter? “IT’S LIKE YOU DON’T EVEN CARE ABOUT MY NEEDS!”

So, he is now upstairs for the rest of the day and I am downstairs with the t.v. turned up louder than I usually allow so that he can hear me playing the Wii. 

Sometimes a Mom has to have a little old school fun to drive a point home.

I Fed My Kids Today!

My day started at 2 a.m. when minions 2 and 3 bounded into my bed claiming fear of “a crazy tick tick tick”. 10 hours later at 5 a.m. they both finally fell back to sleep. 10 minutes later at 7:30 a.m. #3 was awake and ready for Sprout (that is a preschool based t.v. channel for those not in the know) and milk, and waffles, and whining. I am not in a good mood today. I have been very honest and direct with my children about that. They know that I am tired. They know that I am grumpy and they know not to try to pull any shit with Mommy today. Of course now they also know that I am trying to write a blog so they keep finding reasons to come into my room or stand just outside of the door and be annoying in hopes that I will be amused and write about how hilarious they are. I will not be writing about how hilarious they are.

Later in the morning #3, my nemesis for the day (it’s o.k. to say that about your 3 year old right?) got his hands on his boom box and the c.d. that I had “accidentally” put really high and out of sight. He is now BLARING music from his room upstairs. It seems to be bouncing off of every surface creating some kind of super echo throughout the entire house.  And as I sit here gritting my teeth listening to V.B.S. Praise music on a loop I can’t help but wonder if this is pay back for the years of New Kids on the block followed by the years of Guns n Roses that my mother had to endure. I guess I am supposed to be happy that this Jesus music is reverberating through my house. I should have some kind of facebook status with #blessed or some shit like that but, well…..nope, I am not pleased…#jesustakethewheel…

So this is my day, we are all a little whinny and a lot irritable. I’m pretty sure when husband came home for lunch he wanted to turn around and walk right back out the door. This is the kind of day when part of me knows I should stick to my guns and make them do chores and play outside and read before they can play with their screens but the other part of me knows that if they play with their screens they will stay safely and quietly in the house and I will be able to rest. I must admit, there is another, small part of me that gets just the tiniest amount of joy making them do chores, that’s the part of me that is pissed at them for keeping me up all night and forcing me off of my own bed.

This is the kind of day when I want to say to them “STOP. Do not speak, not another word. I do NOT want to know that your brother just filled the bathroom sink with hotwheels and then water. I do not hear your other brother screaming at the top of his lungs because he rolled all of his trains down the stairs and now he’s mad because they are no longer upstairs. I do not want to have knowledge of any of that because then I will have to do something about it. Ignorance is bliss baby.” With this as my mind set today I came to an interesting realization about being a parent and living in a social media world with other parents.

As I was making lunch for the minions I was wanting someone to give me some type of kudos or congratulations for accomplishing this task. This doesn’t happen of course A) because I’m a stay at home parent and by default I don’t receive a whole lot of praise and B) because all I did was feed my children and what kind of bitch wants to be congratulated for that?  But during this inner dialog I realized something, THIS is why people post some of the stuff that they post on facebook. This is why we see checked off to-do lists by stay at home moms of 4. This is why people who are trying in earnest to get fit want to share their journey. This is why we see cutesy (I’ll be it sometimes nauseating) pictures of sandwiches cut into flower and monster truck shapes.  Because sometimes, some days, days like today for example, it is all we can do to live in the day. It takes all a person has to get the basic everyday life stuff done. So when they accomplish something, even the smallest little bite of an accomplishment, it feels like something and sometimes, you just gotta share! Now there are some, and we all know who they are that post every damn thing that they do on social media and that feels excessive, but if every once in a while, out of the blue, you have a friend that posts “I fed my kids today!” you should go ahead and give them a little thumbs up because I’m guessing they need it.

I fed my kids today!

Parent's these days...we're doing our best

A few days ago I had a rather awkward but important encounter. The small details are not important but the sentiment behind it is.

I approached my van with two crazy Kindergartners in tow and found a man hovering. I politely waited so that he could get by or get into the car next to mine but he just lingered, so I went to get in, as I was opening the door he advanced and said “I was waiting for you”.

I should probably clarify here that it was the middle of a very sunny day and I was in the packed parking lot of my kid’s school.  That being noted, my thoughts weren’t “STRANGER DANGER” or anything like that, more like “Ah hell, what did my kid do”. This guy seemed visibly uncomfortable and a little intense so as the seconds stretched between me mumbling something like “umm…ok?” and him telling me why he was looming my thoughts became a bit more absurd. I started thinking, maybe he has some kind of dirt on us with which to black mail our family. Maybe he knew about the other day when I couldn’t fit anything else into recycling so I threw the recyclables in the regular trash can. Or maybe he has been admiring my hotness in car line all of these months and was wondering if boys really do “like a little more booty to hold at night” as Meghan Trainor’s Momma suggested.

  I stood half in my car with the door between us when he finally pointed to my van and said something about his kid opening his car door to wide and making a mark. I just stared at him for a second, (this was very anti-climactic) and then said, “Oh that’s cool no big deal”. But he wanted to make sure I saw it. After I looked and saw nothing and again assured him that all was well, something occurred to him, “You know what?” he said “He should be apologizing” Which is a parenting technique that I completely support so I waited. He told the kid to get out of the car half a dozen times and I felt for him. We have all been there, trying our damndest to parent like a champ and the kid is totally not having it. Finally the pitiful tear stained face appeared as he tumbled over his brother and out of his dad’s car. He sobbed “sorry” to the ground and I waited a beat for the dad to decide if that was an acceptable apology, it was not. I would have made my kid try again too so I stood and waited for him to look me in the eye (as instructed by dad) and apologize again.

Overall this encounter was uncomfortable at best. I did not particularly enjoy leaning clumsily against my van while 2 kindergartners were wreaking havoc inside and an overly intense dude tried to make me care about a scratch I could not see. If it were up to me I would have been sitting in my driver’s seat with the air blasting listening to my son and his friend discus the hot topics of the day. But, you see, dear reader, this was not about me. This was about a father parenting his son. A parent doing his best to teach his small human what it is to be a responsible person in the world. Because of this I stood, and leaned and shuffled my feet and patiently waited while this young person scrounged up all of the courage he had to look me in the eye and say some of the hardest words in the English language “I’m sorry”.

I had hella respect for the dad who recognized that he, himself did nothing wrong but that his child did. (Though I really wasn’t worried about it) And that the kid (if anyone) should be the one to apologize. This parent made his son accept responsibility and own up to it and I applaud them both. Though I did not actually applaud them, the encounter was awkward enough plus my hazard lights had begun to flash and I could hear giggling from inside my van.

This story is important because it is not often told. There is a constant barrage of parental criticisms on social media. There is a never ending stream of memes spouting the phrase “back in my day…” followed by a list of behaviors and rules that people claim to have followed years ago but no longer see in kids. If I read one more thing on facebook about how parents and children were superior humans “back then”  to the parents and their kids today I am going to…well, probably ignore it and do nothing but, it will really piss me off! 

Meanwhile, I am trying my best to raise my kid’s the way the father in my story is raising his. My kids are taught to be polite and respectful and look people in the eye and so on… And I’ll tell you, it’s not always easy to do in this fast paced world. Many of the same people who love to bitch about the way kid’s behave would not have taken the time to allow this father to parent the way he needed to, or to allow his poor scared kid to muster up the guts to do the right thing.  Kids are imperfect human beings, as we all are, and I know that it is no one else’s job to help me raise my kid’s. But, we all live in this world and wouldn’t it be a little nicer out there if people took the time to help kids learn how to be responsible humans instead of blowing them off?

So, there you go, my high horse for the month. Thank you for reading, enjoy the rest of your day and the next time you feel wronged by a kid, or any other person, give them the chance to do the right thing before you make a call. They may well be an asshole, but at least you will be a little better for it.   

 

Here is a picture of me and my boys because if I don't add a picture to the blog facebook does weird things when I try to share the post.