Category: parenting

I think I’m a good mother. A great mother, in fact. But I’ve had my moments. Not negligent moments, mind you, like I’ve never left my three kids – when they were under the age of five – home alone (with only the cats to babysit) so I could go out “partying” with the “girlzzz” (though I may have wanted to a few times). I’ve never hit anybody with a hammer (heaven forbid) or even a straw broom.

I will admit however to hanging up a few snowsuits really hard, and to “dropping” apples into the crisper rather than “setting” them in there. I was the one who paid the price for that when the kids refused to eat them after because they were bruised – isn’t that always the way? And more than once, I’ve folded laundry with such irritability that my fingers ended up slightly chafed from me pressing down so hard along the creases of the fabric.

No, I’ve never done “lines of coke” in the bathroom between the cake and presents at a birthday party, nor have I told the kids that they were “worthless pieces of shit” no matter how “are you kidding me with that attitude” difficult they were, but I have taken an entire Nintendo system (with games) to the thrift store out of spite. (It had been a long and frustrating six months, if I recall – kids go through some “we will fight over every single thing” phases, you know.) You could argue the disposal of a video game system to be a “good” mother moment. My children didn’t see it that way. Neither did my husband.

Continue reading “It’s Not Easy Being A Mom”

A few people in my family (including myself) claim to have OCD. And they/we probably do. Nobody has been officially tested, and nobody’s seen a doctor about it. Sure, we’ve all done the “do you have to check that the stove has been turned off five times before going to bed/do you have to eat ALL the peas on your plate because you don’t want one to feel left out/do you worry that you might accidentally shop lift one day when clearly you wouldn’t because you don’t think that shop lifting is a socially acceptable thing to do” online quizzes, and the answer was yes, bloody hell, yes.

A few of us (well, one of us) can’t even eat his supper and would rather starve “if there are tomatoes, or tomato sauce, or pieces of tomato skin (that’s the worst), or the suggestion of tomato products anywhere around, on, or in the near vicinity of his dinner plates, the stove, or the kitchen counter in general” and he’s not two years old. He’s twenty-four. To him, tomatoes are like the devil and should be banned from this planet, apparently. Ah, good old first world problems.

Yes, we are all a little neurotic around here, and sometimes – just sometimes – we like to give that neuroticism a name, so we label ourselves OCD, and it makes us feel better; it makes us feel like we are NOT alone, like other people do and think crazy shit as well.

Continue reading “Why Does It Seem Like Everyone In My Family Has OCD?”

I’m not a doctor, and I don’t claim to know the things they know. But I am a mother, and when it comes to my children, I believe I have a “sixth” sense. I’m pretty good at recognizing when they are really sick or really hurt – and not just suffering from a pathetically simple, “no you don’t need Penicillin or Demerol or Xanax (as if)” head cold, and not just throwing up because they are hung over even though they deny it, and not just needing to stay home from school because they “have a test today and didn’t study for it”, and not just “distressingly hobbling about because they twisted an ankle playing soccer and now it’s broken, but when I ask them if they want Chinese food, they magically run across the room”. OK, so my husband could help me with that last one. He’s an orthopaedic surgeon.

All mothers have this otherworldly “kinesthesia”, this “ability to know things, don’t ask how” – at least, most of us do. It’s part of our biology, our scientific, rudimentary, plasmic, constitutional, nuclear, basil (is that a spice?) make-up. Like knowing to check the doors at night to see if anyone has locked them – they haven’t. Like knowing when NOT to ask my daughter about her schoolwork/to help clean the house/to be nice to her brothers so she doesn’t bite my head off (she’s pre-period, duh!) – as smart as he is, that’s a skill that my husband does NOT possess. Like knowing to bring snacks on a two-hour car ride (even when the kids are adults), because low blood sugar means low blood sugar no matter how old you are, and it can turn a perfectly normal boy/young man into a monster, so it’s best to be prepared.

Continue reading “Is Mother’s Intuition Real?”

We’ve all heard stories of mothers doing crazy things to protect their children, and while I’ve never had to lift a car off of anybody – knock on wood – I will say that I have that same boundless and (at times) catty drive to protect my young, though they aren’t so young anymore.

This is typically how it works…

Someone says my kids aren’t perfect, I say who is?

Someone says they don’t always use the best language, I say they learned it from their fucking father.

Someone says they shouldn’t be climbing the neighbour’s fence to take a short cut to the bus, I say, Jesus Christ, again? I’ll talk to them.

All kidding aside, it doesn’t matter their age, a mother is a mother forever, and my claws WILL come out if someone criticizes, questions, or otherwise bad-mouths any one of them. I count this as a good thing. It’s my job. If I don’t stick up for them – right or wrong – who’s going to?

I think it just goes to show that we have bonded, that the body-altering nature of their time inside my womb, and the subsequent excruciating pain of their individual evacuations – my daughter’s being by far the most bloody and brutal – and the many, many, MANY long nights of taking care of them, and all the stress, and all the dishes and laundry that I’ve done to clean up after them, has really left its mark on me.

Continue reading “I Am Mother, Hear Me Roar”

I’ve always thought of myself as the mellow one in the family. I’ve never, in a fit of anger, broken up pieces of wood in the basement with my bare hands, and I only backed into my grandfather’s car once when I was seventeen-years-old. I chalk that one up to being young and impetuous. Occasionally, I yell, but I consider that more like “talking loud”, and I only do it because most people around here don’t listen to a word I say.

In my opinion, every family needs a floater – a person who is flexible and who can stay fairly stable (mentally) with the ebbs and flows of life.

Yes, in my situation, that person is me. My husband’s job is one of very high stress. He works long hours, and what he does calls for a great amount of responsibility. It’s been that way for twenty-five years. Don’t ask him to deal with young adult angst. When he gets home, he literally melts into the chair in the living room, his computer on his lap, a stack of papers by his side. His brain goes into “cruise” mode, his eyes close, and his head bobs back and forth from time to time.

I’m the one who has to be ready – sort of like a firefighter, I always say. Things are usually calm, and I can watch “House Hunters” and take my cats for walks on their leashes – fun and (what my husband calls) leisurely and almost counterproductive stuff like that – but every once in a while, the shit hits the fan, and I need to spring into action, like when somebody forgets their dance shoes and it’s minutes before the show, or worse, when someone rips their pants in front of the whole cafeteria, or worse worse, when someone gets cheated on by their girlfriend, or worse worse worse, when somebody crashes the car, or gets really drunk, or fails a major test, etc. etc.

Continue reading “How To Stay Calm When Everyone Around You Is Flipping Out”