Mean Moms....

A good friend sent me the following, which is timely and relevant given the past week I've been having. When you visit this blog and see days on end with no posts, please say a prayer for my children and the sanity of their mother. After having spent the past weekend in the company of a wonderfully, brilliantly active toddler and a nursing baby, I am reminded that every stage of parenting has its own unique and precious challenges. Learning to parent a teen, who is in his own right learning to be a teen, is taking every ounce of energy, patience and love I can muster - sorry to say that leaves little time (and brain matter) for blogging.

To all my fellow mean moms, enjoy:

"Mean Moms"

Someday when my children are old enough to understand the logic that
motivates a parent, I will tell them, as my Mean Mom told me:

I loved you enough . . . to ask where you were going, with whom, and what
time you would be home.

I loved you enough to be silent and let you discover that your new best
friend was a creep.

I loved you enough to make you go pay for the bubble gum you had taken and
tell the clerk, "I stole this yesterday and want to pay for it."

I loved you enough to stand over you for two hours while you cleaned your
room, a job that should have taken 15 minutes.

I loved you enough to let you see anger, disappointment, and tears in my
eyes. Children must learn that their parents aren't perfect.

I loved you enough to let you assume the responsibility for your actions
even when the penalties were so harsh they almost broke my heart.

But most of all, I loved you enough . . . to say NO when I knew you would
hate me for it. Those were the most difficult battles of all.

I'm glad I won them, because in the end you won, too. And someday when your
children are old enough to understand the logic that motivates parents, you
will tell them.

Was your Mom mean? I know mine was. We had the meanest mother in the whole
world! While other kids ate candy for breakfast, we had to have cereal,
eggs, and toast. When others had a Pepsi and a Twinkie for lunch, we had to
eat sandwiches. And you can guess our mother fixed us a dinner that was
different from what other kids had, too.

Mother insisted on knowing where we were at all times. You'd think we were
convicts in a prison. She had to know who our friends were, and what we
were doing with them. She insisted that if we said we would be gone for an
hour, we would be gone for an hour or less.

We were ashamed to admit it, but she had the nerve to break the Child Labor
Laws by making us work. We had to wash the dishes, make the beds, learn to
cook, vacuum the floor, do laundry, empty the trash and all sorts of cruel
jobs. I think she would lie awake at night thinking of more things for us
to do.

She always insisted on us telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth. By the time we were teenagers, she could read our minds and
had eyes in the back of her head. Then, life was really tough!

Mother wouldn't let our friends just honk the horn when they drove up. They
had to come up to the door so she could meet them. While everyone else
could date when they were 12 or 13, we had to wait until we were 16.

Because of our mother we missed out on lots of things other kids
experienced. None of us have never been caught shoplifting, vandalizing
other's property or ever arrested for any crime. It was all her fault.

Now that we have left home, we are all educated, honest adults. We are
doing our best to be mean parents just like Mom was. I think that is what's
wrong with the world today. It just doesn't have enough mean moms!

PASS THIS ON TO ALL THE MEAN MOTHERS YOU KNOW.

(And Their Kids!!!)