Do you remember some of the things that your mother told you when you were a kid? Do you remember how you said to yourself that you would never say those things to your own kids? Well, the time has come for you to admit that you were wrong and to woefully avow that "I should have listened to my mother, she was right."
I have two children, as most of you know. One is three and the other is twelve. Most days, as you've probably gathered, I'm very close to breaking that one precious thread that is holding the last of my sanity. Every day I say the same things to my children, and every day I have to be disappointed when I realize that my words did not make an impression, and that those words didn't even pass the ear drums into the brains. Have you ever heard your mother say, "I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall?" Well, I remember that one among many others, so I guess I'm getting paid back.
My daughter has the messy gene that apparently she may have inherited from me. Messy meaning that her room looks like a J.C. Penney vomited all over her floor, her dresser and most days, her bed. There are clothes everywhere, some are clean and some are dirty and somehow they are organized because she knows which are which. I tell her every day to hang up one or two shirts, because by the end of the week, most of the clothes would be put away. I say this every day, sometimes twice a day. And yet, when I go up to say good night, the room looks exactly the same. However, I believe that I'm getting paid back for what I used to do to my mother. History repeats itself. Mother, I apologize.
My son also does not understand the English language. Every day I tell him not to antagonize the dog, and every day I have to listen to the whining when he gets nipped. I tell him if he keeps lying on top of her like a pig pile, she is going to nip him when she's had too much piling. I say this at least five times a day, but to no avail. I separate the two, I put the human child on time out, I yell, and sometimes I even spray them both with the water bottle. There’s only so much one person can take. I can understand now what my mother had to put up with when my sister and I would start our daily brawls. She must still cringe when she hears that whiney “Mom!” or the infamous “I’m telling!” Again, Mother, I apologize.
My husband says that his mother would always say, “I’ll give you something to cry about.” Children whine. I’m not talking about crying when they are infants, that’s different…that’s communication. I’m talking about the incessant whining that children begin to do right around the time they learn how to talk. This time just so happens to be the same time that they begin the “terrible twos.” They whine when they are hungry, sad, mad, tired, jealous, too hot, and too cold. They whine at meal times, play time, nap time, bath time and bed time. My daughter, even at twelve, still whines about taking a shower, about cleaning her room, and about doing homework. My son whines about everything else. There is no point to it, and sometimes I think they are just trying to see if anyone is listening and if anything is going to be done. I have a whine filter, which I installed right around the time of my son’s terrible two’s. My husband, however, does not have the whine filter. So he cannot block the penetrating whines of the children from entering his mind. Therefore sometimes I hear “I’ll give you something to cry about!” In spite of this, the whining ensues, because the children see their Daddy as a big playmate, and not as the disciplinarian. That’s my job, add it to the list.
Lately, my son flat out cries when he doesn’t get his way. And lately, I’ve been using the old adage, “Your face is going to freeze like that.” I remember when my grandmother used to use that one on my sister and I when we would do the same thing. And yesterday, I used “If your friends jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you?” when my daughter was telling me a story about a group project in school. Wow, I think I’m getting worse.
No comments:
Post a Comment