Totally Random Tuesday: Whiny Parent Syndrome

So you know what?

I love my kid. Desperately.

Know what I don't love?

When my kid, who I love desperately, has to get an earful.

For example, just now, she called me, happy as a clam and at the library, probably ready to offer to bring me back a book she found that I might like, or a movie we could watch together, but I had to be MEAN MOM and tell her to get her happy ass home and call me from there, because she's totally in trouble with me.

I can handle a lot.

Being a lazy teenager and not making her bed... *sigh* fine.
Slacking on her homework... well, it's her grade (not this year though - she's got a trip riding on it).
Doing a half-ass job at a chore... I'll just make her do it again, and explain *again* why it can't be done that way.

But lying? Lying just doesn't fly. At all.

I can't even tell you how many times I've told that girl, if you do something wrong and tell me, I might yell. But if you do something wrong, *don't* tell me and I find out later?

Oh girl.

(Insert shaking head here.)

And so now I have to be MEAN MOM, and she just got back from vacation, and is just starting school Thursday.

I hate that, but it's a necessary evil.

I hate more that she's riding home even now, wondering what it is I'm going to yell at her *for*, and having a bad day that started out nicely... on the one hand I feel absolutely justified in making her feel badly (because she really was a turd), but on the other...

She's my baby, and I want her to be happy. All the time.

That's probably where I messed up along the way... but too late now. Now, she just gets the Wrath of Mom.

Sorry, kids, I know my self-pity posts are rare (quit laughing so hard, you!), but I just can't do that John Hughes Retrospective I was going to do today. I will, however, leave you with a clip from my very favorite JH movie, because a) it shows another bratty teen doing awful things his parents will never know about, and b) because it'll make me feel better.

Whiny mom out!