Mother's Day Rant

It's Mother's Day. I do not require breakfast in bed, flowers, chocolates, or a guest spot on Oprah for being a stellar mother. However, I do require a few basic things I've found lacking today.

1. Children get dressed without being reminded 47 times.

2. Children wear decent, non soiled clothing, wash their hair/body, and comply with requests for assistance without sullen rebellion.

If they were toddlers, this might be unreasonable. But an eleven and thirteen-year-old are capable of these activities. They thought they were going to get away with this. But no. As the meanest mom in the world, I have a responsibility to teach them how to treat other people. So they spent a lot of time doing chores today and (voluntarily?) made me a card to apologise for their behavior. I'm not sure yet whether the latter was to get out of the former, but I'm taking it at face value right now.

Bottom line: If I don't value myself and how I'm treated, how will they know how they deserve to be treated? Most of the time my children are helpful and compassionate. But every once in awhile they become devil spawn just to test the waters. Can I get away with this? Will anyone call me on it? So even on this day, I have to be the mom, even though it feels like I've been struggling all day to fight the french rebellion. So I'm sucking it up. It's part of being a mom. But I don't have to like it.