Thanks for being The Meanest Mom In The World

The daughter actually thanked me for being a mean mommy. Just when you think it's safe to label your children oblivious and ungrateful to your noble, selfless, tireless, humble sacrifices of time, energy and attention, one of them will do something like this to me. I think it's a plot to keep me off balance.

Her Family and Consumerism class was discussing money - credit card debt, how expenses add up over time - and they had each child estimate how much soda he or she drank and then add up what it cost over a year. My daughter was appalled at some of her classmates' totals.

About a year ago, when the media started talking about how much soda contributed to obesity I banned everyday sodas. My son was working on a six-pack a day habit - no matter how much I tried to supervise his intake, he always managed to leave two or three extra soda cans around- usually shoved under his bed. And no, he isn't supposed to eat or drink in his room.

So we banned soda, except for once a week and when at a restaurant. This is still more soda than I like them to have, since we probably eat out at least once a week, but yanno, sometimes I get tired of monitoring everything - did you brushyourteethweardeodorantcombyourhairalreadyhaveasoda?

Anyway, my daughter's total ended up being in the $50 bucks a year range while some of her fellow students were working on $400. So she thanked me for not letting her drink too much soda and for staying out of credit card debt - not that we are saints or anything - we have a little, but have managed to avoid going over $1000 bucks most of the time.

She said she felt better than we didn't have a lot of debt. Still, the money issue seemed to worry her because she asked me several times later in the week if we were okay for money. I reassured her that while we wouldn't be buying a big screen t.v. anytime soon, we were okay. I think she still worries about it, but I think a little of that is good. It's when you don't worry about it that you turn around and find you have $10,000 of Big Macs on the plastic.

So she thanked me for being a mean mommy. And then she hugged me. I've got to keep an eye on that one.