Badmother

I have discovered the POINT of adolescence. If your kids stayed cute all the way while they were growing up, then you'd never want them to leave home. Adolescence is a natural thing to make parents want their kids to leave the nest, and this way wise old Mother Nature ensures that young people go out into the world and create their own families. Who then grow up and annoy them. It's the circle of life.

My badmothering reached an all time low over the weekend there. I did it very publicly. With people stopping and staring. But then again, maybe it's not my fault. It's one thing me being a bad mother, but surely there should be some confessional thing for children who are BAD DAUGHTERS.

It was the lazy one of course. She's at an age where she's getting hormones, and man they drive her crazy. I am just thankful that my next hormonal crisis (the menopause) has yet to hit me, as I don't think we could survive two of us having hormonal stuff at the same time.

Anyway, we were in a bowling alley. On a Saturday night. Which was busy. And hormonal daughter was not very good on her first two shots. So, as you do, she burst into tears and ran away. Obviously I should have been sensitive and given her space but no, that would be good mothering. So instead I chased her (running like a wobbly gazelle) halfway across the bowling alley to grab her and have a very public screaming match with her about her behaviour which ended with me shouting that it was never too late for her to be adopted.

Class.

She went on to win the next game hands down, beating my sorry ass.

Do bad mothers create bad daughters, or is it the other way round?

My badmothering reached an all time low over the weekend there. I did it very publicly. With people stopping and staring. But then again, maybe it's not my fault. It's one thing me being a bad mother, but surely there should be some confessional thing for children who are BAD DAUGHTERS.

It was the lazy one of course. She's at an age where she's getting hormones, and man they drive her crazy. I am just thankful that my next hormonal crisis (the menopause) has yet to hit me, as I don't think we could survive two of us having hormonal stuff at the same time.

Anyway, we were in a bowling alley. On a Saturday night. Which was busy. And hormonal daughter was not very good on her first two shots. So, as you do, she burst into tears and ran away. Obviously I should have been sensitive and given her space but no, that would be good mothering. So instead I chased her (running like a wobbly gazelle) halfway across the bowling alley to grab her and have a very public screaming match with her about her behaviour which ended with me shouting that it was never too late for her to be adopted.

Class.

She went on to win the next game hands down, beating my sorry ass.

Do bad mothers create bad daughters, or is it the other way round?

Yesterday saw the battle of doughnuts, and a new opportunity for me to demonstrate my complete inability to nurture and develop young lives. We were at the supermarket and both the lazy one and the manipulative one wanted doughnuts from the patisserie. Both picked one out carefully using the tongs provided, and put it in a small plastic bag, also provided. The lazy one carried her doughnut round with her to keep it from getting squashed, but the manipulative one chucked hers in the trolley, where it was duly squashed by packets of frozen chips and other cheap and nasty food which I buy to fill them up and shut them up. (I'm not a salad-making kind of Mum obviously.)

At the checkout a fight broke out, as manipulative one tried to lay claim to lazy one's unsquashed doughnut. This fight continued for 10 minutes as we walked down the road. The doughnuts had been eaten immediately, so the fight over whether one daughter had stolen the other daughter's identicial but not squashed doughnut endured, even after the doughnuts had ceased to exist. Lazy one was walking directly behind manipulative one standing on her heels, claiming to be walking in a straight line and not doing it deliberately. Manipulative one therefore kicked her.

Me? Like the strong role model and peace-maker I am, I stopped and told them to stop talking SHITE, while banging my head off a nearby fence.

This battle royal was hot on the heels of the day before, which was over who could use a half-cut up paper bag that was lying around. I kid you not. The paper bag had been cut up to support some project (to make medals for other children that were being taught how to fly . . no I don't have a clue what that's all about either), but the remaining half paper bag was fought over as violently and noisily as if it were Poland in World War II.

Seeing as we were in the house this time, and not walking down the road, I was able to go into the kitchen, shut the door and watch Eastenders on the portable while smoking like the BAD MOTHER I am.

The half-cut up paper bag is still lying on the table in the other room. Unwanted, unloved, no use to man nor beast. The dougnuts have been eaten. But the animosity, bitterness and spite remain.

Today I heard that one of my close friends had given birth to her first daughter (It's not that much of a surprise as she has been pregnant for months). Instead of sending flowers I'm sending her NATO peace-keeping forces.

So all summer the girlz (flesh of my flesh, spawn of my spawn) wanted their ears pierced. "You're too young" I told them. "My Calvinist Mother wouldn't let me get mine done until I was sixteen. My Presbyterian Father told me that God did not want women to have their ears pierced, that it looked ugly and that I would go to hell." Still they whined. Every time one of my friends came round they asked her how old she had been when she got her ears pierced. They stalked the streets finding children younger than them with pierced ears pointing them out to me. They wrote me letters and stuck them under the door of the living room when they were meant to be in bed and I was sitting smoking.

So I gave in. Of course I did. That's what bad mothers do - give in for a quiet life. ANYTHING for a quiet life. I took them to get their ears pierced. Now that was cool. They sat the brats one by one in a chair, then two members of staff each took a gun and fired it through their cute little tiny ears. They screamed. The youngest one even cried a bit. I laughed and laughed.

Then they went back to school and hey-ho, what'dyaknow, their teachers wouldn't let them do gym with earrings in and they can't take the earrings out for weeks. The big lazy one is delighted - she doesn't want to do gym. The wee manipulative one is not so happy. Her teacher told her she was stupid for getting her ears pierced. So now she doesn't want them pierced any more and I had to take the earrings out.

I got one finger nail round the front bit of the stud, one round the back and pulled. She screamed again. I got the first earring out. Then she wouldn't let me touch her to get the second one out. Like the Pirates of Penzance round my house with girl-brats with just one earring.

Tonight it starts again. Will she want me to put them back in? Will they have healed up during the day without an earring in?

But more to the point, what about me? How am I supposed to tell my Calvinist Mother that I got her precious little grand-daughters' ears pierced? My Mum will cry and my Presbyterian Dad will go all silent and condemning. And the brats will be protesting that they didn't really want their ears pierced and that I made them do it. I encouraged them in their vanity and stupidity.

The lesson here is that I shouldn't give in to them. They should not ever be allowed to have their own way. On anything. On a point of principle. After all, that's how I was brought up and the only harm it did me was to turn me into a wishy-washy, liberal BAD MOTHER.

Don't really know what I'm doing. Not sure about the etiquette of blogging. Not sure if I want to make public the things I think. Not sure if I want to be exposed. And yet . . . . and yet.

I'm new to this. I'm not a particularly good mother, but my kids are still alive at bedtime each night so I guess I'm doing my job. Or my job as a mother. Which is, of course, different from my job as a girlfriend, my job as a friend, my job as a part-time student and the actual proper paying job that I go to every day. I suppose what I want to do is justify myself. Is that a good enough reason for this?