I was on a first date with a dude last year1 and we were doing the stereotypical “here’s a brief rundown of my life (except for the shitty parts)” song and dance, and when I mentioned something about my kids he said, “wow, it must be really hard to handle everything!”
His reaction surprised me, although I guess it probably shouldn’t have — being a single mom (or a parent at all) is a lot of work, objectively speaking. But as I told this gorgeous tattooed childless gentleman that night, my kids are the easiest and best part of my life. Is my life in general a shitshow? Do I have serious personal issues to wade through? Am I frequently on the edge of existential despair? Possibly. But don’t get it twisted: there is absolutely nothing about my kids or about being a mom that I resent or consider a burden. Not the endless lunch-making2, not the fighting over video games, not the interminable baseball games played in the blistering heat at which White Claws are inexplicably not considered acceptable hydration for parents in the stands, not the laundry or the midnight bad dreams or the ceaseless avalanche of toys that cover every square inch of my house and make it nigh on impossible to sweep or mop3, nothing. My kids bring me joy, and I am the kind of sick individual that derives pleasure from things like budgeting and checking items off of a to-do list, so even all of the logistical business of mothering is really right up my alley.
If this all sounds like a bunch of holier-than-thou bragging about how amazing I am for not letting the harder aspects of motherhood drag me down, don’t fret: I’m about to let you in on the secret behind this serenity, and it should bring your opinion of me and my parenting acumen back down where it belongs (i.e. very, very low):
I just say yes to virtually everything they want.
Like…to truly ridiculous requests, all the damn time. Eat dinner in my bed? Sure, why not. Go to the 99 Cent Store to buy hundreds of balloons for the sole purpose of trying to pop them with various implements found around the house? Absolutely. Melt a bunch of perfectly good crayons into a brick so we can smash it up? Sounds like a perfectly sane thing to do! Basically, if there’s no risk of injury (and honestly, I’m pretty flexible on that) and it doesn’t cost a ton of money, it’s gonna be a yes every time.
Now, obviously I don’t have anything to compare to since I have operated in this fashion for the duration of my mothering career, but I believe that my yes-slingin’ lifestyle has eliminated a considerable chunk of the day-to-day conflicts that arise from having to tell children “no” all the time, not to mention the innumerable hours I’ve saved by not having to personally entertain these children. Do I really want to clean up tiny bits of crushed chalk from every crack and crevice of my garage after some bizarre art/destruction activity? No, not particularly. But do you know what else I don’t want to do? Come up with shit for them to do myself, and they spent all fucking day creating that chalk nightmare and I didn’t have to do a damn thing.
I believe wholeheartedly that this strategy is the key to me remaining (relatively) sane and am completely committed to saying yes as much as humanly possible, to the point that it has become a defining facet of my personality in my children’s eyes. Ryan once told me, apropos of absolutely nothing, “You know what the best thing is about you? You’re a Yes Mom. Because you say yes to most things…and sometimes even when you say no, you think about it and then you say yes after all!”
And therein lies the problem, of course. I have created monsters who believe that if they ask their mother to buy $40 worth of duct tape so they can make a wall out of it and then destroy said wall with sharp objects, said mother will say yes…and they are right. She will not only say yes, she will say yes again when they want to try another kind of tape, and she will in fact do this four goddamn times in a single month.
(This is sadly not a joke; in related news, for any of you with hot DIY plans in the works, Gorilla Tape is superior to T-Rex Tape and both beat regular duct tape by a mile.)
Worse, they are now old enough to understand that I only deny their requests when there’s a really good reason, which sounds like it would be a good thing but instead just means that I have to have conversations like this whenever I drop a rare “no”:
Ryan, 30 seconds before bed: “Can I sleep in the office?”
Me, simply not in the mood to alter our already protracted bedtime routine : “no, we’re not doing that tonight.”
Ryan, so very sweetly, and genuinely curious: “But Mom…what difference does it make to you where I sleep?”
He was right, it doesn’t make a difference at all.
He slept in the office.
Wish me luck when they’re teenagers, because I am, as I believe professionals would describe it, fucked.
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Footnotes:
1Yes, this is a thing I have to do now and it’s as horrifying as it sounds.
2Remember sending kids to school? Ah, good times.
3Can you tell that I secretly appreciate that I have an excuse not to clean?
The Baby Is Fine 