A sweet friend of mine, mother to two adorable children, recently posted to Facebook something along the lines of, “Why is there so much yelling when getting my kids ready for school in the morning?”
I hope she doesn’t mind that I am paraphrasing big time because I can’t remember her exact words. She might have actually said, “Why can’t my children depend on me more in the morning? Their independence in readying themselves for school makes me feel unnecessary and sad.”
Hahaha. Pretty sure no mother has ever felt that way when it comes to getting kids ready for school. When I read my girlfriend’s post, my immediate response was, “Uh. Because that’s a Mom Rule.”
Like yelling at your kids (and your husband!) before church. It has to happen and is only avoided by mothers who are actually robots.
Who’s with me? (Please say you are with me.) School mornings are the worst, are they not? And the more kids you have, the more likely you are to need a nap once you finally usher the last one out the door.
Take this morning, for instance. I was up late last night because I am a horrible procrastinator who never gets things done ahead of time, and I ended up falling asleep on my couch, head hung over my laptop, in the clothes I wore that day. This wouldn’t matter so much except I had to have myself and all four children dressed and out of the house for an 8 a.m. teacher conference at my oldest son’s school. I know there are people who do this every day, ready themselves and a bunch of kids and make it out the door before the sun comes up, and they deserve a medal. Or an enormous Starbucks gift card. But I am not one of those people. The prospect of All Swensons Dressed and Fed and Out before 8 was an intimidating one.
But no biggie, I told myself the day before. I’ll just set my alarm for 6, take my shower, get myself dressed, and then I could focus on the kids. A breeze, I thought.
Except nothing is ever a breeze. I need to quit thinking anything is ever going to be a breeze, including Drew Brees, for whom football has not been a breeze lately.
So I fell asleep on top of my computer, drool on the monitor, until my husband burst into the living room and half-shouted, “Are you still sleeping?”
“What? No! What?”
“It’s AFTER 7,” he said.
Insert expletives here.
Thankfully, lunches were packed, schoolbags readied, and clothes laid out the night before, or I don’t know, I would have shown up at the 8:00 teacher conference wearing just one shoe, teeth unbrushed, with last night’s mascara smeared down my face. This look worked fine for 8:00 class when I was in college, but it felt somehow inappropriate for an adult teacher conference about my kid.
Still, there were kids to be fed, dressed, shoed–all that stuff that kids forget they’re supposed to do before school even though they do it every single morning of their lives.
“WHY ARE YOU NOT WEARING SHOES????”
“You didn’t tell me to put them on.” (This is the 6-almost-7-year-old.)
“And if I didn’t tell you to put them on, then what? Would you go to school with no shoes?”
She looked at me like I was speaking Swedish and went about lazily tying her shoes, the way one might if one had 72 hours to complete the task. My head was on the brink of explosion, but luckily the 4-year-old distracted me by crying over his disgusting breakfast of Toaster Strudel, which you bought because you thought it would be fast and easy and the kids would love it, and YAY MOM! But the kids don’t love it, it’s AWFUL, and he and the 6-year-old both hate it. (Who hates Toaster Strudel? That stuff is good.)
So FINE, I told them, and tossed (ahem, threw) granola bars at them. Nobody was hit in the head, and I guess they ate them because they threw their wrappers all over the floor, yet another reminder of my failures as a mother.
There was crying because the 4-year-old didn’t like his shorts, and more crying because the baby is cutting 37 molars at once and hates everything and everyone.
Finally they were dressed, and I was shoving them out the door–”THE BUS IS COMING GO GO GO!!!!!” followed by, “I love you! Have a great day!” This left me with approximately 17 seconds to change clothes, brush my teeth, do all the things one must do to be presentable. Lucky for me, I had slept in my clothes. You see where this is going, and no, I am not kidding. I did change my shirt, but I’m not gonna lie, I’ve now been wearing the same pair of jeans for a good 48 hours. Dry shampoo came to my rescue when a shower could not (dry shampoo has changed my life), and I somehow made it to the conference with my 4-year-old and 18-month-old in tow, only 17 minutes late. Sigh. I brought along bottled Starbucks frappuccinos as peace offerings. Maybe it helped.
Anyway, that is my longwinded way of saying that school mornings are ridiculous for everyone, my sweet friend, or maybe just for me, but take comfort in knowing there is at least one other mother out there who is a hysterical disaster in the morning.
“I’m just going to start using my Mean Mom Voice right away, first thing in the morning, because that’s the only voice anyone listens to!”
That’s what’s going on over here. And it’s true, about the Mean Mom Voice.
(Betsy Swenson can be reached at sliindelife@gmail.com.)
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Surely I am not the only one who struggles with mornings
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