The Regular Mom

I had Rocco come inside today after setting my car alarm off- on purpose. He apologized moments later and asked for forgiveness. (Of course I forgave him). In between all that, I had a phone call and I took it upstairs. When I returned back down, and walked into the kitchen I felt a wet little puddle of fruit punch under my feet. Dolly had no problem blowing the whistle and telling me Rocco did it.

I called him in from riding his brothers bike (which he is not allowed to do) and asked him to clean up the spill. After cleaning Rocco said, "I wish you were a the regular Mom". "The regular Mom? When  was I the regular Mom?" He then said, "When you were 33" followed by "You were nice then". I had to remind him that he was only 3 when I was 33. How could he remember when I was 33? The clinker was, "you're mean and boring". Thankfully, my skin is tough after being a mom for 10 years not to mention I majored in Psychology and have a Life Coach certification. With all of this experience I was able to translate the situation into more understanding terms in which I then was able to move on with the rest of my day. What Rocco could not verbalize was, "Mom, why can't I just ride my brothers bike even though you and Dad have asked me not to? Mom, isn't it okay that I pour a 1 1/2 gallon jug of fruit punch myself when your not looking? Are you serious that you expect me to come back inside and at 7 years old expect me to wipe up the fruit punch that I spilled? And missed out on this sunny day (even though I've been outside for the last 4 hours)? And to all of that I say yes my little one, this part of the home school curriculum is called training and development; housekeeping. I am training you to take responsibility for your actions including spills and relying on the fact that you will develop into a young man who will take responsibility for choices and actions-including spills. If I clean up the things that I know that you are capable of doing in a satisfactory manner, I would be robbing you of this wonderful exercise in housekeeping. What a wonderful boy you are! What a wonderful blessing you are to our family that you cleaned up the spill so that no one would slip and fall or worse, ants would come for a sticky wet treat. Thanks for taking care of that son! I am most certain after a couple of these incidents and exercises on how to respond, you wont have to be called in to clean up your mess and you won't even consider setting off the car alarm. Now all those things you said about Momma, I know that deep down inside you just want to do your own thing and instead of saying that it came out as, "You're mean and boring, why can't you be the regular mom". I can only say, I will probably always be The Irregular Mom. But one day your wife will thank me for it.