I realized I needed to revamp my parenting techniques to better fit living with teenagers when I overheard one of my daughter’s talking to a friend on the telephone: “I love being at my mom’s–it’s just like living in a hotel–fresh sheets, laundry, meals, nice soap. It’s great!”
Okay, I certainly want my kids to feel well taken care of and I confess to being a bit of a neat freak when it comes to trying to keep a house and manage work and life as a single mom–but I do want my kids to be motivated enough to leave home some day! It hadn’t dawned on me that I might be managing things so well that they would be happy as clams to keep living at mom’s hotel.
My kids do help around the house some, and they look after their own rooms (mostly)–but it’s nothing compared to the housework and chores I remember doing when I was growing up. Have I been negligent in making things just a smidge uncomfortable so my kids will want to get out there and do things “their own way!?” Obviously, even though I thought life on a tight budget in the “nontraditional” home would be a bit of a motivator, it’s not.
Well, I’ve taken a vow for the new year to NOT be the hotel chamber maid. As much as I like having things orderly and neat and clean and fresh, I think I’m going to have to let go of the reigns a bit and encourage some of the younger generation to pick up the slack. It’ll be tough, but I certainly don’t want to overhear any more conversations about how being at mom’s is just like living in a hotel–not from a pack of high schoolers. Do you think they have twelve-step meetings for recovering overly-efficient moms?