Modern Mom: My Unbecoming

Sometimes my children mistake me for a jungle gym. Last night, my daughter was practicing some particularly tricky acrobatics on my stomach when things got a little rough. “Sweetie,” I said. “I’m a person…be careful.” My daughter started laughing as if I’d said something hysterically funny. “You’re not a person,” she replied. “You’re mama!”

I guess that explains a lot. If I’m not a person, my children don’t need to respond when I speak to them. They don’t need to turn off the TV when I ask, or clear their dishes from the kitchen table, or clean their rooms. If in fact, I’m not a person, why should they listen when I tell them it’s too cold to go outside without a coat or that it’s time to go to sleep? It seems to me I have two choices: 1) get the kids to understand that yes, mama is actually a person, or 2) try to figure out a way to make my non-person status work in my favor. After all, a non-person certainly doesn’t need to go to the gym or feel guilty about eating a second bowl of frozen yogurt. Does a non-person need to wake up when the kids start stirring at 6 a.m. on a Saturday? Guess we’ll find out this weekend.