No-I'm-not-on-crack parenting advice Part 2: Love 'em like they're *not* your own

No one cares more about your kids than you do, but I'm guessing most days at 11 pm, no one could treat them worse. It's just a fact that we give all day at work or school, holding it together when people step on our toes and cut us off in traffic, and at the end of the day, we're tired and we let it all hang out, knowing our families will forgive us.

I was over at a friend's once and washed a few dishes. When she went to make supper, she opened the cupboard, pulled out a pan, and said, "Okay, who didn't get this clean?" I whispered, "I wasn't sure how hard to scrub. I didn't want to scratch the no-stick coating." The friend apologized, saying she thought it was her kids who'd done it. But if we don't want to talk to our friends that way, why do we find it so easy to use that tone with our children?


I'm guilty. Let's say my child has a play date, and the friend spills chocolate milk, just like my son did that morning. Which child heard me say, "It's okay, sweetie. Accidents happen," and which one got "Not again! I just shampooed the carpet last week!"? That's right: the kid I don't even know gets understanding and the one I'd die for gets guilt-blasted. Why do we do that?

Here are are few possible explanations:

1. Nobody heard me yelling at Junior, but I know for a fact that the playmate's mommy is about to get a play-by-play of everything from the moistness of my baking to the humungousness of the bra I left drying on the towel bar.

2. Nancy Nextdoor has never spilled (or vomited or coloured or made lotion potions) on my carpet before, so this incident cannot invoke years of painful memories...

3. ...Nor will she spill there again every week for the next eleven years.

4. And, if she grows up to dump chocolate milk in the White House parlor or down Shania's dress, I'm not the pathetic mother crying on ET Canada about it, while Ben Mulroney shakes his head in national embarrassment.


If the problem is that 1. no one is holding me accountable,  2. I'm holding onto resentment from the past and fear of the future, it helps me stay calm and use my "nice mommy" voice if I remember that a) I am being watched and b) that this is the moment that matters.


So sometimes, when I'm feeling tired and overwhelming and afraid of the next poisonous thing that's going to come out of my mouth, I image these grouchy, hyperactive darlings aren't my children. I pretend I'm going to send them home to their real mommies, and all I need to do is get through the next hour and make sure I use that time to show them how much God loves them because it may be my only chance.

I tell myself that nothing I do is secret because chances are, if I lose it on a regular basis, my children will tell someone: if not their teachers tomorrow, then their therapists in college. And as the song goes, "there's a Father up above who is looking down in love."

...which reminds me - they really aren't my children after all: God's just sent them over for an extended play date. He loves them even more than I do, and amazingly, he trusts me to devote myself to them like they're my own, and treat them like they're His.