A Mom's Famous Words

Do these words sound vaguely familiar to you?  You may have heard them.  You may have even said them.

Please take that down stairs with you when you go.

Did you brush your teeth?

What are you doing out of bed?

Don’t just leave that there.  Take it downstairs.

Yes.  You have to wear a jacket and no I don’t care if you look like a dork.

I don’t care if she can.  If her mother said she could jump off a bridge would you expect me to let you do it too?

Take that downstairs.

Yes. You have to eat everything on your plate and no I don’t think brussels sprouts look like eyeballs. 

I thought I told you to take that downstairs.

Don’t touch your brother. 

Don’t touch your sister either.

In fact, no one touches anyone in this house again without my express permission.

Of course I love you, but dying your hair with green jello is still not a good idea.

Now means NOW.  Not later. Now. Take this stuff downstairs.

            There is a serious side to all of this.  For the most part, all the famous parenting statements, including the most famous of all: “Because I said so that’s why,”  are forms of loving.  Loving doesn’t always mean giving in to what someone wants. 

            Loving means setting guidelines and limits, explaining them and, unfortunately, enforcing them.  Love frequently means saying no.  And love means doing all of that when it would be so much easier to just give in and say yes.

            So for all those times you have sat at the kitchen table going over multiplication tables --- for all those times you said no when you’d rather have said yes --- for all the bedtime stories and clean clothes that magically appeared in closets --- thank you and God bless.