Susie O’Brien: Being a mum is fabulous torment
BEING a mother is terrific, wonderful and fabulous — except when it’s driving you to the point of madness. Here are some things you’re never told when you become a parent, writes Susie O’Brien.
Susie O'Brien
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MOTHER’S Day rolls around every year in a blaze of advertisements telling us there’s nothing more natural, eternal and spiritual than a mother’s love for her children. Mothers, we’re told, don’t expect anything in return. Their love is unconditional and their devotion eternal.
I am not so sure. I’ve loved every minute of being a mother for the past 14 years, except for the time my son spewed in my friend’s hire car and she had to keep driving it for the next three days. The only eternal thing about that was the smell.
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I’m not sure what my kids have planned to make me happy on Mother’s Day — let’s hope it involves them cleaning their rooms. That’s my idea of devotion. Actually, I’d be happy with a few handwritten cards given that I will celebrate my “day off” by watching three back-to-back games of junior football in the rain.
In celebration of Mother’s Day, here are some things you’re never told when you become a parent.
On Mother’s Day, expect to be seen in public wearing the most ridiculous accessories handmade by your children. I’ve worn it all. Pasta necklaces, hats made out of ice cream containers and finger-knitted scarfs. Remember finger knitting? It’s what passed as fun before the internet.
As a mum, your days will be spent finding lost lunch boxes, jumpers and hats in the school lost property pile. At home you’ll go crazy trying to find missing socks. One day you will find all those socks. We just moved out and found a colony of fetid single socks had taken up residence underneath my washing machine.
The only thing more annoying than other people’s kids is other kids’ parents. Ignore all their boasting on social media; they’re struggling just as much as you are (even though they’re in Hawaii on holiday and you’re stuck in traffic on Hoddle St).
Dance like no one is watching, even though you know your kids are secretly filming you in the hope they’ll have a viral hit on their hands.
Ignore blog posts that involve “fun things for toddlers to do with flour”. Use spit to remove all stains. And apply the three-second rule to everything that’s dropped. This includes ice creams, dummies and daddy’s pants. (Now you’re a parent, three seconds is all you’ll get).
You have to let your kids make their own fashion and decorating mistakes. Offering advice like, “You may regret painting your walls black” or “Have you looked in a full-length mirror?” is bound to backfire.
Nothing compares with the agony of watching children pick “yukky green bits” of out your lovingly made pasta dish.
Things do get easier. There is a turning point when you stop trying to make your kids be quiet and instead try and make them talk to you.
In the blink of an eye you go from: Muuum, Muuum, I’m thirsty. Muuum, Muuum, I’m hungry.
To: Muuum, Muuum, I need $50.
At some point your children will get old enough so you can sit through a meal without playing noughts and crosses on the tablecloth, taking them on endless trips to the toilet or letting them take 458 snaps of their knee with your phone.
A mother’s love is unconditional, but we all have limits. Me to my eight-year-old son: “Let’s watch a movie tonight, just the two of us. Your choice. Pick whatever you like.”
Him: “OK, how about Jumanji?”
Me: “No, not that one.”
There is nothing like the relationship between mothers and daughters.
My daughter: “What’s happened to your neck?”
Me: “I’m getting older. This is what happens.”
Her, looking concerned: “Eww. Please tell me that won’t happen to me.”
I remember having a similar conversation with my mum.
You need to be patient with your female teen. A decision involving which of five identical pairs of white jeans she’s going to wear to a party involves no less than 15 texts, two phone conversations, 67 DMs and a class-wide Snapchat discussion.
You don’t always get it right and mistakes usually don’t matter.
I took my kids to the dentist on Tuesday at the start of the school day. We walked in a bit early after rushing to leave home. The receptionist said: “What are you doing here?”
We were three minutes and seven days early for the appointment. We celebrated by having hot chocolate and jam croissants.
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AUSSIES MAKING MOTHER'S DAY FAUX PAS
If you’re having problems getting your kids to do homework, ask them to help out around the house. It’s amazing how they suddenly remember they’ve got maths revision when you ask them to do the dishes.
The years pass and suddenly you realise you’ve turned into your mother. This is a no doubt a good thing. My mum rocks: she used to let my sister and me call her by her first name, always lent me her clothes and made the best lasagne ever.
I love her as much as I love my own kids — wrinkly neck and all.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the mums out there, and let the (footy) games begin. I can’t think of a better way to spend my day.
Susie O’Brien is a Herald Sun columnist
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