Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Mommy..exactly when did you go to Doctor College?

I am going to tell you a long hidden secret....I am a know it all. Yes, I know you can't tell from my blog but I am a smarty pants know it all. So are my beautiful, strong, outspoken daughters. Older people frequently say that your children are payback for what you did to your own parents. Well, in many areas of their behavior, I would have to say I got mixed up with someone else. I should have the polite, well mannered, not farting and burping, not swearing, lying, manipulating kids. But God gave the opposite to me...... Then they use their mouth. They say something really funny, snarky, biting or generally smart pants like and I realize this is totally payback for the way I was with my parents!

So sometimes I daydream about what will be exacted on my daughters by their children...I smile and laugh aloud, then I decide....they don't need this crap! No one does!

One of my daughters is very insecure and needy. She always needs you to stroke her ego. It is a full time job to make her feel loved. I think I do a terrible job with it. She frustrates me beyond belief at how high maintenance she is. I love her, I do things all day everyday to show her I love her and yet it is never enough. She is a black hole that sucks everything around her into the whirling chaos of her mind.

She used to be a puker. She would puke to gain sympathy. It didn't work for very long, so then she faked illness. Headaches, tummy aches, toe aches, thigh pain. You name it she faked it. Then this summer she has taken a drastic turn to real injuries. She got cellulitis from a bug bite. She was put on an antibiotic and told not to scratch again. A week later she "fell" and came home from camp all scraped up. A week later she sat in front of me and scratched her leg so badly that she once again landed at the doctor's with cellulitis. Then last week she came home limping AGAIN.

I looked at her ankle. There was no laceration, no bruising, no swelling, nothing. Yet her limp persisted. Sometimes she is so committed to her story that she begins to make me doubt myself. Yes, she is that gooooood! I hugged her and told her she was ok but if it really hurt, to put ice on it and put it up on the couch. She was happy with that for ten minutes until she was bored. She complained again and I reassured her that she was ok. Then she said it.....

" Mommy, ummmmmm, exactly when did you go to Doctor College?"

Now, I know you are all going to sit in judgement of me. This isn't exactly the most therapeutic conversation to ever go down....But at that moment, after HOURS of hearing this same junk about the ankle...

"um and where did you get yours , Ms Smarty pants?"

She rolled her eyes and I went on to say other useless stuff....Neither her or I could remember if we tried.

I am not sure what upset me more was her smart mouth OR how unbelievably clever that was. The fact that she came up with that so fast is actually amazing...I couldn't come up with a response...all I had was "nanny nanny boo boo"

I am afraid for the future...She will be merciless and I will have to be on my toes....
Matt and I never wanted "dumb" kids but now I am not sure I really want smart ones either....lol

Be Well....

1 comment:

marythemom said...

You have my total sympathy! My kids score extremely high on psychosomatic illnesses, and there have been a few times that I have ignored what turned out to be an actual illness (over a year of "tummy aches" turned out to be chronic constipation).

I thought your response was excellent. At least you had a response and it sort of put her in her place. *grin*

We have a child who was a liar. We made the mistake of telling her how we knew she was lying. Over the years it went from obvious stuff, "He bit himself" (the bite mark was on little brother's cheek!). To - "{little brother} wrote on the couch." (First time it happened we told her little brother is only one - he can't write. The next time she actually tried to teach him how to write his name (!), and when she wrote on the couch again she wrote his name! So DITTO on the, "not sure I really want smart ones either."

Mary in TX
http://marythemom-mayhem.blogspot.com
I'm an online mentor at: http://rad-online.org/