Daily writing prompts

Watch Out For the Wrath of an Exhausted Mom!

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I was flabbergasted, completely stunned. At 1 am my 13 year old daughter came into my room to get something. I have no idea what but there is nothing important enough in my room that I should have been woken up just as I was drifting off to sleep.

Let me back up a bit…I’m sure you might be wondering why my daughter was up at 1 am on a week night. Well, it’s officially summer vacation for my kids. They were supposed to be going to NH with their dad but in what should not have been a surprising turn of events he went up without them, leaving them with me for two weeks with nothing to do while I work.

I abhor the idea of my kids sitting around the house all day doing nothing. It’s important to me that they find engaging activities while I’m not with them, but if the two of them were left to their own devices they would probably spend the day watching TV and playing games on their phones, not because they particularly want to do those things but rather they lack the motivation to find something more interesting.

So in a fit of utter insanity I invited 3 of their friends to spend the week with us (Wednesday to Friday). These are good kids that I trust who have spent a lot of time with us (having 5 kids at my house for days on end is not unusual). Wednesday night 3 of them tackled the project of painting 2 rooms in my house, so the house has been torn apart for days. The other 2 have been busy doing crafts and other small projects. It’s been good for everyone, mostly.

When the kids have friends over I have 2 rules about them going to bed:

1. Don’t keep me up
2. Don’t wake me up

They can sleep as late as they want while they’re on vacation but I have to get up to work.

Well, last night they broke both of these rules. The fault lies entirely with my kids, not their friends. They were inconsiderate. The consequence for breaking these rules is clear and non negotiable. No more sleepovers. Not forever, but enough to be painful. It is the natural, logical consequence for breaking the rules and has been well known for years.

The problem?

Next weekend I’m taking 2 of these kids (plus another friend) with us on our trip to Georgia. The very tired part of me wants to just tell them that their friends can’t come. It would be an excellent lesson and they would certainly learn that I’m serious about these rules. But this trip will be more fun for all of us if their friends come. I’ve already committed to the kids and their parents, and it’s not their fault that my kids were inconsiderate.

So tonight I will need to make a decision about how to handle this. Some parents might disagree with this, but I’m going to talk with them to see if they can come up with a reasonable consequence that will be better for everyone than the one I really should be enforcing. I hope we can reach a compromise because I’m really looking forward to this trip.

It’s often surprising what they can come up with in these situations. Sometimes they are better at this parenting thing than I am!

This post is in response to the daily writing prompt Flabbergasted

25 thoughts on “Watch Out For the Wrath of an Exhausted Mom!”

  1. Parenting is something I only know from ‘within’ as a child with a strict but very caring mother. I will never know parenting from the parents point of view but I know enough to know that it is a very hard job and as long as parents are trying their best, then they are good parents. Bad parents are the ones who either beat their children or neglect their children, all the others are doing fine, IMHO. 🙂
    How’s the first day of the new independent daily post going 😉 ?

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    1. Beating my kids crossed my mind when they were still noisy at 2…. 😏 (Kidding about the beating… mostly lol). The blog has been blowing up today. It’s been interesting to see the response. 😁 Completely unexpected!

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  2. I dont have any kids of my own, but there are lots in our friend and family group…I’ve always heard when punishing a young person dont make the punishment punish you as well…..
    Your idea of asking them to come up with their own consequence is interesting, please post what they decide.

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    1. 😊 I’ll let you know how it works out. They’re good kids who had an off night. I do believe consequences are important but you’re right that it shouldn’t hurt everyone else. We will come up with something!

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  3. My husband does that to me sometimes and I lose it! Don’t ever wake me up cause I can’t fall back to sleep. Interested to see what they choose! I know the feeling of not wanting to take away the big thing and wish for a good compromise.

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    1. Thank you! I may post an update tonight. I came home and the house was remarkably clean (every room including the bedrooms). Given the state it was in this was a huge accomplishment so they may have already done their sentence. We discussed why things need to be different during the week and I accepted that it was partly my fault for not setting different limits for the weekday sleep over (next time they will all go to their rooms on the opposite side of the house when I go to bed). Given these two things….plus the fact that they just left for a friend’s house and the house is blissfully empty….I feel that we have reached an understanding. 😊

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  4. I will be interested to hear what they say is an acceptable consequence.
    As a parent to teenagers, I think you are absolutely doing the right thing. There is no point in making your own life more difficult by sticking to your original rule. By getting the girls to devise their own consequence, they will understand that this is not being overlooked.

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  11. Pingback: Defiant Kids Versus Exhausted Mom – Who Won? | Thriving Not Surviving

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