I visit the IMAO web site on occasion. Alright more than occasionally. In the course of posting my good internet pal Jimmy asked just how mean a mom I was. This is the answer:
I'm so mean that when my children fought with each other (even just picked at each other) I made them sit on a bed with their arms around each other until I was satisfied they got the point.
When they first start having friends outside the family, if they are mean and nasty to their siblings they are grounded from playing with their friends until they are nice to their brothers and sisters. Not fake nice, not nice only when they think I'm looking but really nice. That goes for all of them for as long as they live in my house. They are respectful to their elders and nice to their peers I don't care who they are or how obnoxious they are. They don't have to like them they just have to be nice. After all, a very special person once said, "It is always nice to be right but it is always better to be nice."
One time when my oldest son did something very stupid I grounded him for the rest of his natural life (or until I decided he'd gotten the point-took about 6 months).
We don't own a game box, or nintendo or anything like unto it. There is one in the house which belongs to the adult child just back from the military but when he goes it goes.
My minor children go to church every Sunday. There is no choice, my house-my rules. No option.
They make their own lunches for school, they do their own laundry by the time they reach high school. (I need my washer and dryer and letting a adolescent male loose in my laundry room is not something I intend to do-sorry guys). I teach them to cook, clean, organize and be responsible. Some times it takes them a while to catch the vision but they get there eventually.
When they don't do well in school they do extra school work for me. They can either do their homework correctly and turn it in or they can do work for me, under my eye, turn it in and do some more. Eventually they get the idea that the teacher is so much easier on them than me.
All of my adult children have cell phones, my minor children don't. They do have I Pods but they do not have their own televisions or computers and we control what movies they watch and what music is on their Pods. We monitor where they go and who they go with. The seventeen year old has more freedom because she has earned it. The twelve year old may be living here until he's fifty, but I thought that about the oldest boy too and he's turned out really well.
We have had only two R rated movies in the house (both sent to me by my mother-in-law -Braveheart and Schildlers List) Neither of them are opened. I will not willing expose my children to gory violence and incidental and gratuitous sex so it can warp their perceptions of how intimate relationships REALLY function, because what you see on the screen is nothing like what can happen in real life with someone you truly love and are totally committed to. There are even PG-13 movies that we don't allow in the house. What they watch as adults is their business, what they watch here is mine.
Their hair belongs to me as do their bodies. No crazy color, no long straggly hair for boys, no buzz cuts, no piercing for boys, one set for girls, no body art, no skanky, dirty, clothes. Once they are adults they can do as they like until then they are my responsibility and since they are I get to set the standards.
See what did I tell you, I AM the meanest mother on the planet
