We were pulling out of our friends’ driveway when I asked the girls what they had been playing with their friends while we moms talked in the kitchen.
With fascination in her voice, Viv replied, “We played mean Mommy!”
“Yeah!” Lia chimed in, “Jenny held her dolly up like this and said, “STUpid! STUpid!” Lia held her doll upside down and whacked her soundly on the behind.
As you can imagine, I was sputtering in disbelief. Really?? While my friend, Kate, and I were contentedly encouraging each other at the kitchen table, our children were playing “mean mommy”??
I gently explained to the girls that it’s really tough to be a good mommy and they should give some serious thought to practicing kind mommy…
Long-suffering mommy…
Sacrificial mommy…
(AND THEY SHOULD NEVER EVER PLAY MEAN MOMMY AGAIN! OR ELSE! Just kidding.)
The bad playtime ideas didn’t stop there.
That same week, I had to divert their attention from playing ghost with a friend. Ghost? Really?
These are all cute kids, playing together in good homes, with a handful of bad ideas.
So it got me thinking about how I’ve really backed off from playing with the girls lately. I realized that they still need me (maybe more than ever) to refresh their pocketful of playtime ideas, so that even if lousy ideas come up like, well, mean mommy, they’ll have other equally thrilling ideas that practice good behaviors instead of, well, bad ones.
This week, I’ll fill you in on some of the ideas we’ve come up with!
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