The mean mommy
A shot of me on a recent school day. (Gems from Mother Goose, 1899)
The other night, I took the draconian step of moving my phone and its charger down to the kitchen.
If I want to know what happened in the world (and with my friends and family) while I was asleep, I now have to go all the way downstairs to find out.
The desired outcome, of course, is that I go to bed and get up on time. Both of these things do indeed happen more easily as a result of this change.
If I were an adolescent, I wouldn't have a choice about where to access my device in the wee hours. It would, hopefully, spend its night in Phone Jail. I implore every parent to institute this policy if you don't already.
The fact is, many parents I know give their kids unfettered access to their digital devices, and this is a big mistake. Adults are terrible at regulating their use of these devices, so we can't expect kids to be any better. We have to save them from themselves by protecting their sleep, safeguarding their social and emotional well-being, and shielding them from the harmful things they might find online.
Yes, if I ever have the privilege of having children of my own, I'm going to be one of those mean mommies who says no. It's a highly refined skill of mine — I have a lot of practice saying no after two decades working in education.
On a recent Friday, several of my students were chatting with each other during math time. Generally, learning the latest school gossip is incompatible with doing challenging math problems. The students were invited to change seats so that they concentrate better, but in the end, they did not address the issue on their own. They kept talking, so I had to be the mean mommy and ask them to move.
When you think about it, there are pretty complex dynamics involved. What do I care if they're talking? Well, I care because I have a responsibility to prepare them for high school. Every day that they spend talking instead of math-ing is a day that they fall behind relative to their capability.
And since adolescents' brains are not fully developed, it doesn't matter how many conversations I initiate in which I lay out the requirements of high school and college math programs and the necessity of diligent daily work to meet these requirements. As far as most students are concerned, the future doesn't exist. They simply don't have the maturity to anticipate potential negative consequences that far ahead. So they chat by default, and my team and I try to meet them where they are with respect to both math skill and emotional development.
In short, I want their success more badly than they do. Rule one of coaching is that you can't want it more than they do, right? Well, that's not necessarily true for teaching kids, and it's definitely not true for parenting.
When it comes to coaching, teaching, and parenting ourselves, our desires are sometimes in conflict. We must make frequent choices about whether to sacrifice what we want in the short-term for our own long-term benefit. Therefore, I do my best to be my own mean mommy. I say no to myself and I make myself do things I don't want to do so that I can set myself up for success and happiness.
Though my actual mommy is no longer responsible for me, my mean mommy persona has taken up the job with varying levels of success. I don't buy candy, I go to bed early on school nights, and I get my homework done before I watch TV. And grudgingly, I must admit that my phone doesn't belong in my bedroom and should be plugged in elsewhere.
Without that voice of reason in my head, I'd be adrift on a sea of sugary breakfast cereals, credit card debt, and emotional chaos. In short, I'd be like a thirteen-year-old who has no rules. It's not the life I want for myself or anyone else.
So I embrace my inner mean mommy, and I project her outward when it's my job to do so, telling people no "for their own good." She's ultimately a voice of generosity, though it may not seem like it at first.
Do you have a "mean mommy" who is calling you to a higher standard of behavior? What is she telling you? How might she help you?
