Bad Mom moments

Years ago when I was serving as a missionary for our church in eastern Canada, I had a small "Cantique" book with all of the hymns in French that I carried around with me.  It seemed like we were always singing for some reason or another, so I just stashed it in my bag for those singing emergencies when I didn't know the French lyrics.  In the back of the book, there were several blank pages where I would write favorite quotes, inspiring messages, and even lyrics to old hymns that were no longer in the hymn book.  This was one of my favorite. 

"Why do we do the things we do, when we know the things we know?"

I have no idea who said it.  It probably wasn't really even a quote by some famous person, just something I heard that I liked and decided it was worthy of some real estate in my Cantiques. 

That quote played over and over in my mind this morning as I was grocery shopping.  I was a really mean mom this morning to one very sweet boy.  I think I succeeded in doing everything that I tell my kids not to do.  Don't yell.  Don't talk meanly.  Don't be so rude.  Don't call names.  Don't give mean looks.

I tried to justify it by saying "He just makes me so mad when I have to keep telling him over and over and over what to do in the morning.  That is what he has a job chart for.  His little brother in 1st grade can do it, so he has no excuse."  But that didn't work because I could hear my own voice in my head saying "You are in charge of your emotions.  No one can make you mad but you."  I say that to my kids at least 10 times a day.  So the justification failed. 

When I got home, I put Yummy to bed, then interrupted John's precious studying for finals to talk about it.   He told me a story about that very sweet boy that happened just 3 days ago.  That very sweet boy had lost misplaced the charger for his school laptop, which he needed desperately to take to school because they do all of their homework on the laptops.  I yelled at him that morning too, for being irresponsible.  Great.  Without me knowing, he went upstairs to his bedroom and pleaded with Heavenly Father to help him find his cord.  He went to school without it and had to borrow someones so his computer wouldn't die.  He came home, still no cord.  Then, while I was cleaning up the next day, I found it, shoved up on obscure shelf in our computer room.   He told John that Heavenly Father had answered his prayer by helping me find it. 

Now I felt even worse.  I asked John if he could stay with the sleeping baby and study, while I took Isaac out to lunch.  The fifth graders had not gone to lunch yet when I arrived, so I checked him out of school for an hour.  The look on his face was priceless when I saw him sitting in the office waiting for me.  He thought he was in huge trouble.  (He had in fact been playing a small prank on his substitute teacher that morning, by making sounds with a miniature guitar he had in his desk, so there was some reason to feel guilty).  When we got outside, I gave him a huge hug, and told him how sorry I was and asked if he would go on a lunch date with me.  What a cutie pie.  He held my hand for the rest of the afternoon, even in the ice cream store where we went afterwards.  I swore him to secrecy, but we did talk code after school when I picked up the rest of the kids.   When I asked the kids if they had had a good day at school, he winked and said it was the best day of his life. 

"Why do we do the things we do, when we know the things we know?"   One lesson learned.