Here’s Looking at You, Kid

Now that I have who are old enough to make mischief of one kind or another, I’m doing more yelling than is ideal.

I believe that raised voices should be held in reserve in order to maintain their efficacy, but like a lot of parents, I have trouble sticking to that when my children inevitably get on my nerves and do things I think they shouldn’t or wish they wouldn’t.

Ideally, yelling is only used to discipline kids when they are about to land in harm’s way, like when my decided she was going to dart into traffic in the grocery store parking lot.

Hollering was definitely warranted that day in order to grab my daughter’s attention and keep her safe. However, when I shouted at her a few nights later for purposefully and devilishly turning off the dishwasher halfway through the wash cycle, after I had just stopped her 18-month-old brother from doing the same thing, I suppose my bellowing went too far.

So that’s why, for her sake and mine, I’m putting some solid effort into developing my mom glare. If you are the grown child of pretty much any mother out there, you know what I’m talking about.

I’m doing my best to create a unique stare that will grab my kids with an icy cold grip that will stop them in their tracks and force them to cease whatever crazy thing they are doing and feel guilty about it at the same time.

Sadly, simply having given birth to two troublemakers does not mean that you are just suddenly in possession of the ubiquitous mom glare.

Remarkably it’s not enough to have gone through the physical pain of childbirth and then the psychological exhaustion of raising them. The mom glare has to be honed and carefully crafted before it will work.

Right now, judging by my daughter’s reaction to it, my version of the glare apparently winds up making me look more like Rodney Dangerfield than anything else. What can I say, I get no respect, no respect at all.