Revenge/Consequence

Remember when you were a kid and someone told you a story about how the family hamster had babies then ate their young? My first reaction was “how gross” then I remember my friends and I thinking how sad it was. How could a mother eat her own? Well, now I have children and it makes total sense. Don’t get me wrong, I love them dearly; however, there are days when, well, they are not really likeable. For those of you with older children, you’ve warned me for years that it only gets harder. For those of you with younger children, those folks are right.

In May we caved and bought our oldest daughter (middle school) a phone. We sheltered her for long enough and the day before she left for her first week-long, overnight camp, we surprised her with a phone. She is a fairly responsible kiddo and typically aims to please.

Fast forward to the day I found a mean text about her dear, sweet, precious, fun, mom. Yep, that’s me. (Please also note that while finding this text, I also found a wet bathing suit and a wet towel on her bed…need I say more?) Using my Love and Logic skills, I looked at her said “Aren’t you glad I don’t hate you like you apparently hate me?”. We briefly spoke about texting etiquette and I ended it with yet another fantastic Love and Logic line, “I will let you know about a consequence”.

Later that evening we took the kids to the Rome Braves baseball game. As we entered the stadium a couple Rome cheerleaders asked if I would be interested in playing a game on the field between innings. If you know me, you know there was absolutely ZERO hesitation. When they said I needed to pick my opponent, I got very giddy and with the biggest smile, I gladly gave her the name of my precious, preteen, painfully shy, daughter. The same daughter who, coincidently, wrote a nasty text to her friends about me. The same daughter who was warned about four hours earlier that I would let her know about a consequence. What a perfect bonding moment. What a perfect way to remind her how fun I am. What a perfect revenge, I mean consequence.

I am not sure what I enjoyed more, watching her beg her way out of it or beating her to the finish line. Either way, I am fairly certain that she will think twice before sending a nasty message about her mother again.

For this incident, this laughing mom of 3 got the final laugh. J

This likely captures the consequence at it's peak time.