Sunday, March 9, 2008

I never thought I'd hear myself say...

Since becoming a mother, I've caught myself saying things that MY mom and dad said to me when I was a child...Things that I thought I would never find myself saying because they bothered me so sometimes! :)  

1) I've adopted the phrase "First things first" when talking with C, a phrase that my mother LOVED to use with us when trying to drive home the point that before you could get to the "fun" activities, you had to go through the more routine, practical activities. For example, before we were allowed to watch a TV show or go to a friend's house, we had to finish all of our homework...She also used this phrase to remind us of the order of importance of different activities - i.e. Going to mass on Sunday took precedence over getting to a birthday party on time, Getting our work done took precedence over talking on the phone, etc. 

2) Another favorite was, "Children in Africa would walk 10 miles for that _____ on your plate." I remember having a vivid image of a child walking 10 miles through the African desert just to get my portion of fried eggplant, or whatever it was that I didn't want to eat on a particular night at dinner. But of course, we use the same phrase with C when we can't get him to eat the spaghetti sauce that has "green stuff" in it :) 

3) One of the phrases that I hated the most was, "Looks like you woke up on the wrong side of bed this morning," reserved for mornings when I was particularly grumpy.  I used to say to my mom, "First of all, I'm not grumpy, and second of all, you're only making me madder by saying that!"  I was about to say this to C this morning at breakfast when I decided that I would spare him this snarky comment - isn't there something in the Bible about not provoking our children? :)

The other day I was in Banana Republic and I heard a woman say something that my mom would NEVER have said to me in a million years...The woman was a well-dressed, trim, very put together mother shopping with her teenage daughter. She held up a skirt and said, "Melissa, this one is a wider cut, so it might actually look good on you." I nearly marched right over there to tell that mother how damaging such comments are for a mother to say to her daughter, but I chickened out. My mom never had anything but good things to say about my appearance or that of my sister - THANK YOU mom! There are so many awful messages out there for teenage girls, and I can't imagine hearing those same messages from my own mother! Of course I didn't escape the body angst that most teenage girls go through, but that was mostly because of my own issues, another story for another time :) 

So, here's to all of those phrases that we swore we'd never say, and now find ourselves saying :) Do you have any to share with us? 

8 comments:

Right Said Red said...

"Because I said so." I really disliked when my parents said that as I was the kid who always wanted everything explained to me. If they said no, I wanted to know "why?" I HATED when the answer was "because I said so." I now know why they always said it...because they were sick and tired of all the whys. Gianna is a big fan of asking why, and on bad days, or after the 3rd why in a row, I just blurt out, "because I said so."

JesusThroughMary said...

"...The other day I was in Banana Republic."

I'm actually looking forward to "Don't make me turn this car around."

Ellyn said...

It's fun when they start coming back at you from the progeny...

There's nothing like having a young adult daughter help tidy up around the house and say, "I'm sure I could find a grateful, middle-aged housewife who would appreciate this nice coat..."

"Don't make me turn this car around," is a phrase of epic proportions for me, since my father actually turned the car around on a highway in Montana (or was it Wyoming) on a trip to Yellowstone when I was about 5. So I've never made it to Yellowstone...not to imply that we were short-changed. We had already spent about two weeks puttering around South Dakota.

Maria said...

When we heard the dreaded "If you don't stop crying, I'm going to give you something to cry about" we all knew we had better shape up or a serious punishment was coming our way.

I made it three years without saying it, but this whiny phase of my oldest son broke me down last week.

texas mommy said...

I promised I would never follow my kids around with a camera like my mom always did to us. Seriously, we would go to the grocery store and she would bring along her camera. Now I am an even worse offender!!!

With cell phones, I guess we always have a camera now.

Juris Mater said...

Kat, great topic! Definitely "hungry, poor kids in Africa would give their arm for this food, and here you are wasting it." It's something about earning money to buy the food, bringing it from the store, slaving away to prepare it, and placing it nicely on their plates, only to have them mush it around with a fork and then reject it when it gets cold... makes the waste seem so obvious. I wonder about ways to make kids appreciate what goes into bringing home and preparing food so they recognize the offense in wasting it. I'm sure my kids are too small right now, but someday I'd like to instill this in them.

Bethany said...

The phrase I heard most often as a child was "You're just talking to hear yourself talk."

I've found myself using this statement when my oldest starts rambling a stream of consciousness in the back of the car just to prevent himself from falling asleep. You know, the kind of chatter where he doesn't get any complete thoughts out of his head, and as soon as he stops talking for about 10 seconds, he's sound asleep. When he starts that up, I actually have out of body experiences where I can see my dad in the car speaking those words to me, because I used to do the same thing.

B-Mama said...

"I told you so" was a chosen motherly outburst in my adolescent home. And it always irritated me to no end! If I was going to make a mistake, I would have preferred to make it and learn from it, NOT hear these four words repeated often! :) Yet, as many of you have admitted, I often find myself saying this to my boys... and they are still quite young! What happens when the dreaded teen years descend? What happens when the "I told you so" goes from commenting on a boy standing on a couch and falling to one of them dating the wrong girl and getting his heart broken? Lord, help all of us!