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Mom wars

Andria
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Mom wars

In hindsight, there are so many parenting moments that would make hilarious Seinfeld skits (even if​ they did​n't​ seem so at the time). (Photo: behance.net/runamokstudios)

As parents, we expect to be continually wowed by our offspring. We expect to learn a few things about human psychology, primal urges and behavior incarnated a million ways. But did we count on seeing all that up close via other parents?

So what in the world came over the English woman who recently sent an invoice to the family of the 5 year old who ditched her son’s birthday party?

The family had responded “yes” – the little boy would attend the party. But at the last minute they chose to spend the time with grandparents and no-showed. So the host mom drew up a no-kidding, homemade invoice, complete with bank details, billing the truant 5 year old’s family for around $20, the cost the host was out for the boy’s spot at the party.

But it didn’t stop there. The billed family, in their own reactionary display, then spread the story through the media, traditional and social, creating something of an international tirade of onlookers falling on both sides of the argument. The host mom was pegged “tacky,” “petty” and “stingy,” and the folks who reneged on their commitment to attend “rude,” “impolite” and “disappointing.”

Please tell me how a 5 year old’s birthday party escalates into minor international mayhem.

Having been a parent for 15 years now, I’ve personally witnessed (should I admit to having experienced?) the mom angst that somehow seems inevitable. Chalk it up to competition, strung-out nerves, whatever: So many things about being a parent bring us to our emotional knees. When someone slights our child, they slight us. Our kids may not even catch on to what’s happening in their world, but we’re the parents, and we see it all and get so ruffled that we revert, all we’ve supposedly learned while becoming mature grown-ups be damned. “Let me tell you about that kid. And you know it all comes from the parents…”

At times the stories grow so big that they become legendary. Take Cookiegate. Several years ago, a mom brought a cookie cake to my daughter’s class lunch for her daughter’s birthday. There wasn’t quite enough for everyone, so several kids in the class didn’t get served. As you would imagine, children jumped into cars after school and complained to their waiting moms, who were already at the brink just trying to make it through the afternoon. The complaining must have gotten pretty loud in a few cars – phones started ringing and moms started talking.

The next day, one of those moms, upset that her daughter got snubbed during the distribution of the original birthday cookie, brought enough big-as-your-face cookies only for the children who were passed over the day before. Again, kids complained, stories circulated, moms took sides. Next thing we knew, everyone was talking about Cookiegate. Years later it still surfaces every once in a while, knowing glances exchanged, meaning what, I’m not sure. (To my friends involved: Forgive me. I love you all and take no sides.)

Then there’s the mom across town who keeps a spreadsheet – as in Excel, on the computer – of her kids’ playdates. It’s all there, a quantified, tidy chart of who she’s hosted for playdates, on what days, and when, if ever, the invited guests reciprocated. After a while, if you haven’t invited her kids back, or if you get too many marks against your name (what does that even mean?), you’re off the spreadsheet forever, never to be invited back.

“She was truly serious about it,” a mom whose child thankfully made the spreadsheet cut tells us. “We did not joke with her about it. But we all did behind her back.”

We don’t even have to be intimately involved. Juicy stories inevitably make the rounds, jumping from school to school, even across oceans, inciting lusty opinions on all sides, eyes rolling in their wakes. By nature, even though we’re the grown-ups, we’re going to talk. If you say you can resist talking just a little bit when someone spreadsheets your kids’ behavior (and your own), I’ll forever call you a saint.

But we’re all parents, and we’re all chunking rocks from glass Pack ’n Plays. The confidence in our eye-rolls is what will get us into trouble. Because as parents, we’re always going to be wowed, good and bad, by our kids – and each other – no getting around it.

Editor’s note: If you have a Parent War story to share, email us at [email protected]. No names, we promise.

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