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You are here: Home / Essays / The Best Phone Call I Ever Got

The Best Phone Call I Ever Got

by Marie Leslie

the best phone

“Thank you for being so mean.”

That’s how it started out. The best phone call I ever got.

When my oldest daughter was in her last year of college, she called home one day. It went like this:
Daughter: Thanks, Mom, for being so mean and making us do all those chores. Now I understand why you made us clean all the time.Me: Hello?

Me: You’re welcome. What’s up?

Daughter: I have the messiest roommate ever. She never picks up after herself and she never does any chores. We are always picking up her dirty dishes all over the house. She’s even broken most of my glasses and doesn’t even care. She doesn’t put away food or clean up after she fixes something and don’t even get me started on the bathroom. It’s gross.

________________________________________

It’s true. I’m mean. I am the meanest mom in the western hemisphere. I find out everything sooner or later, so there’s no point in trying to sneak it past me. Just ask my older kids; they’ll tell you it’s all true. The two younger ones have figured out the mean part and they’re finally starting to figure out the other part.

I make them do chores. I’ve made them all do chores since they were big enough to make the mess. Now before you get all bent about children not being old enough to clean, it wasn’t like I was having them scrub floors or bleach toilets before they were old enough to do those chores safely. But I did make them help pick up their toys, tidy up their bedrooms, hang up their towels and other small chores.

Does that mean I had a clean house by the time they were 10? Not a chance. It still gets really messy around here and it would never pass my mother-in-law’s inspection, but I know that they know the difference between a healthily clean house and unhealthy dirty one. And when the house really needs to be clean, they can get the job done.

It’s always nice to get the parental payoff. You know it’s going to come sooner or later. Have you gotten a parental payoff?

Category: Essays, Home Matters
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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Michelle

    at

    I am so working on this with my kids! My youngest son is my most helpful cleaning partner though, so even though his room is a mess, he knows how to clean a bathroom!

    • Marie Leslie

      at

      It took a lot of years for us to get to that point, Michelle, and I still have two teens who can’t even seem to find a laundry hamper. 🙂 But someday. . . .

  2. Alison Caughey

    at

    I had the exact same conversation with my daughter when she was at university only a few weeks. It’s a wonderful feeling to know our hard work pays off and the dirty jobs are then so natural to them x

    • Marie Leslie

      at

      It definitely is, isn’t it, Alison?

Trackbacks

  1. 7 Things I Learned About Business by Being a Mom - Small Business Simplifier says:
    at

    […] rarely last forever. Eventually, they grow up and you get to see the fruits of your labors—like this call from one of my college students. The same is true in the business world, though it rarely takes 18 years or more to see the results […]

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