The Cure for Sibling Rivalry

So we’re one day into summer vacation, and I’m already about to string everyone up.

I tend to get the most pissed off when I’ve been busting my ass for other people’s benefit and then all I get is grief.  It’s enough when no one notices — that, I’ve come to expect.  I am, after all, a mother.  A servant.  Cinderella without the mice or the pretty dress.  I’m “someone” (as in “someone” will pick up the soaking wet underwear that’s been left on the bedroom carpet, “someone” will take all the stuff upstairs that’s clearly sitting on the stairs because it needs to go upstairs, “someone” will sweep up all the food that just got dropped all over the floor even though there are no longer infants or toddlers in the house).  I’m used to doing things that go unnoticed and unappreciated.  Fine.  But what really gets to me is when I spend half my day making and buying food for the last day of school, carting small people back and forth to activities so that they don’t “miss out on anything,” and making phone calls in an effort to ensure that said small people can participate in an activity that they said they wanted to participate in, I kind of expect a semi-positive response.

But no.

Instead, I’m met with whining from Elfie because she didn’t get to shoot the BB gun in addition to the bow and arrow at camp.  And bitching from Newt because, poor kid, he had to put on his bathing suit and go swimming.  And then, after telling them about the great activity I got them signed up for — which they wanted to do but apparently only in a parallel universe where I dreamed it — I get a stunned, stressed, horrified response.  Oh the indignity.  The whole episode actually concluded with pouting and some sulking under a desk (I didn’t do any of the sulking — I only get under furniture when I’m really, really upset). 

If it weren’t for the fact that the kids would be climbing the walls and asking me who was coming over to play every ten minutes, I’d cancel everything I’ve signed them up for, just out of spite.  But that would definitely be a case of cutting off my nose. . .

So instead, I’ve told them, in so many words, to piss off.  And now I’m hiding on my computer.  Seems to be working.  No one’s bugging me, and everyone’s fending for themselves.  One of their first action items was to charm their father with adorable tales about their day.  It’s a basic survival instinct — they need at least one parent who won’t eat them.  And now they’re playing a game they’ve made up with a beach ball on the stairs.  I don’t know why I keep forgetting that this technique works — everyone bands together when mom’s pissed off.  As my friend Verity says, it creates sibling unity when they all have to cower together.

Now, if I could just get them to cower together and clean up the house.