Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be brats

September 20, 2008 07:49 pm

— This new breed of super mamas has me all fired up.
You know the ones I mean. Those perfectly coifed, mani/pedi-ed mothers who make sure nothing is ever amiss in the lives of their offspring, raising kids who have to take deep breaths into their lunch bags if the crusts were not removed from their PB&Js and who want Mama to call the principal if someone put them out at kickball during recess.
Look, I understand spoiling your kid. Mine is walking around with a brand-new, $200 cell phone you can make dinner reservations and check stock quotes from while I am using a 5-year-old phone whose display stopped working two months ago so I am never sure if I’m dialing Nanna or 1-900-HOT-DUDES.
I’m not talking about a little harmless spoiling. I’m talking about Mamas who are so worried their Precious Babies might get their feelings hurt they instill in them a sense of entitlement, such as the belief they are entitled to have their hair regularly highlighted at the salon starting at age 10 — something I can’t even afford more than once a year.
This phenomenon starts in preschool when mamas try to make their children more popular by outdoing the other mamas.
If you have kids, you have likely witnessed one of these mama smackdowns.
If little Sally brings pink princess cupcakes to school for a class party, then Marcie’s mom has to make a chocolate cake with gummy worms baked inside for Halloween. My friend from Birmingham said some of those Big City Mamas have started decorating their babies’ elementary school lockers with marabou and sequins. All those scrapbookin’ mamas must have had heart palpitations when they saw rows of blank locker doors.
Well, we wouldn’t want the kids to be ill-prepared for book-learnin’ by being forced to use bland lockers.
And as we’ve witnessed on the MTV show “My Sweet Sixteen,” more and more girls feel the need to arrive at birthday parties on the backs of elephants or brand new pink BMW convertibles.
I say if you want to enter a party on an elephant, you should have to earn it. But that’s just me.
It’s all well and good to want your child to have the finer things in life. Shannon eats better, dresses better and gets invited to better parties than me. Not that I’m bitter.
But some of these Mamas need to be reminded of their Southern roots before the situation gets out of hand.
Sure, we spent most of our childhoods learning to be pretty, perfect and pleasant but no one should confuse this with weakness. Where do you think the phrase “steel magnolias” comes from?
Behind every prim Southern young’un was a girl who could outspit her fourth-grade boyfriend and outmaneuver an overly aggressive date without wrinkling her dress.
Southern mamas used to know when someone was getting too big for her britches.
Southern mamas used to know you can be pretty and act ugly at the same time and, if you get caught acting ugly, you aren’t too big to take a switch to.
So when we start writing their English papers and insisting coaches put them in the game just so they’ll never have to suffer disappointment, we have gone too far. As our mamas used to say, we’ve rurn’t ’em.
All the marabou and sequins in the scrapbook kit can’t disguise a rurn’t kid.


You can reach Kelly Kazek at Kelly@athensnews-courier.com.

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