‘She was probably just kidding’, I responded, when Olivia came in the door from the playground after school, sharing that her friend’s mom said those words that you never speak in front of another child.
‘So & So’s Mom said you’re a bad Mom’
Guilty. I was the bad mom. I was the mom who rushed the kids out the door for the Broadway touring performance of Cinderella, keeping them out until nearly 11pm on a school night, forgetting all about that list of ten words in her agenda to practice before the spelling test the next day.
It’s funny, because as we were driving there – I explained to Olivia that there were all types of learning and that if she completely bombed her spelling test tomorrow it was fine, because learning means experiences, and come in all shapes and forms. There would be plenty of time to nail those words.
That’s a bad mom award I’ll take. I knew the words were there, I knew we were going to be out late, and I knew that it wasn’t going to ruin her entire-seven-year-old-life, to bomb the test. We could practice them on the weekend. Er, not the weekend because she was headed off on a sleepaway camp adventure.
But we would get to them sometime.
There are going to be weeks of spelling words. Many opportunities to work on them in the car, practice them on our next road trip out of town or for me to quickly input them into one of those handy online magical websites that make them into a wordsearch for you. There would be plenty of opportunities to practice those boring words, learning to spell creature without error. Tonight though? Tonight, Cinderella was in town for five days only, and we were going to see it.
We were going to have huge aspirations to see the show, as a family, bringing all three kids to the first performance where we weren’t going to cut it short and leave during the first intermission. We were going to watch Cinderella and the Prince live happily ever after – spelling test be damned.
And if that makes me a bad mom? I’ll take it.Â
It’s definitely not my most award-worthy ‘bad mom’ moment. I’m pretty sure that’s the day she had a unicorn frappucino for breakfast.
That is absolutely insane. You are a bad mom for exposing your children to live theater. Yup Definitely a Bad Mom there lol. I am a teacher and not once would I tell my students that they would get more out of studying a spelling list than they would going to a play, or a playoff hockey game or a family vacation. those are the things they will remember. Those are the things they will learn and care about. in 30 years they won’t remember going over spelling lists (or whether or not they got all of them right on a test) but they will remember the experiences. sounds like someone needs to get their heads out of the sand and stop mom shaming!
On my ‘bad mom moments’ this one is definitely on the very very low end of the scale. (; Hahaha