Great job, Becky! I knew you could stand up to her!

Kathi

This thread really had me evaluating my mothering. My mother was nowhere near as bad as some of yours, but she came from many generations of bad and abusive mothers. I feel that the mothers my daughters become are a reflection of the mother I am to them, and something happened last night that made me feel that maybe I am doing something right! I am sorry for the long explanation - but it made me immediately think of this thread!

I have a 4 year old and 10 month old (also have a 8 year old step-daughter). The two girls share a room and the baby has been having some major separation anxiety lately and DOES NOT want to go to bed at night, she just wants me to hold her! I was explaining to my 4 year old that her sister was just scared without me and didn't know I will be coming back. She was getting tired and I was trying to let the baby cry a little, because she wasn't going to sleep anyways. I put my 4 year old to bed and she was able to comfort her sister by whispering "Its ok, Brooklyn is here" everytime she started to whimper. Well, it worked, baby and oldest daughter were asleep in no time. Here is the kicker - when I went in later that night to get something, I kicked a toy or something and made a little noise, the baby started to whimper. This made my kind hearted and sweet little daughter to whisper that "it is ok because Brooklyn is here" in her sleep! She was comforting her sister in her sleep! It brought tears to my eyes and I almost woke my oldest up because I had to hug her! All I could think was she is going to be an AWESOME mother!

I know this was a little off topic, but I had to share! This thread was the first thing I thought of after that happened!

So all you mothers on CC - be good to your daughters, they will be raising your precious grandchildren one day!

Carson, that is a great story !! ( almost brought tears to my eyes !! )
My mother isn't as awful as previous posters, I get treated as though I'm invisible ( my kids too ) & on the occasions she does speak to me ,it's as if I was 5 years old again & incapable of doing anything

So, I vow to always be close to my children, supportive of any choices they make & let them know I will always love them...

Carson, That's so adorable!!! We're having the seperation anxiety problem with our daughter... who is 8 years old lol. We spent the last 18 months living at my parents house in their basement with our beds side by side and not really allowed to be anywhere else in the house except the basement, because the boys would fight with Susie if we were upstairs anywhere so we spent all of our time in the basement in our "room". We've been in our own house since March and she wanted a bunk bed so we bought her one, she needed a new tv because her's was broken in storage, so we got her a new tv. She's got everything and anything any child could ever want lol. She's extremely spoiled. She falls asleep on the sofa and is carried to bed by my husband, or walked up holding hands if his back hurts too bad, (she takes sleeping pills because she's ADHD and can't sleep otherwise), and once upstairs he'll sit in her room and read to her until she's sound asleep again. This seems to be working, just started this the other night with hopes it'll work. I always read to her when she was a baby and it soothed her to sleep and I figured she'd always like that but she grew up and said "I'm not a baby anymore mommy" lol well now daddy reads to her everynight for about 20-60 minutes give or take and she's out! lol.

Being she's an (in house) only child she's very lonely I guess lol. Sometimes she has to fall asleep in our bed and be taken to bed and it's always "I want mommy" lol. I love it! It's annoying sometimes when we're all really tired but damn it feels good to be needed on a daily basis

Carson, hug those babies until they pop

Wow! I didnt read all of the other posts, but I would tell her something like:

"mom, while I want to give you a great price for this cake, the cost of ingredients for the cake and cookies is $x. (I imagine it is nearly $20!) So as you can see mom, that is a lot of work for $5. So for the cake and cookies we discussed I will need $x to cover my time and cost of ingredients. If you only have $20 to spend, maybe I can just make a small 6 inch cake.

good luck!