How to be a mean mom in three easy steps

Step one: Form and impose ridiculous, hard-to-follow rules, such as, "No drawing on the furniture."

Step two: If your ridiculous, hard-to-follow rules are broken, inflict a form of cruel and unusual punishment on the perpetrator. For example, have them scrub crayon off the furniture.

Step three: Rinse and repeat.

While I was sweeping the kitchen floor after dinner, the girls were playing with cars and other such things. Or so I thought. One of those children (*cough* Miriam *cough*) was running a black crayon along the bench instead of a toy car. Do you know how similar crayon-on-bench sounds to car-on-bench? Very. I should know—I listened to cars being driven on benches all day long and couldn't tell the difference between that and crayon scribbling until I looked up from my pile of dirt.

I gasped. "Miriam! That's naughty!"

She started crying. We discussed, again, the proper function of a crayon. Then I handed her a sponge. She started sobbing and scrubbing and was so remorseful and cute that I decided to get the camera. 

"Sweet!" she thought, " Mom thinks I'm cute! I'm totally off the hook! Happy dance!"

But then I said, "Oh, no—you're still in trouble."

She picked up the sponge and pouted.

"Back to work," I prodded, while she looked up at me with her cute bottom lip a-quivering. "You're not finished until all the crayon is gone."

When she finally figured out that I was dead serious, she stuck her thumb in her mouth and got to work erasing her crayon tracks.

Miriam cleaned the whole bench. She had gone up and down the whole length of the bench several times with the contraband crayon so she certainly had her work cut out for herself. For the most part, though, she did it without fussing and seemed truly sorry she had forgotten (again) that crayons only draw on paper. 

I'm not sure she's ever going to get that rule down. She's going to be fifteen and scribbling on the kitchen table—I just know it!