Didn't I Feed You Yesterday__ A Mother's Guide to Sanity in Stilettos - Laura Bennett [38]
“Turn it off!” I yelled, getting up from my chair.
“I can’t,” he claimed, not looking at me. “I am in the middle of a mission, and I can’t save now.” I have heard this excuse before.
“I said, turn it off.” Peik casually reached over to the remote and pressed the mute button without losing the spray of bullets coming from his avatar’s AK-47.
“Turning the sound off is not turning the game off!” I shouted. “Turn it off now.” Only when I made a move for the power button, and he feared he would lose everything, did Peik pause the game and come over to me.
“But, Mom, you know that I have to get to mission nine or I won’t be able to upgrade to an M-16. With an M-16, I could blow my enemies to hell.”
“Halfway to hell with an AK-47 will do just fine.” I looked him in the eye, unblinking.
“Okay, okay,” he said, throwing his hands up in the air and retreating to the boys’ room, no doubt to log on to yet another game on the Internet.
With five boys comes violence; there’s just no way around it. They make guns out of jumbo crayons or potatoes, or just their damn fingers. They play violent games of their own devising, so I can’t just expect my kids not to indulge at all. For quite a while I tried to keep up with all the videos, DVDs, games, iTunes downloads, and other media streaming into my kids’ heads. This was a full-time job. Eventually I decided that I would check in every once in awhile, but that I wasn’t going to let it drive me crazy. Denying the boys these outlets just makes them forbidden fruit. I would rather they learn to make choices and set limits for themselves. There are elements of pop culture that are violent and cruel, fast paced and sexual, but it’s their culture; who am I to deny it to them? My mom let me watch Love, American Style.
SCIENTISTS AT RUTGERS UNIVERSITY HAVE RECENTLY ISOLATED THE gene that causes overprotective motherhood. I kid you not. Genetically engineered mice without the gene, known as on-coprotein 18, were slow to retrieve roaming pups and showed no concern when the pups interacted with unknown peers. By contrast, mice with the gene, or “helicopter mice,” made sure that their pups ate lunch in a peanut-free school and called them on their cell phones three times a day.
I am certain that I was born without this gene. Now I understand why I let my kids ride bikes without helmets and eat snacks replete with preservatives and artificial colors while other mothers are making their teenagers use safety scissors. I have a genetic predisposition to laissez-faire parenting. The fact that I buy my children trampolines, go-carts, and motorcycles so they stay out of my way on weekends is not my fault. I have a disease.
It has nothing to do with the fact that I have six children aged twenty years to twenty months and couldn’t possibly care for them and remain sane without a team of nannies, mannies, tutors, therapists, and cleaning ladies. I am not lazy; I have the biochemical markers of a bad mommy. My mother passed on this genetic propensity to me. She allowed my brother and me to roam the neighborhood unsupervised with a gang of kids until the streetlights came on. She never stopped us when we chased the mosquito man’s truck as it blew a cloud of DDT into our smiling faces. We were allowed to ride in the back of a station wagon without seats, much less seat belts. And we watched cartoons! Violent cartoons in which coyotes dropped anvils from red stone desert cliffs on passing roadrunners.
And to think for all these years I thought alcoholics were just undisciplined whiners who wouldn’t take responsibility for their own actions. I totally get it now. Being a bad parent is a hereditary trait, no different from my green eyes or my dyed red hair. It’s part of my DNA and has been passed down to me from generations of mothers who let their children fall behind in their immunizations, eat frozen dinners, and languish, forgotten, on playdates.
The truth