My daughters now range in age from 27-32 years old, but back in the 1990s when the internet was new, a parenting exercise with them helped me earn a free year of detergent.
Social media was called message boards in those days (I sound like Abe Simpson and his onion rope belt), …and I submitted a parenting tip that won our family a free year’s worth of a leading detergent brand. With three little kids, the soap came in handy, but the lesson I learned was even more valuable.
During the entire decade, I was a single mom to three daughters, each spaced about two and a half years apart. On one particularly humid Iowa summer day, the girls were at each others’ throats: screaming, stomping up and down stairs, slamming doors — the works.
I had had ENOUGH.
Using my Inside Mom Voice, I summoned them all downstairs to the dining room and seated them in chairs, facing each other. Placing a timer in the middle of the table, I gave each girl a pencil and a sheet of paper.
“All right. Here’s what’s going to happen,” I began. “I want you to each write down everything you love about your sisters. Write until the timer goes off.”
Having given my directive, I cranked the dial on the timer to five minutes and went to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee, returning just as the timer jangled. Collecting the papers, I noticed that the girls were still a bit stony-faced, but the papers did have lists scrawled on them.
After scanning them, I handed the papers back out to the girls, switching the authors and sisters, instructing them to begin reading them aloud to each other.
The first entries were predictable:
• “I love how my sister smells like farts all of the time.” (giggles from the trio)
• “I love how my sister steals my tee shirts out of my dresser.” (more glaring)
But then, the tone shifted:
• “I love how my sister lets me crawl in bed with her when I’m scared from a nightmare.”
• “I love how my sister stands up for me at school on the playground.”
After the lists were read, I told them that we were a team — that we wouldn’t always agree, but that didn’t mean that we were to scream at each other and take each other for granted. I’m quite sure that I’ve given my daughters a few therapy sessions, but the Soap Summit was one of my better moments.
Being a single mom was, and still is, the most difficult and exhausting thing I’ve ever done. But the lessons I’ve learned from my children make it all worth it.
Farts and all.
P.S. Every Sunday, I publish a free weekly newsletter called the 3 Minute Reset, which includes life lessons, life hacks and treats. To subscribe, click here.
