Mother, I Don’t Like You.

It was the end of a very long day. My husband and I were placidly sitting on the sofa watching our children play a game of “Mother, May I?” before they went to bed.

Our 14-year-old was acting as “mother”, and each lined-up child was requesting a variety of movements in order to progress to where mother was standing. This was a very eventful round! Already we had witnessed cartwheels, somersaults, baby steps, whirlwind steps and leaps.

“Mother” was definitely giving one chid a hard time by saying no to every request and making her progress more slowly than she wanted.

Finally, this exasperated 10-year-old stated, “Mother, I don’t like you!” To which this 14-year-old “mother” responded, “Thank you. That’s what my job is.”

Then the whole group turned and looked at ME.

I sheepishly grinned and waved. Where on earth had they heard that before?

Laughing, I immediately wrote the statements down so I can repeat the experience to those girls when they are mothers.

Now before we all jump to the conclusion that my children never like their mother, let me give some background information.

Yes, there are certainly times that each child has not liked their mother.

May I also say that there are certainly times that their mother has not liked each child!

But my LOVE for them does not change, even when I do not LIKE their choices and the consequences that must be dished out according to those choices.

President Russell M. Nelson of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has stated, “We need women who are devoted to shepherding God’s children along the covenant path toward exaltation; women who know how to receive personal revelation, who understand the power and peace of the temple endowment; women who know how to call upon the powers of heaven to protect and strengthen children and families; women who teach fearlessly.”

Please understand that I would rather work and play with my children than do anything else this world has to offer. My husband and my children are everything to me.

However, the desire to “shepherd” them toward the lasting happiness of covenant living, the drive to “teach fearlessly”, and the need “to call upon the powers of heaven to protect and strengthen” them are my motivators, not the need to have them like me. In fact, I expect there to be lots of times that they do not like me along the way, but our Father in Heaven is teaching me to give children what they need, which is not always what they want.

In fact, don’t you feel that He often works with all of us in that same loving manner? This can be very difficult in the heat of the moment, yet very instructive indeed!