“Was I really going to buy an extra car to save the kids from a downpour?”
Malu Pesulima (29) lives with Romano and is mother of Mack (4) and baby Mosi.
Have you ever seen it on Facebook? The “everything was better back in the day” boomer who describes today’s kids as pampered brats who get help from their parents with every fart? Okay, so my timeline is teeming with those kinds of naysayers. And admittedly: as a seasoned millennial who can no longer classify himself as ‘the youth’, I never felt addressed.
“In one fell swoop I turned into a mother who prefers to keep her children under her wing until they retire”
Until four years ago I brought those snot noses into the world myself and I suddenly turned into a mother who prefers to keep her children under her wing until they retire. You know, the kind of parent who studies the photos of Social Schools in detail to check whether her child is not completely alone during the break. Who still holds her toddler’s hand every night until he falls asleep and hangs over her baby half the night to make sure he isn’t too cold. Oh woe if someone dares to find something about that…
Read also – Joan is a pamper mother: ‘If it rains, I will take my son by car’ >
Protective mother duck
Yet this past week I overstepped the mark in my role as protective mother duck. It went like this: Mack recently started primary school and because Romano works night shifts, I take Mack away. It’s a five minute bike ride; great to do just after the summer holidays, but with rain / wind / snow less. So not even a day after we got caught in a heavy rain shower for the first time, I suggested whether it might not be more convenient to buy a second car so that Mack wouldn’t arrive at school in the coming months like a drowned cat or completely hypothermic.
“Fortunately, this mother duck came to her senses just in time”
Romano agreed and not much later I was browsing Marktplaats looking for a cheap shopping cart – until I was about to make an appointment for a test drive and, thank God, came to my senses. Because what was I doing? Was I really going to buy a car just to save the kids from a few minutes of downpour or snow?
For a moment I thought about my own winter bike rides to school back in the day and how I (quite a bit) had not become a worse person. I exchanged Marktplaats for a children’s clothing webshop and threw a winter coat and rain suit in my shopping basket, because you know? Maybe that boomer was a bit right after all: we can also go too far in that pampering.
This article is in the Kek Mama Winter Book 2022.
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