Mother’s Day Panic Button: I’m Messing Up Big Time; Help Me Fix It

You know those warm, fuzzy gushy feeling columns you read around Mother’s Day?

I’ve written a few myself. (Like this and this.)

Yeah, this isn’t one of those.

Oh, it’s about motherhood, all right.

But this one is more like hitting the motherhood panic button.

A button I hit the other day while, don’t get too excited, sewing on a real button.

A button that had fallen off one of my girls’ school uniforms.

That’s when I realized–

These children,

Scrap that,

These teenagers,

These young adults—

Don’t know how to sew on a button.

Don’t even know how to thread a needle.

Holy Worthless Parenting, Batman! I’ve forgotten something so basic, so elementary, so important about motherhood.

I’m supposed to be raising humans.

Humans, as in people who are one day, all too soon, supposed to be functioning adults in this world.

I’m not the only one, am I, Dear Reader?

The only one who has been so busy building self-esteem, creating moments, acting as chauffer ensuring these precious beings arrive safely at each social opportunity, each after-school activity?

So busy, I forgot basic life skills.

Talk about major fail.

And so I started scribbling out The List.

Can my girls sew a button?

Cook?

Figure out how to get from here to there?

I’ve started shoving my precious baby birds out of their comfort zone.

Last week, I dumped them in the middle of the grocery store.

“You guys are making spaghetti dinner tonight,” I announced. “You need to go buy all the supplies you need. Oh, and here’s your budget.”

Momentary panic set into their teen brains, but they figured it out. Well, I think they did. Husband and I went out to dinner that night just to be safe.

Then, there is Daughter who is learning to drive.

“How are you going to get there?” I asked the other day as she got behind the wheel to get to her friend’s house.

“I, well, you go, then,” her eyes crossed and her brain scrambled as she actually didn’t know how to get to the block 10 minutes away where she used to live.

Turns out you don’t have to think about how you get somewhere when you sit in the passenger seat madly texting your friends while your mom does the driving and the thinking.

We got there, eventually, with a few bonus left turns.

Of course, there is this—

This column is written by a former kid, the one whose dad cut her pancakes right up to the time I went to college.

I’m not sure what it was about a knife and fork, but I couldn’t seem to master it.

I was clearly no Einstein in the life skills department, myself. Yet, I somehow grew up to be a functioning, pancake-cutting adult.

This is my Mother’s Day gift I’d like from you—

Please add to The List.

What other basic, human life skills do my kids need to know?

Please help me raise functioning humans with your comments below.

Find more uplifting stories on my website, DarynKagan.com

Please catch my newspaper column each week in the Atlanta Journal Constitution,the Dayton Daily News and other newspapers across Ohio.

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