Picket Fence Post

My kids are constantly giving me grief about my working from home. They may say that they understand that I have to do work — which includes reading lots of stuff, sometimes watching TV programs and lots o’ writing at the laptop computer – but I don’t think they really do.

My 10-year-old son might say he knows I have work to do, but he still wants to know why I don’t just do all the grocery shopping and the laundry during the day so everything’s just so when he arrives home from school. My 7-year-old gripes that I drag them out on errands instead of getting the errands done when they’re in school, during the few quiet moments of my work day when no one’s home. There are incessant complaints about meals.

That’s why I took my 10-year-old twins to see the stop-action, animated movie Coraline with me. (The movie’s too scary for my 7-year-old and even scared my 10-year-old daughter a bit.) I wanted them to gain a bit of appreciation for their old mom.

In the movie, the blue-haired, 11-year-old Coraline Jones is angry with her distracted work-at-home parents who won’t entertain her and are severely domestically disabled. Then Coraline magically finds herself in an alternate reality where her “Other” parents seem perfect and dote on her all the time, giving her things she’s been craving. I wrote about the film and my kids’ reaction to it — “You should be thankful for what you’ve got,” The Girl said – in my Pop Culture & Politics column over on Mommy Track’d this week.

Do your kids pine away for a “perfect” parent?  (I frequently tell my offspring that I’m gunning for the Meanest Mom of the Year award.)