I’m sitting outside on my front stoop, wearing my coat, gloves, and scarf, taking a break from the loud music blaring in my house (my kids insist on turning the volume on the highest setting to make sure they don’t, Heaven forbid, miss a word) when I notice my neighbor, Dina, likewise bundled, obsessively shoveling snow from her driveway.

She walks over to me. “I came out here because my girls are complaining nonstop that they’re so bored this midwinter vacation. This morning I took them to the arcades at Fun City and we just came back from the pizza shop. I’m so annoyed — they’re just never happy with what they get.”

I shake my head sympathetically. “I know exactly how you feel,” I say.

“On Thursday morning,” Dina goes on agitatedly, “Mindy called me from school and said she left her snack in the car, could I drive over with it. When I said I couldn’t leave work for that, she went on a tirade saying every other mother would do it and why can’t I be a normal mother for once.”

I nod again. “‘Always pasta or French toast. That’s all we have in this house. Always the same thing. I’m starving,’ Sarah will complain,” I say.

We continue to exchange woes.

“We decided to limit the kids’ time playing computer games. It frizzes their brains,” Dina says. “Then Mindy whines about us being so yeshivish, as if that’s the worst insult.”

“Listen to this one,” I say. “Yesterday, Eli stormed at me that I take advantage of my mother status. The only reason his older brothers obey me, he said, is because they’re serious about kibbud av v’eim.”

Dina is silent. “Wow,” she finally says.

As I head back into the house, I feel lighter. I feel validated. There are other “not normal” mothers out there who really are normal.

I realize that the job description of kids is to test their parents. My children, for example, test my sanity and sense of self on a daily basis. Turning issues on their heads. Intimating that I’m the crazy, unreasonable one. Proving it to me with such convincing illogical logic, that at times I end up believing them and wonder how I could have descended into such depths of depravity as to ask them to clear the table after supper.

They simply don’t listen to me. I should be ashamed to reveal this (I am ashamed to reveal this) but when I call out from the kitchen to Sarah in the living room, asking her to come, I get utter silence in response She doesn’t appear. When my husband calls her, she immediately responds, “Coming!” and zooms over.

I like to think that the reason they don’t listen to me the same way they listen to their father is because they feel more comfortable and open with me. Intuitively, however, I feel there’s something not quite right about that observation.

There are so many books out there about talking in a way that will get your kids to listen. Unfortunately, they seem to have bypassed some of us. We can give the class on how to get your kids not to listen.

(Excerpted from Family First, Issue 630)