The BFF Mom

The Beast often regales me with tales about the “Nice Moms”...the moms who let their kids do all sorts of things…like stay up late on school nights, eat junk food, hang out at the mall, fully fund their child’s every whim. I fall far short on the “Nice “ meter and I am, of course, suspicious of moms who are too high up on that niceness scale. On the opposite spectrum from my low placement…the most dangerous in my opinion… are the BFF moms—the Best Friends Forever moms. They turn motherhood into another popularity contest and there is really no winner.

There are a lot of BFF moms. It is easiest to spot them with their teen daughters buying clothes at The Mall. The mom is wearing an almost identical outfit to her daughter…looking like the sadly unpopular girl from high school who believes if she gets the right cloths, agrees with everything that popular girl says or demands—that she will win her love.

I was in The Mall with The Beast last winter buying, what I hope is, her first and last pair of new UGGS—it was there that we witness a teen daughter—dressed, in all intents and purposes, in pajamas…her beautiful, slim hip bones showing between her short, tight t-shirt and the elastic on her flannel pajama bottoms. I looked at the girl and thought—What would your mother say if she saw you out and about with that perfectly beautiful stomach exposed to the world?! But then I saw her—a tired woman, also sporting UGGS picking up the discarded shoes from her daughter’s shopping spree….she was encouraging the girl to make one more purchase of UGG boots because” they are so cute.”

I stared at the woman in amazement and daughter stared at the woman in disgusted…tossing get another box on their pile to buy. Neither of them looked happy. The BFF mom desperate to seek approval from her daughter, the daughter annoyed by her mom’s attempt to buy friendship.

The Beast is my favorite person. She is so like me and so like The Husband—what is not to love? Yet there are fights and challenges and constant pushing of boundaries. Sometimes with the delicacy of a well trained diplomat I am able to craft an agreement between the two us. But sometimes…sometimes I just have to be the mean, mean mommy. And to quote Ms. Leather-Pants—“I’m not your friend, I ‘m your mom. You don’t have to like me.” And believe me—there are times when she really doesn’t like me. But it is not the end of the world—she can’t drop me as a mother.

The role of BFF is best left to someone else. Too much pressure...not enough power.

Friends

The Husband thinks I obsess…and it is SO true. One of my obsession is friends….The Beast’s friends.

I would not say I have a lot of friends…mainly because of this blog… and my personality in general. But I have TRUE friends. And I think there is nothing more important in life than true friends. Ideally friends who have known you for a long time.

My best friend in the whole wide world is Ms. Filmmaker. She has always been crazy, silly, creative, deep and endlessly interesting to me. I met Ms. Filmmaker when we were both on our way to our first day of kindergarten. We chatted a mile a minute and giggled then and we do the very same thing today.

When the Beast started Public School I was frightened…very frightened. As I may have mentioned before—we were zoned to the one elementary school that was NOT artsy-farty… Many of the mothers looked like aging Barbies and the kindergarten class looked like a box full of Kelly dolls.

Taking a deep breath, I dropped my Asian/Hispanic looking child in to the mix. She loved the Kellies. She loved the long ,blond hair, the pink clothes, the blue eyes of the Kelly doll students, but sometimes they were friends and sometimes not. This was not the warm fuzzy German Pre-school where everyone played nice. This was not the “movement class” where all the kids dressed kooky.

We were now in the land of the pink Hello Kitty outfits and the light-up sneakers. The Beast’s red Blundie boots, the wildly striped winter tights and the Basque beret were a dead giveaway that we did not live in the development down the street. My vintage Saab, my basically all black wardrobe and distinct lack of make-up set us apart from day one.

I did not have the time nor inclination to start expanding my wardrobe color palette since I worked “Outside the Home” and the child had no intentions of giving up her beloved Blundies. But this turned out to be a good thing, because being yourself (as my mother always told me) is in the only way to find true friends. Plus we were too lazy to work on actually fitting in.

The Beast navigated quietly through a social network of queen bee girls (which we called the “pill girls” because they were really quite unpleasant) and found the interesting girls. We tried Daisy’s and we BOTH discovered one true friend each and then through love of art the Beast found another good friend.

The Beast is now in Middle School and the friend issue still lingers heavy on my mind not because she is lacking friends, but because I believe it is your friends more than your parents who truly help you navigate and succeed in the world. They are your mirror. We have been lucky—The Beast is still close to girls she met when she was three and her new friends all are interesting and nice. Once she entered the Middle School, where all the schools come together, the artys-fartys types now outnumber the more socially conservative groups and dressing kooky and doing interesting stuff is prized.

The beast still sees some of the queen bee girls from her old school and there is even a joke among her friends about one girl who was notorious for befriending girls and then dropping them. The joke is that all the “dropped” friends are forming a club called: “The Former Friends of XXXXX XXXXXX” since there are so many of them.

If you can’t join them—at least make fun of them.

The Mommy Cliques

I hate cliques.

I managed to successfully avoid cliques in high school by rarely attending classes and when I was there--my group of friends was so small and so scattered among the cliques I never really had a chance to belonged to any one group.

But NOW I have a deep, dark secret—I am part of a Mommy Clique. Don’t pretend that you are a not. Anyone with a child and a job HAS to join one, there is no way around it once the child is in school and doing “afterschool activities.”

The pre-school mommy cliques are completely different than public school because you can predefine who you are by the pre-school your choose. If you send your child to some touchy-feely German preschool where the child just runs wild all day long, sings semi-pagan songs, piles onto one futon with the other kids for a nap, where closing the bathroom door is optional AND where parents are served mulled wine at school plays --chances are there are just two cliques of mommies—the ones lining up for the mulled wine and then the OTHER mommies who are desperately looking for another pre-school because they thought this little school had a “German immersion program.”

Public school brings on a whole different set of issues. You are thrown, once again, into the larger spectrum of society (just like in high school) and you must reassess where you, and now your child, belong in the social mix.

We all know the cliques, but I will list the most common ones and its high school equivalent for easy of identification.

The PTA mommy clique (Cheerleaders)
The non-PTA, but volunteer a lot mommy clique (Flag-twirlers)
The popular mommy clique (the pretty smart girls who are going to good private colleges)
The stay at home mommy clique (the greaser girls)
The crunchy super organic mommies (the camping/ Grateful Dead listening girls)
The super-smart mommy clique (you know—they got 800s on the SATs...)
The artsy mommy clique ( the music/art freaks and geeks)

Of course, being a Lazy Mom rules out entrance to many of the mommy cliques.

The PTAing and Volunteering mom cliques—I am FAR too lazy.

My economic and intellectual needs rule out the stay at home mom clique.

The popular mommy clique—they breed popular daughters and The Beast feels the popular girls are mean and “are really just afraid of losing their BFFs.” The Beast is far nicer and far more socially aware then I am--so I generally go with her opinion and steer clear of the popular moms—because I would hate to displace a BFF and get in an ubermom’s firing line. Because e-mail CAN be an ugly thing.

The crunchy moms are SO NICE, but again—our own personal short comings get in the way...we love red meat, red wine...plus I am a firm believer in vaccinating children and using antibiotics appropriately....need I say more.

The smarts moms—they are so busy and so good--makes me tired just thinking about them. We liked the idea of the science fair and the Beast and her friend thought of many creative exhibits to build... such as the bowel model that farts etc...and even went to museums for further inspiration, but when it came time for the research bit....

So...that leaves us with the Artsy Mom Clique—which is just fine...slightly kooky, crunchy, smart and willing to carpool at the drop of a hat.

Mulled wine anyone?