Wearing Mom Genes

Recently, I had one of those calls with my mother. You know, the kind that starts out innocuously enough and casually takes a turn to disaster when you least expect it. Mom knows all your insecurities and exploits them willy-nilly on a whim. In this case, it began with a simple phrase that should always be accompanied by foreboding, slasher-flick music whenever my mother utters it, "Oh, I need to tell you something..."

Apparently, I have a smart mouth. And I shouldn't be dispensing advice to my cousins or siblings (or any relatives or even friends, for that matter). I guess an off-handed comment I made to a cousin caused a cataclysmic tear in the very fabric of my cousin's relationship with her parents. I didn't know I have such POWER. Neat-o.

It doesn't really matter that when I called to apologize to said cousin, she told me that my comment had nothing to do with the argument she had had with her mother and that it had already blown over. It's irrelevant that my mother blew the situation out of proportion by just a wee bit. The damage had been done, I was an emotional wreck for days. Now that's power.

It's the power of Mom, to undo someone with just a sentence or an intense glare. And it's in every mother's genes, as I discovered from E's teacher after I scolded him one day by simply telling him, "I'm really disappointed in you." E's teacher told me he was nervous and scared to do the wrong thing all day, that he didn't want to disappoint the teacher, that he hoped I wouldn't be disappointed in him anymore by the time I picked him up if he was a good boy all day. With V, if I look at her the wrong way, she spontaneously bursts into tears, not one word needed.

I'm really ambivalent about this. On the one hand, I know what it's like to be on the receiving end of a Mom-whammy, and I feel for my poor kids. On the other hand, sometimes it is the most efficient and effective way to influence their behavior. With great power comes great responsibility, but Peter Parker never had to figure out how to get his son to stop using his daughter as a battering ram. I guess there's really only one solution: save up for the kids' therapy bills when they get older.

Do you have Mom-guilt? If so, how do you cope?