Apogae Production. Welcome back to another episode about My Bad Mom podcast. We love the memes that come to our Instagram account, by the way, and do you know who sends me a lot of parenting memes?
Who?
Amelia? My fifteen year old, sends them to.
Me all the time, just letting you know how good your parenting is.
Not normally but this one, I'm going to read you a couple because they're quite funny. So this one's a picture of a cat and it says me walking past the cat vomit, I'm going to have to act surprise to hear about later. True. Nobody's more full of false hope than a mum who places items on the stairs for people to carry up. I do that all the
time the time. Is that an English thing? Because I remember someone saying to me, you've got all like shoes, someone's put all shoes on the bottom of your stairs. I was like, yeah, that was me, for everyone to take their shoes upstairs.
It's a hint. It's a subtle hint of take your shit upstairs.
Take your shit upstairs. People see me spending money and think I'm rich, bro, I'm just irresponsible. That's her, that's.
How she's feeling after working.
And then this one. Once I started spending my own money, I realized that my mum was right. We do have food at home.
So true.
When they always say to me and we're literally from school to home and they go, can we stop in the petrol station and get something to do, I'm like, we're going to be home in ten minutes. Yeah, no, you can make something iron And then they open the fridge and they stare at it like we've got nothing nothing. I'm like, it's not going to jump out at you talk of which just real quickly. Only the other day,
first day back at school, can find the shoes. I tried to not do the whole Well, if you sorted your school stuff out yesterday, like I tell you to do before school goes back, then you wouldn't be in a panic now about not having your shoes. She went to school without her school shoes. She had socks and like not thongs.
But like slides and slides to school to.
School because she can't find the shoes. Right she left for school, I'm doing a quick tidy up around the house before I'm leaving for work. Literally open up her wardrobe and there's her school shoes on the bottom of the wardrobe, where they always are. I called her. I was like, what, look what I found? Your school shoes? Where were they were? They always are? Oh? Why didn't
you look where they always are? Why would you not look in your wardrobe on the floor for your school shoes, that's where you keep them.
Yeah, oh, because I just.
Assumed i'd lost them, so I didn't think they'd be there.
I'm also more concerned that she's still at school with socks and slide. What did she do for the rest of the day. Let me guess you had to drop the shoes to her at school. No I didn't.
I didn't even offer what would she do for the day? She wore them all day? Socks a side? Am I a bad mum for not being discreet?
Okay, all right, I can see your face. You're still of now gauging. You're going, oh do I do? I not?
I actually feel really bad about this.
So when you start off like that, I already know you're like, oh, half in, half out half.
It's one of those moments I was like, oh shit, like that was a bad parent. So my girls at the moment are at that age where they are massively into going to life concerts, which is a really annoying for me because I spent years working in radio and getting free tickets and they never gave a shit about
going and we used to leave early. And now they're all into it and it's the best thing, and they're super excited, and they're on like the ticket master website and they're waiting in the line and they're oh my god, I'm through. They're getting Yeah, is it.
More about that part of it? Do you reckon sometimes for them? Like the winning part, like you've got the tickets, you know, like you've got to sit there and wait and that wait suspense.
Yeah good, and then you feel like a real winner when you get through. Yeah, we've spoken about those ticket websites. I feel like we've spoken about them recently. Whereas I feel like they don't treat me like a customer.
No they don't.
It's like you wait in line, now you've got three minutes too late. Sorry, not taking your money to I'm.
Going to take the next one hundred thousand people. Really annoying.
So anyway, they're super excited, they have saved up money, they're going to see Billie Eilish, that was obsessed, obsessed, so obsessed that her brother Phineas. I mean, you've got to be a diehard Billie Eilish fan.
I was lost with whose brother it was.
Yeah, her brother is also touring, so they were kind of excited about the fact that he's coming to Australia. I even know, I haven't even never heard of a song that he's me neither in my whole life.
But I didn't even know she had a brother. That's how far of a Billie Eilish fan I am. I do love her music, don't get me wrong, but I'm not a like super fan. So then they're going to see Billie Eilish. But they were also very excited when her album dropped, to the point that they stayed up until like midnight midnight bore it to drop, and then they stayed up even longer to like three am listening to the new album. Then it's a big thing for them.
Yeah, and Rach this all happened because I was away, so they had someone staying with them and I was like, yeah, whatever, whatever, time me like, I'm not going to be there, and I'm also not going to be there tomorrow. When you're horrible because you're so tired, So that was allowed to happen.
So anyway, they are waiting online ticketmaster whoever it was, for these tickets, and they managed to get them and one hundred dollars each, which still one hundred dollars, but she who Taylor Swift and people like that, like they're ridiculous amounts of So Amelia paid for her ticket because she had the money and Holly didn't. But Holly's got a new job, just hasn't been given any shifts yet. So I said, you know what, I'll buy your ticket and you can pay us back so that you've got them.
So that was all great, and they were super excited and then we were at home and has actually been surprisingly oh it was so surprisingly lovely. I don't mean surprisingly lovely, like she's always lovely, but she has definite moments of being a teenager, being rude, making me feel
like a piece of shit. We've spoken in another episode about how, you know, I feel like I need to go and do some sort of trauma counseling for my self esteem living with teenagers, because they do make me feel like I'm a piece of shit on the bottom of the shoes sometimes but this last week has been absolutely lovely. No arguments, no rudeness, no not doing what I've asked, getting up in the morning, getting ready for school. She's ready to go by the time I come downstairs.
She's made a lunch box, she's fed the animals, she's opened the curtains, she's done the whole lot. And then she sits there and she's on her phone, which I don't mind, because I'm like, how nice does that feel. You've got everything done and now you've got spare time instead of rushing around and everyone shouting at each other.
You've only been trying to teach them for like fifteen years.
Finally I've had a week of it. And so I said to her, I thought we were being really discreet. We're on the stairs, and I said to Holly quite quietly, but I was like, I've been really impressed with your behavior and just generally how lovely you've been this last week, and how easy you've made parenting you this week because you're not arguing, and you're not you know, we're not having to tell you something ten times.
Yeah.
Yes, I had a really nice moment with her, and I said, you know what, don't worry about paying us back for the ticket. We're going to pay that for you. But don't tell Amelia.
Because she is just asked her already.
But I could see in her face like she was we were having a lovely moment, and she was really pleased. And they do everything together, and they never get their own time, and I forget to praise one because I group them together too often. And we just had this really nice moment, and I could see that she was really enjoying the fact that this was just about her and it was not about Amelia. Great, She's super happy. Jay's cooked dinner, Dinner's ready, We've gone down, we're eating dinner.
Meally comes down, we're all eating dinner. At the end of dinner, everyone's putting their plates where and we're all tidying up, and Amelia says, Mum, can I have a chat with you? I went, yeah, yeah, of course, and she went in private, and I was like, yeah, sure,
no worries. So we went off. And it was just the way that was the hardest about this was the way her little face looked so sad and innocent, but she was so grown up in the fact that she'd asked me to come away like previously, it would have been a big fucking drama, shouting, crying in front of everyone. And she just literally took me on my own to
the side, didn't make a deal of it. And when I heard what you said to Holly, don't tell Amelia, but we're going to pay for your ticket, and I just went, oh, oh my god, no, feel terrible.
What did you say? How did you rectify it? Let me guess we'll pay for you.
I said, oh, I said, I'm really sorry that you heard that, but now we've ruined the surprise. Shut up, I said, I was going to give you another couple of days to see if you were getting your shit together, getting your lunchbox made, getting out of the house on time, coming down as early as Holly. I was going to give you another couple of days to do that, and then we were going to surprise you with the tickets too.
Over it was so horrible.
I felt like the worst mom. And the worst part of it was in that moment, I was trying to be a good mom. I was trying to really lovely, and I really fucked it up for the other one.
Yeah, yeah, look, it probably wasn't like ideal I mean that part when you go, look, don't tell the other that probably was just the only part where.
You're like one step too far.
Well, I think the whole idea of it would be that you can praise them without having to give them something. You can praise them for doing what they're meant to be doing because they're meant to be doing it. You don't have to give them something because they're being good.
Yeah, but I've spent fifteen years as a parent absolutely bribing my children to do.
The right thing. You don't even need to bribe them though. Now you are not bribing them. They are simply now stepping into their own power and doing their own thing. Because you've formatted that, you've created that for fifteen years. How good is that? Like I'm listening going, holy shit, I can't believe they've turned the page. That's all because you've done it, You've put in the hard yard.
I feel like for you, you're spending all these years that we've been doing the podcast and being friends and will continue to go I'm going to watch what she does and then not fucking do that.