How to make the most of Mother’s Day

It’s Mother’s Day this Sunday. The promise of a lie-in, the house being spring cleaned, hand-made cards declaring undying love and gratitude or an elaborate ploy to make other people feel okay about you doing most of the work on the other 364 days of the year and to sell a few more chocolates?

Mums with a baby on a beach

 

Mother’s Day takes place this Sunday so here’s our guide to how to make the most of it.

1. Make a list of your top five Mother’s Day things. That way you might have some control over what happens next. If you know that cleaning is not their forte and generally results in more work for you, scratch all mention from the list. Stick to the easy stuff like letting you have a lie in. Emphasise that ALL mothers get a lie-in on Mother’s Day and spell out what this involves in detail to avoid confusion. Spell it out in capitals with glitter if necessary.

2. Do not exaggerate the importance of Mother’s Day. The chances are if you hype it that you will excite the younger members of the family so much that they will want to wake you up early to celebrate, thus completely missing the entire point of the day.  Teenagers will probably allow you the lie-in on the grounds that they won’t get up till noon. Plus bear in mind all those who don’t have mothers around for whatever reason.

3. Talk about what you did for your mum and slightly embellish that to create some sort of sense of tradition, eg “We let her spend the whole day in bed and did a complete spring clean of the house.”

4. If making breakfast is on your list, give a suggested hour and ask for a menu. If not you could find the whole house turned upside down or yourself being force fed some combination of marmalade and Rice Crispies at 6am.

5. Emphasise that it is not about presents, but about thoughtfulness. Let them ponder on that one for a few days, particularly the teenagers.

6. Discuss whether in an age of supposed equality whether Mother’s Day is just one big excuse to overload mothers on all the other days of the year – like when children make a big deal about cleaning their plates on one particular day, recalling it weeks – even months – later in order to justify you doing it all year round? If Mother’s Day means getting the odd lie-in and sharing the housework shouldn’t it be celebrated all year round…?



Post a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *