The Best of: Confessions of a Sneaky Mom

Yesterday, Sue, at Navel Gazing at Its Finest, wrote a blog post about true mom confessions. You know, things that many moms do but don't usually admit to it. I thought a bunch of the confessions were shocking, funny, and good ideas. So I decided to gather together the best ones, categorize them, and post them here. For credit to the original moms I am just going to link back to the original post and comments. The examples below are not necessarily representative of this blog poster's opinion.

Meals

• Last week, everyone wanted pancakes for dinner. My response was, "Fine, but you'd better have vegetables too!" Which is how my family came to have broccoli and buttermilk pancakes for dinner.
• I will confess for a friend, though. She is an obsessively good parent (her kids eat every vegetable known to man and they like it!). However, one morning when her twins were toddlers and she couldn't fathom making breakfast for them, she just poured a pile of Cheerios on the floor under the dining room table and let them help themselves. (I should talk--typical scenario in the van: "Mommy, I'm hungry!" "Find some pretzels in the crevices of your car seat.")
• I used to give them bran muffins and tell them they were cookies.
• Oh, and, like all kids, my girls always want to have a bite of my food, sip of my drink, etc. So, I discovered the only way to keep them from siphoning all my food is to put hot sauce on it - so far so good.

Chores

• When my kids are irritable and bored and at each other's throats, I sometimes like to help them bond by pitting them against me. I tell them to go clean the playroom and not to come out 'til it's sparkling clean. They'll angrily trudge in there, but a few minutes later I'll hear whispering and the sweet sounds of plotting. Every so often I'll bellow out "You'd better be cleaning!" and I'll hear them giggle because they are SO not cleaning. They get along independently for hours because, hey, THEY SURE PUT ONE OVER ON MOM.
• My daughter saves everything too...Trash, candy wrappers, packaging from toys. It's disgusting! So every now and then, I "help" them clean their room. When I clean, I make "piles" of stuff to put elsewhere in the house. When it's about time to be done, I tell the girls, "Wow, you did such a great job helping mommy, why don't you go downstairs and play, and I'll finish the rest" They can't get out of there fast enough, and it gives me time to take the trash outside without them knowing!

That's it for today. I still have 3 more categories to share. As a teaser they are, Bedtime, Punishments, and Just Because. I'm now curious if my mom had any tricks she used on us kids.