Coolest mom not always best mom

She’s the other woman.

She comes into the picture without warning, and while you’re distracted and worried and bogged down in the everyday matters that keep an ordinary household running, she steals the heart of someone you love.

Almost any woman who has had a teenager knows the feeling. Suddenly, the child you’ve been so close to seems to turn on you. One day you’re golden, and then the next someone else, usually the mother of a classmate or friend, shines a little brighter than you do.

The other mother is everything you aren’t. She might have more money than you do. Or, she might be someone who hasn’t put on a few pounds like you have. She might be someone who dresses more like a girl than a woman in her 30s or 40s.

She is someone who doesn’t believe in forcing her children to come to the table to eat. She buys everyone tickets to the movie you said no to.

She likes to have her children call her by her first name. She doesn’t mind when your child swears like a sailor. She’s bright and interesting, not dull and boring like you are.

She buys the junk food you won’t buy, or she whips up gourmet meals when you’re too tired to go into the kitchen.

She has a bigger television.

She’s the one who doesn’t nag her children to pick up their clothes, empty the litter box or unload the dishwasher. She thinks everything ought to be fun.

Her mother made her do chores, so she won’t ever ask a child to do anything. That’s her job. Or the housekeeper’s job.

She’s the one who looks the other way when there’s a little alcohol involved or doesn’t get alarmed when curfew comes and goes.

She’s the one who boasts that she just loves having young people around. And then as soon as the house fills with a noisy crowd, she disappears.

She’s the one who doesn’t believe in rules and restrictions; the one who gives a caravan of 16-year-olds the keys to the car and the keys to the lake house on a Friday night and then goes to bed early.

She can be counted on to provide an alibi when another frantic mother calls her looking for a child. But just this once.

She’s the one who calls to tell you there something going on you should know about but she won’t violate her child’s confidence by telling you what it is.

She’s the one who sees nothing inappropriate in confiding to her child that she’s restless and tired of being married; that she’s “thinking of leaving your father” or “seeing someone who is very special to me.”

She’s the one who, blind to the acting-out of her own offspring, tells your child that if things ever get to be too much at home – the place you, with all your rules and restrictions, have made it so hard to get away with anything – he or she can always come and stay at her house. Where it’s fun. And there are no rules. And there are no restrictions.

Sometimes the other mother does real damage to a family. And sometimes she is more irritating than anything else.

But when she’s in the picture, she’s a force to be reckoned with.

The good news is that the other mother’s powers are weak. They can’t hold your child for long.

To a child, the other mother is cool. And she’s everything your own mother isn’t.

But in the end, for most teenagers, that’s where it all goes wrong.

In the end, for all her faults and flaws, your own mother is the one you want.