No parent wants to read that they are doing something wrong when it comes to raising their kids, but to all the parents reading this, please be brave and take a quick survey to see if you just might be what I am calling in the parenting world an "Offspring Worshipper (OW)."

Do your kids:

Go from one activity to another without cleaning up after themselves?

Have to be told to do certain things over and over again?

Seem to view the household chores as being the parent's job and not theirs?

Do not help you bring in or put away the groceries unless you ask them to?

Do not help with the laundry unless you ask them to?

Do not keep their rooms consistently clean?

Don't seem to value your time as much as their own?

Constantly ask you if you can help them find something they have misplaced?

Ask for an allowance for doing what should be just expected behavior from them?

Have a difficult time taking criticism at school or at home?

If you can answer "yes" to even one of these questions, you might be an OW, and perhaps your parenting techniques are creating the very behavior in your kids that is driving you absolutely insane. Now, before you get too defensive, let me tell you that I am one of the worst offenders of OW, but I didn't realize I was until very recently, and might never have had it not been for what I thought was the worst thing God ever gave me: arthritis.

For the past several months, I have been waking up on Mondays so battered and beaten from the weekend's business of running around and picking up after the kids, going up and down stairs all day long, doing the laundry by myself, shopping and putting way groceries alone, and just overall being the household nanny, when it occurred to me one morning as I sat in bed with a heating pad on my back with two empty jars of Advil on my bedside table, "Wait a minute...wait just a darned minute. This is madness. I have a 10-year-old and a 6-year-old who are more than capable of giving me some help around here, so why are they not giving it to me, and worse, why am I not asking them for it?" It was these questions that made me stop and ponder for a long time...a really long time.

I always viewed myself as a pretty strict parent, or rather a parent who did not have spoiled kids. I mean, you have your Willy Wonka, Veruka Salt spoiled, and I knew my kids were not that, but as I pondered the "Why were my kids not helping me and why was I not asking them for their help?" question, I had to think that perhaps, just perhaps, my kids were spoiled in another kind of way. I slowly started to see and understand some things that I had never seen before.

I believe I am in this generation of parents who, through the very best of intentions, has inadvertently taken themselves and their kids down a rather strange road along the journey of parenting, a road I'm sure many of us never thought we'd find ourselves on. The journey starts pretty much like all the other generations before ours: we want our kids to have more than we did - more education, more time to be creative, more time to develop their minds and imagination, more time to be a kid, more time to laugh, have fun, read, think, explore, etc. All these things are good things to want for your child, BUT...here comes the but...at what cost? Everything has a cost, and there are some things you just can't put on a credit card. This leads me to how I became an OW. I wanted all these things for my kids so much that I became practically obsessed with them having it, willing to sacrifice anything...even my own body...for them. When we talk in terms of sacrifice, we very often also speak in terms of worship, for they go hand in hand, and this, my friends, is how I began to worship my children in terms of their every need, want and desire.

My children are not spoiled in the typical sense, but they are clearly overindulged. Perhaps to some this is only a game of semantics, but I am trying to make a very fine line distinction because I feel it is an important one to make. My kids have good manners, are pleasant to be around and are overall well behaved, but they have an expectation here at home and a sense of value about their time vs. my time that I have created over the years, and the only one can change these perceptions in them is me.

For the past several weekends, I asked my kids to help me out with the laundry, groceries, housework and to pick up after themselves without my having to tell them. At first, they did it with no complaints because I don't think they realized these would become reoccurring requests. When I finally sat them down and told them the main reason I needed their help on a consistent basis was because mommy's body was hurting so badly from doing too much work, my oldest one began to cry. She said she didn't realize she was making me work so hard. Then I cried. I guess I just assumed they saw me working and how hard it all was for me, but kids don't work like that...you gotta just tell them.

As a recovering OW, I know how hard it is to take one second away from your child's time to learn, laugh, play, explore, create...all those things our parents didn't have the time or money to afford to give to us as much as we wanted. But we were learning different lessons when we were young, lessons about sharing, going without and still enjoying life, working together, helping our parents out and being proud of it, being hard workers at a young age that gave us good, strong work ethics. These lessons gave us qualities that make us great people and good parents, qualities we want to instill in our kids but can't as long as we are OWs. Things are going a lot better now in my home. The work around the house gets done faster, the kids are really proud of themselves and their efforts, and they have a sense of ownership of more than just their toys now. My kids have come to see mom in a whole new light and with that has come a whole new level of respect from them. Oh, and best of all, my back doesn't hurt as much. It can only get better from here.