You Might Be a 90s Mom

If you are a Gen Xer mom like me, you may have experienced the wonders of raising kids in the 1990s, an era when there was no such thing as never having had cable TV, handheld devices did more than play football with lines and beeps and we watched Disney films (on VHS), not a Disney channel.

Here are some other differences between our generation as 80s kids, and that of the children raised at the dawn of the Millennial era.

You might be a 90s mom if:

1. Your kids learned everything they needed to know about science because it had a mascot: Bill Nye the Science Guy.
2. You taught your kids how not to act based on Angelica from Rugrats’ behavior because she was the representative bully of the generation.
3. Your child to this day knows the original Toy Story movie by heart and has the high quality McDonald’s Happy Meal toys to prove it. Ditto Lion King: the movie, not the Broadway musical.
4. Your kid collected Pokemon toys before eBay sold them as collectibles, and you one time made a Jigglypuff cake because it was pink and there were no good girl Pokemon characters.
5. Your child today can immediately identify a SpongeBob SquarePants episode by whether it was “one of the originals” or is a cheap knockoff episode.
6. You are still picking up Polly Pocket shoes, some of which will be forever trapped between the hardwood floorboards.
7. Nintendo was their Atari and the Gameboy and Gamecube ruled.
8. You taught your kids life lessons via Berenstain Bears books, especially the one where the mom bear freaks out and has a nervous breakdown so they better pipe down if they don’t want that to happen around here.
9. Your kid’s first pet was either an endlessly noisy Furby or a Japanese animal on a keychain that had to be electronically “fed.”
10. <Insert any one of 1000 Harry Potter references.>
11. Your now-nearly-grown kid’s “back in my day” sentences often include reference to Saturday morning Nickelodeon cartoon shows like Angry Beavers, Hey Arnold, The Wild Thornberrys, The Powerpuff Girls, Catdog or Kablam.
12. When they see kids watching Blue’s Clues with Joe, your kids roll their eyes and talk about Steve, the original.
13. There are still Beanie Babies in your house.
14. Your kid’s early fears involved getting slimed, Goosebumps, Are You Afraid of the Dark and the very sight of The Blair Witch Project movie trailer.
15. Your kids’ first music involved dancing to the Macarena while it was on the radio, and Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys CDs.
16. Scary purple things: you can name the purple Teletubby and finish the lyrics to the Barney song: "I love you, you love me..."

Ah yes, a simpler time, when McDonald’s still had the ball pits that only a 90s mom remembers.