By Katie Brady 
Becoming a parent means you will deal with messes, right? Seriously, sometimes the messes are so unbearable- you really think you might just lose your mind. One mama had enough when her college aged son left a mess while he was visiting home for a break, and the surprise she sent her son is epic.
Connor Cox is a freshman at Westminster College and he receives sweet care packages from his mom, Terri, once or twice a semester. When he received his normal care package a couple of weeks ago, he was expecting the things his mom usually sends- “Gushers, Pringles, chips, and some protein bars,” he told TODAY Parents. “Like any other college boy.”
It didn’t take him long to realize that his awesome mom had actually sent him a box of trash. Specifically trash that he had left on his bedroom floor in Leonardtown, Maryland.
Cox posted a picture of his special mail delivery of trash to Twitter. “Thought my mom was sending me a care package… but instead she sent me a box of trash I was supposed to take out,” he wrote. The tweet didn’t take long to go viral, garnering almost 1,500 likes.
“I didn’t know how to react,” said Cox. He said his mom had played pranks on him and sisters Madison, 22, Mackenzie, 19, and Kyleigh, 16, in the past, but “nothing to this level.”
“Connor came home from college, and his priority was visiting his high school friends and having friends visit him at our house,” his mom, Terri, told TODAY Parents. “Connor made a habit of leaving his dirty dishes and trash in his path, assuming it would disappear. He was on his ‘Christmas Vacation!’
“Well, the fact that we all were on our Christmas vacation did not cross his mind.”
The night before Connor was returning to college, his mom said he was in his room “cleaning and packing,” so she said she was “surprised” when she opened his door the next morning and was met with a “foul odor.”
“Dirty, sweaty, smelly clothing, used dryer sheets, and other debris littered the carpet,” she said. “Connor’s dresser drawers were open and included clothing as well as Gushers trash, clothing tags, empty Gatorade bottles, and a Loco can. I thought to myself, ‘This is completely unacceptable.'”
So, like any fed up kick butt mom, Terri knew she had to do something about this. “Thoughts raced through my mind as to how I could get the idea across that I was not a maid,” she said. “I needed Connor to be responsible for his own trash, and I in no way was willing to haul out his trash. We had agreed his room would be left in the state it was when he arrived home. Connor needed to get the message that his trash is his and he was going to need to dispose of it no matter the cost.”
Terri packaged up the trash from her son’s floor using an empty box from her son’s room- and a few weeks later, along with a box of clothes and food, that trash was sent to her son.
Connor says that his roommate thinks it’s pretty awesome his mom is such a “savage.”
Now Connor and his mom have a very mutual understanding.
“When I called my mom, we shared a nice laugh, because she’s always had a great sense of humor,” he said. “But she also didn’t forget to remind me that I need to complete all my chores when I’m home.”
“I love my kiddos and they know it,” said his mom. “It is fun now to be able to use humor for these teachable moments. When the kids were younger, rewards and consequences were much more concrete and easier to track. Now that they are older, humor seems to go further and is more memorable. All kids need boundaries no matter the age or stage.”
Bravo Terri! You are paving the way for other fed up mamas! Way to teach your kiddo an amazing lesson!
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