It must suck to be an alpha mom. That is what I thought when my friend tearfully told me she had a 20-minute row with her daughter over clothing.

“She has a closet full of clothes and this week she wore the same thing twice,” said my friend in a whisper. “I really had to put my foot down.”

You have got to be kidding me. I do not have this problem, because the day school ended I went on mom vacation.

That last school term was a doozy with fights about everything from tooth-brushing to itchy socks.

The last straw was my 7-year-old daughter screaming that I loved to hurt her. I was brushing her hair, gently.

So I decided, that is it, no more brushing hair.

I took her to the hair salon and had her hair whacked into a bob.

She looks great and we have not shed a single tear since. She brushes it herself now (at least I think she does).

Bolstered by that I decided to chuck out the ironing board as well.

So what if she turns up at camp looking like a walking wrinkle.

And I am not crying if she wants to wear the same clean shirt twice in one week.

I took her into her room and showed her a piece of furniture called a dresser.

“See, here are your shorts,” I said. “Here are your T-shirts. You dress yourself.”

“Ohhh,” she said, wonderingly.

This last bit turned out to be more challenging than I expected. Most of her clothes are pink, so there is not much chance of mismatch, but this morning she went to camp in a paint-smeared dress two sizes too small with a little hole in the side.

Deep breath, let it go. It was art camp, not Cinderella’s ball. Then there was lunch, which comes home uneaten more often than not.

“You gave me peanut butter when I wanted jam,” she said.

“There was a little bit of crust left on the bread. I couldn’t eat it.”

I said to her: “Let me introduce you to the cutting board. This here is bread.”

It was so interesting to see what her own sandwiches looked like.

The crusts stayed on and the jam was spread unevenly, but for once she ate them.

Slacker Mom is having a great summer.