Ughhh help me convince my mom!!!

[Neal]

I'll never forget my first actual pet snake that I bought.

I was living under her roof and I wanted a snake, and her quick but decisive NO all but told me to drop it. So growing up I knew better then to ask my dad because I was 10x more likely to get a yes from my mother than my father. When I'd get in trouble for bad grades through elementary and middle school my mom would come to me with the report card and say we'll hide it from your dad. He would either forget about it, though I think one year he asked for it and my mom put it off all summer, when she finally showed it to him and he grounded me it was nearly the end of summer. While my dad was at work though my mom would tell me I was ungrounded and just be home before my dad got home from work. Now that may sound like I was spoiled but I was a momma's boy and still am. I'm very close with my mom and while I've turned out to be a hell of a kid, my own house and a great job for retirement, both of them couldn't be prouder.

So anyways rewind back to when I was 16? I saw a snake I wanted and I asked my mom a few weeks later and she responded we'll see, which meant no but she didn't feel like having me annoy her. So sometime that week I went to rite-aid and got one of those prepaid credit cards and loaded money on it. I ended up ordering a snake from online anyways and when it came in my mom had no way to say NO, because the snake was already here and I had spent money on it. We just didn't tell me dad until a few weeks later which my mom told him she said it was okay, which she didn't. She has always been terrified of snakes but has gotten a lot better over the recent years. Her favorite snake that I had was my Yellow Anaconda a few years back. She likes my rufous beaked but she's still sketchy of them because of the lack of color. She loves colorful snakes, and it's easier for her to get used to one she finds more attractive than not. She's gotten so used to snakes that when I flew to the United Kingdom she said she would care for my 3 rufous beaked since they live together and with being colubrids they digest faster and I didn't want to come home to find one eaten. Well I looked around to friends and stuff but the only person I could find that would take care of them wanted to charge me like $150, that was feeding & cleaning(I had my own food btw). I just found that to be absurd and I remember my mom telling me she would look over my snakes for me, but I didn't want to put that burden on her, so I was going to cancel my United Kingdom trip. I ended up making sure she was okay with this because of her not liking to feed them mice. Long story short I basically set a time that was good for me being +6 hours and her to feed them, I gave her step by step instructions and we would video on Yahoo so I could monitor everything. She even held some of them which I didn't know, but it wasn't an issue.

So long story short, my mom has finally come around after years. As a child she was deathly afraid of lizards because when she was a child either my grandpa or my uncle threw a cage full of anoles(green lizards) on her. So to this day she still has a fear of them.

Now on a positive note, she came to this past repitcon with me that was in December and enjoyed it. She wants to come to them all now.

EDIT:
So the morale of the story is try to get your mom involved in your snakes, holding and stuff. Taking baby steps and don't pressure her. Just let her see how you deal with them for awhile. It may take some time and some take longer than others, but once it works out, it's a lot easier.