Susan Heffley (Diary of a Wimpy Kid)

Susan Heffley is Greg, Rodrick, and Manny's mother. She is also a major character in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid franchise.

Why You Wouldn't Want Her as a Mother

 * 1) In the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, Susan is shown to be a generic overprotective mother who is mostly against modern technology.
 * 2) She constantly embarrasses Greg as shown in most of the books.
 * 3) She lets a certain spoiled brat get away with everything like drawing on Greg's wall, not punishing Manny at all, and letting him get away with almost killing the entire Heffley family in Cabin Fever.
 * 4) She is the reason the Heffley's are on disastrous vacations in The Long Haul, The Getaway, and The Deep End are vacations that caused Frank to lose his boat and the family losing almost all of their stuff, the family getting hated at a luxurious place, and almost causing Greg to get in trouble with the camp director. Yet she still wants to have family bonding time, showing she has learned nothing from the past experiences.
 * 5) In The Long Haul book, she lets Manny keep the pig even though she should have known that pigs cause lots of problems.
 * 6) She is very unlikable in the book "Dog Days".
 * 7) In The Long Haul movie, Susan was at her absolute worst, first of all, she was nothing like the other films. Alicia Silverstone gave a threatening performance and wasn't like Rachel Harris who gave the character a sweet performance.
 * 8) She started dancing during Rodrick's concert, which embarrassed him all over the entire internet.
 * 9) She gave Greg the advice to make the right choice and then gave him stupid advice to ruin his reputation.
 * 10) In Dog Days, she tries to make a reading club for Greg and the rest of the neighborhood, ultimately embarrassing Greg yet again.
 * 11) She also never believes Rodrick or Greg (mostly Greg). An example would be in the Rodrick Rules movie, in an animated scene, in which an obscure cat the Heffleys own named Frisky, pushed off a lamp, breaking it. As a result, Manny told Susan that "Bubby did it", causing Susan to be mad at him.
 * 12) She thinks Manny's imaginative friends are real (although, to be fair, she didn't want to make Manny upset by telling him his friends weren't real), and she takes it to far. For example, when Manny broke a plate, he told Susan that Johnny Cheddar did it, and instead of punishing Manny for lying and breaking a plate, she punished Johnny.
 * 13) Another example of how unlikable she is in The Long Haul movie is the scene where Greg almost gets hit by a car and looks at what she said  Be more careful! You almost woke up Manny!. This scene shows how bad of a mother Susan is.
 * 14) She ruined Greg's chance of being with his crush, Holly Hills.
 * 15) * She even ruined Greg's friendship with Rowley too.
 * 16) Most of the time, she relies her parenting on opinionated parenting magazines as an only source of advice and discipline and also tells her how to do her job rather than teaching her kids the good lessons that they need herself, in which case, proves that Susan isn't exactly ready to be a parent.
 * 17) *She even returned an Action Walker that Greg really liked just because she read an article that prevents kids from learning to walk.
 * 18) She forces people to do things based on what she and Manny like. This proves that she can't let people do exactly what they want to do and constantly over spoils Manny too much.
 * 19) * In addition to that and as mentioned in BQ#10, in Old School, she forced a petition for people to sign to go without technology for at least 48 hours/2 days by her standards.
 * 20) *While her bonding options seem like good ideas, that doesn’t mean that you force people into doing it just because you want to.
 * 21) *She even made up a new system known as "Screen-Free Weekends", where she doesn't allow Greg, Rodrick, or Manny to use Screens on Saturday or Sundays just because  she thinks screens are what makes them misbehave.
 * 22) She is an old-world mother who fails to live in the present time and wants to live in the past time.
 * 23) In “Wrecking Ball”, she always stalls people who criticize her furniture, proving that she can't handle criticism.
 * 24) She even threw a paper flower away, which poor Greg made when he was young.
 * 25) She is extremely impatient. For example, when on vacation trips, she always takes pictures of random people and puts them in her family’s photo album, which proves that she hates standing for a long time, in addition to that, she even forged a signature of the author of one of Greg's favorite book, just because of the wait time.
 * 26) In “Rowley Jefferson's Awesome Friendly Adventure”, Rowley cried because Greg didn't find Rowley's tap-dancing good and instead of just talking to him on what is an opinion, she took his side and punished Greg, proving that when it comes to spoiled brats who can't take criticism, she always takes their side.
 * 27) She killed Greg's pet fish, due to her putting Rodrick's fish in the same bowl as Greg's because she thought Greg's bowl was cleaner.
 * 28) In the Third Wheel, instead of sharing a crib with Rodrick, she forced Greg (when he was a baby) to sleep on the top drawer, which is a large safety hazard for Greg in which case could've killed him.
 * 29) *Another example of when something very dangerous happened to Greg was when she put a bar of soap in Greg's mouth because he learned a swear word from Rodrick. While it is justified, it is a bit too dangerous to do that.
 * 30) Also while Erica Cerra does a good voicing her in the 2021 movie, the audio quality for her voice is simply too jumbled to the point where it looks like she is recording through her phone.
 * 31) In "Double Down", when Greg bought a bunch of stuff for himself at a book fair, she made him return all the stuff he got and made him get books, making it clear how overbearing she is.
 * 32) It's mentioned that she doesn't let Frank buy anything without her permission and that she gets mad at him when he does, yet again showing how controlling she is.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) These can be mostly blamed on Gramma Heffley, Susan's mom, as she was responsible for Susan being a horrible parent
 * 2) *Her mother seems to have no respect at all and to rub salt to the wound, she shows favoritism towards the family's pet dog Sweetie.
 * 3) She is able to be a caring mother when she wants or has to.
 * 4) In the first 3 Diary of a Wimpy Kid movies (especially the 2021 movie), her character is much more relatable and likable.
 * 5) *Rachel Harris (live-action) and Erica Cerra (voice) did a good job portraying her as a good mother.
 * 6) She helps her children at times.
 * 7) Although she rarely grounds Manny for his brattiness, Susan has shown sometimes that she is willing to correct or reprimand Manny if his behavior isn't the best, as shown in Rodrick Rules when she talks with Manny and convinces him to make a gift to Greg (though a really useless and dangerous one, a spiked aluminum ball which ends up hurting Rowley) for breaking his console and while she doesn't punish Manny for nearly getting all of them killed in Cabin Fever, she isn't shown to be happy with him when she ties him up to his shoes.
 * 8) Sometimes she means well with her ideas and has every right to try to convince Greg to spend more time outside the house so he can enjoy summer instead of spending all day at the house playing video games.
 * 9) She gives Greg and Rodrick lots of advice to help them such as the time in Hard Luck where Greg was feeling sad that Rowley isn't his friend anymore.
 * 10)  Diary of a Wimpy Kid would probably not be as good as it is without her.
 * 11) Her design can be seen as cute to some people (both the live action movies and the 2021 movie).

Videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt_Wno2_yXg&t=19s