Madonna as a mom: Not ‘as tough as I should be’ with the kids

As Madonna would know, it’s often hard to wrangle a willful young woman -- including daughter Lourdes, who was photographed recently smoking a cigarette on the streets of New York.

Critics furrowed their brows at the 15-year-old touting the cancer stick, putting the “MDNA” singer’s parenting skills in question.

“[I] wasn’t very happy,” she said on NBC’s “Rock Center” in an interview that airs Wednesday night. “But honestly, I don’t think I’m as tough as I should be. I think I need to be maybe tougher. It’s hard -- every day is a negotiation. But cigarette smoking I’m not very fond of -- for anyone.”

So there you have it: Madge has the task of parenting a teenager. Not the easiest and she’s not pretending otherwise.

In fact, juggling her work and family life as a single mom “must be hard, because I complain all the time,” she said with a laugh. “It’s pretty challenging. But so far I’ve survived with sanity and humor intact.”

Hey, if that smoke smell dares enter the singer’s New York household in the future, Madonna could always fire off a spritz of her new signature fragrance Truth or Dare, which launched last week at Macy’s in Herald Square. It’s a scent, she said, inspired by her own mother.

It could be a lovely sense-memory trigger for the family, in case Mom decides to get tougher with young’uns Lourdes, Rocco, David and Mercy James.

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Follow Matt Donnelly on Twitter @mattdonnelly.