No, don't pick off the pre-flowers. It can be used as a mother right now just fine, but as children of the mother the children will be in the same growth stage as Mom.
The issue here is one of hormonal confusion, that's all, and it can be set right using the appropriate photoperiod. Want her vegging? Then an 18/6 should work just fine. The big thing is that getting it back to a normal growing state takes time, several weeks in my experience. The best way I've found to monitor what's happening and where the plant is at, in terms of growth phase (vegetative vs regenerative/flowering) is to look at the number of lobes on each new leaf.
Basically, it goes like this (when going back to vegetative phase): You start seeing the plant throw triple-lobed/bladed leaves. Assuming the plant is on a veg lighting schedule, after about two weeks it'll start putting out single lobed leaves. That's ok, watch it do that for about two weeks. After that, it'll start pushing out the triples again, that phase takes approximately another two weeks. After *that* you should start seeing normal growth of 5, 7, 9 lobes on each leaf, and then you know the plant's growing normally.
You may see the leaves twist and pucker during this time. While it's important to be cognizant of possible deficiencies or imbalances, it's also good to know that when the plant is flipping back and forth you're going to see some really screwy stuff. As long as it's growing, you should be able to get it to grow out of the weirdness.
