I'm beginning to realize that the older kids get, the more difficult their "problems" are. When you have a baby, all you have to worry about is if they will bawl their head off in the middle of Sacrament meeting. When you have a toddler, all you worry about is whether or not they will pummel some strange kid on the playground. There's kind of a "honeymoon" period between 5 and 8 years old. Then 9 comes around and they start learning all kinds of fun things from friends at school. They come home with new "information" that is gross and totally inappropriate. After discussing with them what is okay to say and what isn't, you begin to realize just how important it is that they hang with good friends.
This has been on my mind a lot this last year. Teaching Dylan the way to choose good friends without being rude and judgmental to those kids that are maybe not so great. "Be friends with them from a distance", is kinda my motto. I think its catching on, but its not a perfect system.
Yesterday Dylan was playing over at the neighbor's house. After a few hours, he called me on his cell phone (which has TOTALLY come in handy, by the way) and asked me if he could go with his friends to another neighbor kid's house. Now this kid doesn't have the best reputation and everything I know of him is T-R-O-U-B-L-E. I told him there's no way he could go to his house and that was the end of the discussion. He started on the "why can't I, so and so can"? I replied in the typical parent fashion and said, "that's tough, I don't care about them, I care about you". He said, "Fine" and hung up. I was feeling annoyed with his obvious lack of common sense when about 30 seconds later he calls me-bawling. "I'm so sorry, I hung up on you. I'm sorry I wasn't listening, blah, blah, blah". He was back in his normal Dylan state of mind and I was at least glad he had the guts to admit he was wrong and apologize. He usually has a really level head on his shoulders, but nobody's perfect. About 15 minutes later, he calls me back totally stoked and informs me that nobody's mom would allow them to go to this kid's house and how I was right after all. Duh, I knew that.
So now what I've learned is that the honeymoon is over and its just gonna get worse.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
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1 comments:
I love that none of the other moms would let their kids go either. I think all to often I didn't read the fine print in the motherhood contract. What did we sign up for? Hope you are doing well. Do you know what you are having yet?
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