Friends are good, right? You want kids to have friends, right? They are supposed to drive you crazy, right? Right?!
My kids are driving me crazy these days with behaviors I can track directly back to their friends. Eve has been full of the baby talk lately. Baby talk, baby behavior, baby, baby, baby. My “baby my baby” plan works sometimes, but more often I find myself annoyed and asking her to please, please use her big girl voice. We had a playdate last week with one friend and I realized that the baby talk Eve now uses is exactly the same as how her friend talks, and how her friend’s mom talks to them both. Ugh. This week we had a playdate with two kids from her class and I noticed that they both use baby talk. I guess maybe I’m just spoiled at how verbally advanced she is. Perhaps most three year olds do still talk with baby talk. Ugh. I really like when she uses real words. Really!
Our neighbor came over the other day.The three of them played for about an hour and at the end both of my kids were making fart jokes and calling each other “big fat poop heads.” Lovely conversation. We now have a “potty talk belongs in the bathroom” rule. I guess kids will learn such stuff, but it bugs me when I can so easily track it back to their friends. Maybe that’s a good thing though, maybe it would be worse if I didn’t know their friends and had no idea where the behavior was coming from.
Lex came home with a note yesterday on his sheet. He was really upset and kept telling me he was very angry about it. Apparently he was calling other kids names. “Big fat…” is what the note said. His teacher had him apologize to the other kids and she said it took him a lot of effort to do so, but afterwards he was fine for the rest of the day. I’m not sure if Lex was angry at his teacher for the note or at himself for the behavior. Either way, I don’t think he’ll do it again. I was secretly happy it happened because I’ve been asking the kids all week to stop with the name calling, but they don’t care. Clearly I need a better strategy, or a teacher to back me up! It was nice for him to get a chance to understand why I’ve been asking them to stop and to see that other people also have a problem with the behavior.
A friend yesterday was telling me that she’s working with teenagers who are homeschooled and she said they are super well behaved and studious and polite and and and… It made me wonder if exposure to bad behavior, like exposure to the chicken pox, is best had when the child is young and still moldable by a loving parent. Or is it better to wait until a child is older and potentially able to make more mature decisions… Love and Logic says it’s best to help kids develop those critical decision making skills (like don’t call classmates poop heads) when they are young and the consequences are still small. My mom says “small people, small problems. big people, big problems.” I guess I’d rather have them learn these behaviors, and their consequences, now when they are young. I’m hoping it will result in polite, well behaved teenagers. I can hope, right?!
my dear, you cannot shelter your children from the world
you will always tell them why that is a poor choice for them, why we don’t do that at our house, why you expect them to follow rules of behavior in your house even if they don’t have to elsewhere, why what we say truly matters, etc, etc, etc,
your children may be the light the world needs, so continue to teach them to be compassionate and strong and not to be swayed by the poor choices their friends may be making…..and they will be safe and happy
Words only a parent can pass on. They are going to turn out just fine. What an AWESOME family!!! God bless you all Mary Ellen.
Their friends don’t love them enough to keep them from wrong, only enough to ask them to do what they do. A parent loves them more than any friend. A parent loves them enough to stop them from doing and saying things which will get them hurt, get others hurt, or get them in trouble. Which many times they perceive as their parents being mean, or the discipline necessary is mean. That is true LOVE, and defined true friendship.
Words only a parent can pass on. They are going to turn out just fine. What an AWESOME family!!! God bless you all Mary Ellen.
Their friends don’t love them enough to keep them from wrong, only enough to ask them to do what they do. A parent loves them more than any friend. A parent loves them enough to stop them from doing and saying things which will get them hurt, get others hurt, or get them in trouble. Which means many times they perceive their parents as being mean, or the discipline necessary is mean. That is true LOVE, and also defines true friendship.
Wow. Hope those “friends” don’t read your blog. Every parent has things they think are ok for their kid to do, but maybe other parents don’t. Maybe home schooling and keeping your kids sheltered from other children gets you through childhood, but I think it would come back to haunt you later.