playgroupsarenoplaceforchildren

She was pretending to be Mommy.

Purse?  Check.

Stroller?  Check.

Devil horns?  I have no idea.

******

Psst.  I still have a t-shirt giveaway from The Rocking Pony over here...

I was just thinking recently how parenting is getting so much BETTER as they get older are farther away from babyhood.  In the past few weeks, I’ve actually been able to reason with Ella.

“Ella if you behave, I’ll give you a cookie.”

“Okay!  I be good, Mama.”

And guess what?  She WAS good.

I walked around feeling like I had finally gotten this parenting thing down pat.  “I’m pretty good at this parenting thing!” I thought to myself and out loud to Tate.

“You know, Tate, I feel like our kids have gotten so easy.  They REALLY listen to me!  It’s been like, a whole week and neither child has been in time out!”

He looked at me like I was an alien with a palm tree growing out of my chin.  “What about that time you called me last week when they were wreaking havoc?  Or this morning when you told me that you had to put them in their rooms for their own safety?”

So maybe it had only been about six hours, but SIX WHOLE HOURS of my children behaving feels like a week.

It seems like we get on a roll where the kids are behaving, or at least their misbehavior isn’t that damaging to my psyche that I’m left scarred for months afterwards.  Right now, though, we’re on the Deluxe Triple Salchow of OUT OF CONTROL BEHAVIOR roll.  Damaged psyche ahead!

It’s awesome, as I’m sure you can imagine.

The mall and it’s germ-infested play area is where the downward spiral first began.  Ella, being Ella and very much three-years-old, threw the tantrum to end all tantrums.  It was the type of tantrum that had all the perfect parents judging me with their evil looks and perfectly behaved children.  She was screaming and thrashing and I was sweating and silently screaming the f-word in my head.

I wanted to ask the perfect moms, “How do you propose I get her to stop screaming?  Seriously!!  I’m politely asking her, I’m threatening to take away everything that was or ever will be meaningful to her, I’m kicking myself for failing to pack duct tape.  What can I doooooooo?!?”

Carson, who is four and who I was certain had passed the fall on the floor tantrum stage, threw his own mega tantrum within a few hours of Ella’s.  Luckily it was in the privacy of our home, not in front of other’s prying eyes.  BUT STILL, it was a tantrum that no amount of reasoning, ignoring, redirecting, or any other textbook behavior management technique worked to just make him stop.

It’s been like this for about two weeks now, with only a few hours respite and sunshine in between their outbursts.  I’m starting to believe there is something really wrong with my children.  Surely it’s not just my kids that act this way???  Please?

They are thisclose to getting shipped off to a far away land that’s FAR AWAY.

And I vow to never verbalize or even think any thoughts where I extol the virtues of my parenting skills ever again.

“Mama, wait.  Don’t take a picture.  I don’t have all my Silly Bandz on.  I’m not cool yet.”  –Ella, Age 3 (going on 13)

This is Ella.

She is not the daughter I expected to have. When I was pregnant with her, I’d imagine her in all the little girls I saw everywhere. I just knew she’d be blond, with long, straight hair. She’d carry a little purse and wear smocked dresses and bows.  My daughter would be dainty and clean.

That is not Ella.

She’ll wear dresses, but only if I beg, plead, and force her. Bows stay in her hair, on a good day, for twenty minutes. Usually I find them on the floor, minutes after combing through her nest of golden caramels curls.  Ella’s favorite accessory is dirt.

Princesses?  Ella thinks they are just pretty decorations on her underwear.  She doesn’t understand why she can’t have Thomas the Train panties.

I signed her up for a little dance class, but what she desperately wants to do is play t-ball. At Dollywood, she doesn’t understand why she can’t ride the roller coaster. Ella is my fearless baby.

I’m always having to tell her, “when you’re bigger, Sweet Pea, then it will be your turn.”

I don’t miss the daughter that I imagined her to be.  To me, she is perfect.

Ella, please always be who you are.  Walk your own walk.  Mommy and Daddy love you.  YOU.

We took the kids out on the lake for the first time.

After a few hours of swimming, it was time for lunch and I pulled out the sandwiches I’d packed in the cooler.  Carson began eating his sandwich and exclaimed, “Mom!  This is a great sandwich!  Can you make these lake sandwiches again, sometime?!”  As he ate, he kept proclaiming the deliciousness of the “lake sandwiches” I prepared.

He liked his so much that he ate Tate’s sandwich, too.

Since Carson was such a fan, I thought I’d share the very special recipe for the Lake Sandwiches.

Sliced ham, swiss cheese, mustard, and bibb lettuce between two slices of whole wheat bread.  Pack in a cooler.  Swim in the lake for two hours and become ravenously hungry.  Eat the sandwich, but fail to recognize it as the exact sandwich you’ve eaten two to three times per week for probably the last three years.  Voila!

We just returned from a whirlwind trip visiting family, family, and more family.

I’m kind of family-ed out.  I’m particularly in need of a break from two small humans named Carson and Ella.  For a better part of the week we were gone, they drove me insane with their whining and crying and generally unruly, albeit typical, three and four year old behavior.

Now that we’re back home, I’m working on getting back to that mellow, grateful place where I don’t feel like locking them in a closet for a few hours.   As they kept acting like jerks last week and I grasped at the the tiniest thread of patience that remained, I kept thinking to myself, “I’m a much better parent when…”

I’m a much better parent when they aren’t sleep deprived.

I’m a much better parent when I’m not sleep deprived.

I’m a much better parent during the day than I am at bedtime, particularly when very tired children refuse to go to sleep.

I’m a much better parent when my children aren’t hopped up on fast food.

I’m a much better parent when the kids aren’t fighting.

I’m a much better parent when it’s not 1000 degrees outside.

I’m a much better parent when my children aren’t whining.

I’m a much better parent when I haven’t been in a car for nine hours.

I’m a much better parent when I haven’t listened to the same Thomas & Friends video for seven hours straight.

I’m a much better parent when I haven’t slept in the same bed with one of my children for six out of seven nights.

I’m a much better parent when I haven’t taken a foot to the face in the middle of the night.

I’m a much better parent when I’ve had a few hours to myself.

Well, enough of this whining.  I have 27 loads of laundry to wash.  I also have 42,354 photos to edit, you know, to remind me of how happy and great my life is.  Ahem.

I remember exactly how old I was when my mother allowed me to leave the house, roam the neighborhood, and not even bother to tell her where I was going, who I was going to be with, or who the parents were.   I remember this because IT NEVER HAPPENED.

When I was in elementary school, my parents knew (or had at least met) my friend’s parents.  If I were to walk to one of their houses, it was with the understanding that I would go straight there, I wouldn’t leave and go somewhere else without telling my mom, and while I was there, I’d be polite and respectful.

Mostly, I was a good kid, but I didn’t always follow those rules.  There were times that I remember leaving one friend’s house to go to another friend’s house, without calling to tell my mom, and feeling both exhilaration and the pit of fear in my stomach for breaking a major rule.  I’m sure that there were times I annoyed my friend’s parents by overstaying my welcome, or eating snacks, and drinking their juice boxes, but I can’t remember ever being purposely rude to a friend’s mom or dad.

We’ve become friends with a family in our neighborhood who have kids the same ages as Carson and Ella.   Down the street there is a family that also two kids the same ages as ours, but until recently we never saw them outside.  A few months ago, the five year old (I’ll call him Jared), whose parent’s we’ve never met, started coming down to knock on my neighbor’s door to play.  He would stay for several hours, only to leave when my neighbor would tell him it was time to go home.  Jared has also shown up in my neighbor’s fenced backyard, and tried to open their back door when they didn’t answer the front door.

My neighbors have also seen him roaming around the neighborhood alone on numerous occasions.

Jared has come over to my house a few times, usually with my friend’s son, Aiden.  Every time he comes over there is some sort of incident.  He ran over my son with our Power Wheels monster truck, literally RAN OVER him.  I know it was an accident, but I told Jared that he was no longer allowed to drive the truck because he couldn’t drive it safely.  When my husband dumped the water out of our baby pool because all of the boys were getting too rough, Jared threw a fit and kicked the pool, then sassed Tate when he told him that he wasn’t allowed to kick our things.

He’s told my neighbor and I to get him something to eat, or something to drink.  “…And be sure to put ice in it.”

These are just things that kids do.  The interactions between our boys are things that will happen, kids pick on one another, they’ll be too rowdy, accidents will happen.  I’d like to think that I’ve taught Carson to be polite to adults, but I can’t guarantee that he’d act like a model child if I weren’t there to watch…which is exactly the crux of this issue.

Where are Jared’s parents?

My friend let her son walk down to the Jared’s backyard today to play with water balloons.  From her backyard, she could watch them as they played.  About five minutes later, Jared’s dad came outside and told the boys that if they wanted to play, they needed to go back to Aiden’s house.

Apparently my neighbor (and sometimes me) have been designated Jared’s babysitter.

There are so many things wrong here.

1.  Jared’s parents do not know us and have never attempted to meet us.  I don’t even know what their names are.

2.  Jared has spent entire afternoons at our houses, HOURS, and neither of his parents have come outside to check on him.

3.  My neighbor and I don’t appreciate the assumption that OH!  Sure we’ll babysit your kid, feed your kid, and give your kid drinks for hours on end.

4.  My neighbor and I are worried about Jared’s safety since nobody, besides us, seems to be watching him.  He regularly crosses the street without looking, because he’s only FIVE-years-old and doesn’t have the best judgment.

5.  Jared is FIVE.

I admit that I don’t really like Jared much, but I know that Carson and Aiden enjoy playing with him.  My knee-jerk response is to make a rule that Jared’s not welcome at my house simply because he’s kind of a jerk and because he ran over my kid.  My softer side, the one that doesn’t want to shame a child who is only five-years-old, is to make sure that Jared understands our rules and to send him home only if he breaks those rules.

My neighbor and I both are unsure how to handle the situation as a whole.  We don’t feel comfortable being responsible for Jared, we don’t want to become his default babysitters, but we don’t really know what we should say to his parents.  It’s not like we want to say, “Hey, we watch your kid for hours, you should take a turn and watch our kids, too.”  Um, no.

But what do we say?