The things that rattle around up there…

I’ve had about 8 things bouncing around in my head lately that I’ve needed to put into sentence, rather than open ended thought form and just haven’t had the time, energy or motivation to do it.
The first thing I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about is parenting. I expected being a mom to be time consuming, to require sacrifice, to require me getting rid of college age partying stuff, to mean less sleep at night, to mean watching seemingly endless hours of children’s television programming. I expected all that. What I did *not* expect was a redefinition of my values. I didn’t expect that parenting would require me to examine MYSELF so closely and decide who I want to be and who I want my children to be and how I want them to behave. I think though, that all good parents must examine these questions. I try (and frequently fail) to model behavior that I would prefer my children to have. Its oh-so-much easier to lead by example than to lead by orders.

I was reminded of this today at a Bridal Shower. I took Logan. There were 2 other little girls there who were about 3 or 4-ish. I couldn’t believe how differently they all behaved. I knew the one little girl. She is my step sisters cousin (but not my cousin because it’s the wrong side of the marriage line – I hope that makes sense). Anyway, her mother, while being fairly main-stream is still a decent mom. Paid attention to where her kid was, that her daughter was playing nicely, you know, she was present without being overly involved.

I, on the other hand, am guilty of being over involved. I need to back off and let my child figure out how to handle conflict on his own but at the same time, every one in his life is always kind to him. He doesn’t know what to do if someone doesn’t say please, let alone is bossy or manipulative. So anyway, this other little girl; her mom was paying absolutely no attention to her. I mean, we were in the front yard of a house with tents set up and the kids were playing on the yard, this girl could have run into the yard and the mom likely wouldn’t have noticed!!

Annoyingly, I was the only mom who thought ahead and brought toys. By some stroke of genius though, I managed to bring 3 of everything. 3 little cars, 3 books, 3 small plastic animals, I even made 3 paper airplanes, one for each kid. The one little girl though, she just wanted all of them. One of the other moms did get a blanket out of her car for the kids to sit on and the mean little girl kept pushing Logan off the blanket. To the point where I had to go over and say “Do you like to be pushed?” “No? Then don’t push!” I hate getting involved; telling other people’s kids how to act, but Jesus, I’m not going to stand there while she shoves my kid around.

So, then when we went to leave I had to wrestle our toys out of her hands to take them home. Her mom was STILL oblivious. I would never have known which woman was her mother had I not asked my step sister. My step sister says its really not the little girl’s fault that she’s bossy and mean like that. Apparently its better if the mom ignores her because when she does talk to her, all she does is yell at her. Ugh.

I don’t understand why some people don’t get that little kids are people to and speaking to them with respect teaches them to speak with respect to their peers and other adults. Seriously, why is that a hard concept for people?

Ok, so this blog has turned into a rant about other people’s kids and I didn’t really express my thoughts so much about how I behave in a manner I wouldn’t mind my kids copying but… oh well. We just left the shower 30 minutes ago (early) because I wanted to smack the mom around. So, rather than being rude, I excused ourselves early by saying the kids were tired.

On a happy note: My step sister’s Grandma is the nicest lady ever. She insisted on holding and playing with Quinn while I got a plate and ate AND THEN, she managed to get him to go to sleep so he slept in his little carseat thingie for about 45 min and let me talk and eat desert and everything. Wonderful woman