Taking your children out is always an adventure. Will they be on there best behavior? Will you be able to enjoy yourself, or is it just going to be about watching them? Do you relax your rules or do you stay steadfast to your disciplinary plan. This may sound like I run a military boot camp, but I strongly believe that the way children behave when they are not in your home or even under your supervision does reflect on you. Why do you think kids love going to there Grandma’s or Auntie’s house because there they can run wild without anyone saying anything to them?
This weekend I went over to my girlfriend’s house, with the whole gang, my daughters and husband. They don’t have children, so it’s fun for them to interact with my girls, it’s like they have a new toy. It’s the first time I have ever been to her house and I was worried that my daughters, especially my lil’ lady would as I like to say “Show her ass” which means show her true colors and run a muck in my friends brand new apartment. It’s funny because before when I went to someone’s house I looked at there stuff and enjoyed how everyone has different decorating styles, you take mental notes of what you like, you ask questions like where they got those fabulous decorative pillows. But when you have a child and you go to someone’s house all you think about when you look at there stuff is “wow that looks expensive”, “where the hell am I going to find another one of those”, “I hope that nothing gets broken, I can’t afford to replace that”, “Cha ching, Cha ching”. They want you to feel so comfortable that they act like it doesn’t matter that your daughter just spilled juice on their new rug, or that she is running back and forth from room to room touching You wonder to yourself do they really mean it’s ok that she wrote on the sofa that I just got a week ago or do they just want to make you feel comfortable.
My question is when they tell you that it’s ok that your child is doing these things that normally you try to prevent, do you politely disagree and continue disciplining your child or do you let the rules go out the window and give your child a get out of jail free card. I really don’t know what to do in these situations. I tend to over discipline when I am out and about with my child because I don’t want anyone to say “her daughter now that girl is too much”. So when my friend was like girl leave lil’ lady alone she is fine let her play, I wonder should you just let them be, do they really know what they getting themselves into, do they know that giving this child a free pass leads to drawing on the walls, castles made out of all the pillows on the sofa, a non stop marathon of “kung fu panda”, they can’t possibly know.
My daughter is well behaved for the most part, but she is two years old, she will test the limits especially when she is in a new place. I do try to feel comfortable when I take her out to someone else’s house and I try to let her get comfortable, to a certain point, and when well meaning friends try to issue the get out of jail free card, I smile and nod and look at my daughter with the look, she knows I mean business. I do relax my rules to an extent, I mean I do want my child to have fun but I also want my child to value others. So I pose this question to all, when is it ever ok to issue the get out of jail free card?
I don't have children.. and if and when I say.."it's okay"..I do mean it. What I expect is for "it" to be broken and me have to replace it...I expected that the minute I offered you an invite with your "terrible two-year old" BUT.. and this is a BIG BUT...it is worth it to make my guests feel as comfortable as possible.
ReplyDeleteI say don't discipline in front if others. Do give those eyesand show her whose boss when you are home. She'll get the picture
ReplyDeleteComing from someone with a child that you know can be too much you have to draw a line somewhere. You know kids if you give them an inch they will take a mile. So I say no get out of jail free cards. If it's not ok at home then it's not ok anywhere else with some exceptions. If your friend is ok with her running around then it's fine, if she then takes out her trusty crayon and starts a mastepiece on the walls then we have to pull the reigns. I try to remind her with that voice that she knowws I'm not playing. Do I take out the belt and hold it on my lap? No... We just have to know if they are being cute or if it's embarrassing. I recently spoke to my mom on the phone and she was telling me that Mia won't go to sleep without the tv . I was like really? At home I turn off the tv and she goes to sleep. So my mother told that to Mia and her response was "yea because my mommy doesn't play". I had to laug at that because she knows what and where and to who she can do certain things with.
ReplyDeleteI have a friend who I dreaded when she came to my house with her two boys (boys can be a lot more….energetic, than girls). My friend never kept her eyes on her boys. She would sit in front of the television and tune out all the chaos going on around her. Or she would turn the tv to a channel that her boys supposedly liked and engage herself in a conversation with me. Even though we were talking, I could still hear that her boys were no longer watching television because there would be a lot of thumping and bumping around in the next room and I wondered, them being her kids, how she wasn’t keen to their every sound. I would politely smile as my house got toe’ up around me and things got broken. I don’t remember what one of her sons did, but one of them was finally taken to the bathroom for a private whopping, which was too little too late, but still, I smiled inside at his screams.
ReplyDeleteI don’t have kids, but I plan to keep the same disciplinary action plan going in my friend’s houses as I do at home. Don’t listen to us…or ‘her’ who says, “no leave them.”, when it comes to your children. I won’t be saying that. Lol. I will give you the nod as a signal to administer ‘the look’ to your children. I’ve been there where I have been polite and things ended up broken. All my mother needed to do to me was administer the look and I sat still as a statue with my little hands in my lap. And trust me, your lil lady is extremely well behaved. I’m sure she has her melt down moments…she is two, but she is so much more together than other kids I have been around. When you say ‘don’t touch that’, she listens…and that’s fantastic.
And I also totally agree with Thiara.
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