This weekend Cole was invited to two birthday parties. One on Saturday and the other on Sunday.
Saturday's party was for a little boy who Cole went to daycare with for a few years. His mom had triplet girls (OMG!) last year. He has been out of daycare for six-months or so, but wanted to invite his old friends. The party was at his house. First, it was scheduled for four-hours! A four-hour birthday party, needless to say we didn't stay the entire time. There was no real organization to the party and total mayhem ensued. The birthday boy screamed at the top of his lungs every time someone touched a toy and proceeded to pout the majority of the day. His parents constantly where bribing him (hey, I've been known to bribe occasional myself, but not at every instance) and putting him in time out where he screamed louder and banged on their bedroom door. Timeout would be followed by rules that were shortly broken with no consequence. The birthday boy fought the majority of the time with another boy that goes to their daycare (who's party was on Sunday). The other boy was really out of control. His mom must have counted (you know 1.....2......3......Usually trailing off to 4) about 50 times!, but he not ONCE did what he was supposed to do and she did not ever follow through with what her intended consequence was. She was saying that he is just so hard to control and he is up to midnight every night, because "he just doesn't know what bedtime means". Neither kid seemed to mind their parents at any point.
The counting thing is my biggest pet peeve, why even bother if you aren't going to follow through? Counting works on Cole. After leaving the grocery store once and Kohl's before, Cole knows I will do whatever I said I was going to do if he didn't start listening.
The funniest part of the day was when another kid's mom from daycare was saying that the other night her husband (who is a vet) had to work late and she just told the daycare teacher there was "absolutely NO WAY that she could have her son do his homework (we are talking five minutes of letter writing) that night, because she had Nathan ALL BY HERSELF, she couldn't even make dinner and they had to go to Sonic." I tried to not laugh out loud. Oh my goodness, she had to parent by herself for one evening and it was so rough she couldn't help her son with five minutes of homework? What is this world coming to?
Cole didn't fight with anyone and was great at sharing with all the kids and even sweet to the toddling babygirls. He behaved well and had a good time.
Luckily, the party on Sunday was at "Chuckin' Cheese" (as Cole calls it) and was brief and had plenty of things to distract the kiddos. Ahhh....I can't wait to have these kids that don't know what rules are in my classroom..Oh wait, it will kinda of be like being at work, now!! Just kidding!
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3 comments:
I'm all for a good birthday party, but four hours?!? With nothing planned?!? Those parents really asked for a miserable time.
I don't get the not following through thing either. Yelling and nagging a lot does not make you a good parent. You definitely have to make your words gold and deliver on the consequences, good or bad. They are going to test you anyway. Those poor kids are in for such a shock when they get in the real world... or when they get in your class, and you fail them if they don't turn in the homework!
No doubt, parenting is tough (especially single parenting, eh?) and we all get tired and lax occasionally. But if you don't make them pay now, they're going to have to pay later, when the cost is much higher.
Ineffective parenting, and then blaming it on the kids ("he's so out of control...") is a HUGE pet peeve of mine. We're not here to be friends with our kids. We're here to be parents, and good parenting means consistent discipline. That mom that couldn't do supper or homework with her kids is pretty sad. God help her if she ever decides to have more than one child.
So I'm out of the loop as usual. I knew you were in school, but for some reason I didn't know you were planning on teaching?! I need to not be so wrapped up in my life! Please email or call me sometime and catch me up on what I clearly haven't kept up with:)
I know you were not kidding. It is like being at work. You are going to be a great teacher look at what you have to deal with at work everyday. The kids in your class will be a breeze.
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