Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Not My Proudest Day as a Parent

So, I thought by moving my journal to this blog I would be a bit more consistent. That has turned out to not be the case. I think my last, and only, post was almost a week ago. Hopefully, I can get better at this. Kind of hard to record a daily account of life, when you don't account daily, right? But this is my life, so actually that makes perfect sense. Even my two fledgling journalers, Choppy and Fiona, are not exactly writing in their new journals daily, and yesterday I caught Fiona writing a page and dating it the day before in an attempt to "catch-up." I appreciated her try at perfection, but explained to her that since her journal is an account of her real life, she should be honest in dating her posts, because in real life, sometimes you just can't post everyday!
So today, we had a playdate. A friend needed a couple hours alone to do some house cleaning, so I, because you know my house is always clean and company ready, said ----bring 'em over! Get your stuff done! No problem! We're not doing a thing! ----That's what a friend says, right? I may suck at keeping an organized home, but I am a good friend. Playdate went well, only problem being that My 3 girls and the 2 visiting girls made up a pack of girls in which the one lone outsider, my little 5 year old boy, we'll call him Taco, (long story, but if you knew him you'd probably be calling him Taco too). So, back to Taco...he decides to act as naughty and ornery and 5 year old boy disgusting as he possibly can in order to get the attention of this all female pack. At one point when a guest comes to you and says "Taco spit on his finger and picked his nose" you about wish you could crunch the ever lovin' life out of that Taco shell. Know what I mean? He was naughty, mean, out-of-control and everything in between, but really he just wanted to be a part of the group. Don't we all?? At one point he could even be heard saying "raise your hand if you want to play with me." Now, that is enough to make this mom's heart melt. And what did the female pack do? Why they laughed, and continued to whisper about him. My heart broke. Did I raise these heartless, nasty girls? I must have, cause I looked around and there was no other mom to blame. These were my kids, ages 9, 8, and even the 3 year old, taking pleasure in being mean to someone else, laughing at another, and excluding someone who just wanted to play in their group. In a nutshell, they succeeded in doing every single thing I always remind them not to do to another human being, using the logic that it does not feel good to be on the receiving end of it. I can only hope that what goes around comes around and of course I will be there to listen to the crying and comfort the hurting and help wipe the tears when "it" indeed, comes back around, like it will inevitably do...but I will be grateful that it is an opportunity to learn a lesson on how to treat others and hope that it is not a lesson we need to learn very often.
I've heard people say before that when your child hurts, you hurt...and today, that was true. I hurt for that sweet little blond boy who was left out and I hurt for the three mean sisters who will someday find out how it feels to be left out of the group. And I hurt because I was a kid once too, and I know how it feels to be left out and that really sucks. Kids never change, and that sucks to.

1 comment:

Katherine@Raising Five said...

Hi Lisa,

You ARE a true friend - just hope your friend returns the favor some day!

You painted quite a picture there - I wish I recognized more often that some of the naughty behavior I see is simply wanting to be part of the "group." Seems like any time there are more than two kids, some kind of "pack" forms, and someone is left out. Bummer!

So glad you are blogging - great to meet you here! I'm looking forward to getting to know you more!