Parenting isn't easy and it sure isn't black and white. As a mother I wish I could put my kids in a bubble and protect them from the world, but that is impossible, if not impractical.
I know this is a DD blog, but there's not much new on the DD front and this is what's weighing on my mind these past few days. My kids are on spring break, this is our "off" week, so my 2 step-daughters and my daughter are at their other homes, so we're left with just the 2 full timers as we call them, my son and our baby (who's actually almost 2 and not quite a baby anymore). But my house is no where near peace and quiet.
Before I had kids, I always wanted to be the neighborhood house. I love a house full of people (good thing since we have 5 kids together), I love all the noise and chaos and for some reason I thrive on that. I wanted to be that house where the good parents felt comfortable sending their kids and the kids with bad parents had a safe place to go. Since the schools are on spring break this week we've had and incredible number of children ranging in ages (from our baby who's 2 through a 14 year old who's nothing but trouble) at our house at any given time. Some of the kids' parents are good parents, some parents try really hard to be, some really couldn't care less where their child is or what he/she is doing and some would prefer their child be anywhere but at their house bugging them. All of these kids end up at my house. I love it! It's what I always dreamed about.
The gray area though is this. Not all the kids are good influences and I'm torn between having my children be the good influence some of these kids need or them being a bad influence on my kids. I guess at least if they're at our house, I know what they're doing.
I agree that it's great that they are at your house. I spent a lot of time at a certain friend's house when I was a kid. Her mom had a "our house, our rules" policy as I'm sure you do. She was so effective with it that when kids were there who would usually be a bad influence, they cleaned up their act quickly or they knew they had to go home. It worked great...at least from the perspective of a kid being there.
ReplyDeleteActually Susie, we do have an our house our rules policy. We had to send a kid home for the first time last night for not following. He tried to say his brother had to go with him, we told his brother he was welcome to stay if his mom was ok with it, she was. He then tried to convince some of the other kids to go with him, they all wanted to stay. He was much better behaved today.
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