Saturday, July 31, 2010

Lessons

I know I have used this place as a way to vent about my neighbors before.
But I need to add to the list.

Annabel has been screaming more and more. Yesterday I just about lost it when her yelling woke Liam up and started him fussing. I really almost went outside and just said "I have never met anyone who yells as much as you do. I have to wonder if these kids are going to need therapy later on in life, because between you and the rest of your loud family they will think that screaming is the only form of communication."

But these kids. I wonder really how much of it is their personality and how much of it is parental issues (mostly being ignored I think...) and how much of it stems from not being provided with some sort of structure in their lives. 

They were bored and decided to uproot some weeds and the volunteer peppermint plants and replant them in the back area of the complex and call it a garden. (Hey, it even got them to eat fruit, since they wanted the seeds from it! They went and bought a nectarine, a peach and I think it was a plum and ate them ALL! Reminder: If Liam won't eat his fruit later in life, start his own garden, but he has to get all the seeds from things he eats!)

But, I got some dill seeds out of this massive baggie of them that Dan had. He had once said that he didn't even KNOW what to do with them all. So I took a handful and gave them to the kids in a baggie. Well, Breanna wanted ownership of the whole bag, but I gave each munchkin a handful and still there were some left over. I asked who wanted to use the bag and have the leftover seeds (Bad Idea!!! I didn't think!), and before anyone else could say anything, Breanna SNATCHED it from my hand and then, dumped HER handful of seeds into it so she could claim it was HER seeds in the bag, which of course now gave her twice as many as the rest of the kids. Of course, all the other kids then don't want to play with her, once she starts saying that when she plants all her seeds, most of the garden will be hers but it should be all hers anyways since she was the one who came up with the idea.

Lesson: Even if you thought of the activity, it belongs to everyone who participates in it.

Some days the boys get balloons. And then they each want to pop the others balloons, but don't want theirs to get popped and the last boy with a balloon now has the whole group following after him shouting that they are going to pop it and he is of course trying to keep them from doing this. When they do finally pop his, he forgets how many of theirs he might have popped, suddenly this is a terrible thing and he gets angry at all the other boys. Yet, the same events occur the next time the boys get balloons.

The lesson to teach Liam from this: Don't pop someone else's balloon unless you want yours to get popped as well... a.k.a. Do unto others...

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