My kids are just like everyone elses kids. They play, they fight, they fight some more, and then they play again. Sometimes I feel like I should be wearing a black and white stripped shirt and have a whistle around my neck. I say that so you know my kids are not perfect little angels by any stretch.
My kids also LOVE friends. It doesn't matter if they know you or not. If your a kid, your a friend, and they want to play with you.
Even though our neighborhood in Oklahoma wasn't exactly what you would call nice, the people who lived there were good hardworking people and the kids all seemed to get along. My kids were constantly running around with a group of kids that spanned in age from 4 to 10, and none of them seemed to notice or care.
When we moved to our current neighborhood I was so excited. Even though the house we live in is just as old as our other house, the neighborhood took about 3 huge steps in an upward direction. The houses are all average, but well cared for. And there is no longer a used car junk yard starring at us from across the street. When we were unloading our moving van, an 11 year old girl from down the street even came over to welcome us to the neighborhood.
We learned pretty quickly that she is one of the select few nice kids in the neighborhood. All summer long my kids would see other kids outside playing and get so excited. "Mom, can we go play with friends?" and most of the time it would end in tears of "they said they don't want to play with us." or "they said we can't be in their club." I'm not saying it happened every time, but it happened a lot. And every time my heart would break and I would just try and comfort them and tell them that if they weren't nice kids than it was best if they just didn't play with them.
Well, yesterday I had enough. Samm and Macy were outside sledding on the little hill in our backyard. Although technically the hill isn't part of our yard so there have been streams of kids out there all winter long sledding on it. They had been out there for quite a while so when they came in I figured they were just cold, but I could tell by the look on Samm's face that she was mad.
"That's it! she stomped "I was trying to talk to one of the girls out there and she kept yelling at me to "Shut up" so I told her "fine, if you keep yelling at me to shut up then I'm going. And she said, "Good! GO!"
What kills me here is that Samm then proceeded to tell me how she knew the best thing to do was to just walk away. But I couldn't just walk away. Samm is good and kind and nice and genuinely just wants to be friends with everyone and these kids treat her terribly. So I had Samm point out the little brat, put on my boots, and then traipsed through knee high snow to tell that girl she better learn some manners.
I didn't yell at her or threaten her, I just very angrily told her how displeased I was with her and all her little friends and how they treat people. I'm pretty sure I scared the snot out of her though because when I got back to the house they were all gone. And I'm pretty sure I will be known as the mean lady on the corner now, but I don't care. Unless that means that no one will really want to play with my kids now. Then maybe it wasn't such a good idea.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
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2 comments:
Somebody's got to do something about kids who just don't know any better. Unfortunately you'll probably be known by something other than "mean lady around the corner" by all the kids parents... But 'd put my money on you if it came down to a fight lol
welcome to that horrible stage of being a kid. There always has to be the mean ones and the groups, which is one thing I hated about school. I applaud you for doing it Sally. It was not like they were playing with your kids anyways, and maybe it will stick their minds like a sliver next time they want to be rude. Poor Samm, if we still lived in OK at least the cousins would get some playtime in.
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