Flashback Friday: When Mama ain't happy

Note:  I used to have a different blog.  It was my friend.  Then I got rid of the email address associated with it, which unbeknownst to me, also got rid of that Google account, which made it so that I couldn't resuscitate my old blog.  I did, however, save some of my favorite posts from that blog.  Hence, the Flashback Friday feature. 

This time I'm gonna take you back to July 16, 2010. 
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Ever go off on somebody else's kid? Yeah, me neither.

OK, that was a bald-faced lie.

Actually it's happened twice with two different kids in the past couple of weeks. And while I can see that there were valid reasons for my annoyance, I would be totally miffed if someone yelled at my kid. (She says with a sheepish look...)  Here's my defense: In both cases there were four kids at my house, which is exactly three more than I usually have. I was overstimulated by all the noise. I told them to play outside, but these two mavericks kept coming right back in because of the heat.  (Which is totally a crap reason, right?)  And both kids were being little turds. Defiant, complain-y, smart aleck-y. They'd both been kindly and patiently warned told to cut it out multiple times. So they needed correction.

But it shouldn't have included the blowing out of ear drums and the straining of vocal cords. I could have kept my cool and still got my point across. (Although, have you ever noticed that some kids seem to think you're not serious until your eyeballs are bulging out and the spittle is flying?)

A confession here: I'm more tolerant of my own kid than I am of other people's kids (OPKs). I'm not a strict mom. I'm more "let's talk about this" than "obedience NOW!" That said, I turn into a drill sergeant around groups of kids. I guess I get overwhelmed. And not all OPKs respond to a cooperative parenting style. They don't respect people who aren't firm with them. So I am forced to oblige, see?

That doesn't excuse yelling though, so I apologized to both of the kids.

(Hopefully that won't take away their newfound fear of me. Mwahaha!)

Click to enlarge.

The battle of the sexes

Or as kids call it today, The Boy/Girl War.

It started back when Eve passive-aggressively gave Adam fruit from the forbidden tree.  (I think she must have resented her secondary role.)  Perhaps it went something like this.

Until my son went to kindergarten, most of his friends were girls.  And that's because most of my friends have daughters.  He didn't wear tutus or play with Polly Pocket, but early on, he didn't discriminate when it came to friends.

Then he went to public school.  And I started hearing about The Boy/Girl War.  Apparently, this is a very serious activity, one that requires strategy and military precision.  The Boy/Girl War involved groups of boys and girls sabotaging each other's projects at recess.  The girls would "bake cookies" in a hollowed out tree, and the boys would raid the tree-oven and stomp on the cookies.  The boys would build a fort out of sticks and limbs, and the girls would kick it all down.  Then the boys would chase the girls, and vice versa.  It was probably the only thing my son liked about kindergarten.

I thought it was a public school thing.  I was all, "School is like Lord of the Flies!  Homeschooled kids don't act like that!"

Yeah they do.

I'm sure there's some deep Freudian reason for this eternal conflict, but I have no idea what it is.  I only know that it's pretty entertaining to watch.

My best friend Shrinky Dink and I met at childbirth class.  Her eldest daughter (Thing 1) and Nature Boy are only a few days apart in age.  We didn't keep in touch after the classes were over, but when our babies were 6 months old, we ran into each other at our church's young mothers group.  We discovered we'd had the same OB/GYN, had delivered at the same hospital, went to the same church, both had degrees in the social service field, and were both born in Illinois, where our dads (but not our moms) still live.  We became instant friends. 

Since our kids were born in the same week, their birthday parties often happen on the same weekend.  Our respective parties went smoothly (except for that time Shrinky Dink unwittingly preheated her oven with a box of Krispy Kremes inside) until last year.

Below is a picture from last year in which Shrinky Dink brought a horde of female Rambo-impersonators to prank Nature Boy and the clueless group of boys we had over for an overnight birthday camp out.  They forked our yard (prompting a threat from our cranky next door neighbor to call the police), sprinkled glitter everywhere, flushed the boys out of their tent with air horns, and then went after them with Silly String.  It was an expert tactical maneuver. 

Yeah, they got us good.  They were very proud of themselves.  I think Shrinky Dink was prouder than the girls were.  The boys, however, could think of nothing but revenge.  They immediately began planning how to get the girls back. 

We played it cool, you know.  Hoping the girls would forget that we owed them one.  We waited A YEAR to return the favor.  On the day of this year's birthday sleepover, I pretended to be all cranky and fibromyalgia-y so Shrinky Dink would be scared of me kindly refrain from girl antics during the party.  (Yeah, I played the disability card.)  It worked.  Shrinky Dink made the mistake of going out to dinner, concerned about how my health would hold up to a crowd of rowdy boys, I'm sure.  I supplied the boys with prank rations and Tree Guy led the mission.  They did the toilet paper thing, the Silly String thing, and they wrote boy-promoting messages all over Shrinky Dink's driveway and house.

I'm woman enough to admit that their prank was better than ours.  But the girls should be aware that teenage boys are much better at pranking than pre-teen boys are.  We've got years to make it up to them.

All he ever wanted

Discovering musical theater has been a blessing for Nature Boy.  Life is hard for kids with dyslexia because so much of a kid's day is spent in school.  (Thank God for homeschooling!)  I think it's super duper important for kids to be able to spend even more time on their gifts and areas of strength than they do on their areas of weakness.  That's not what the schools say.  They're all, "You're messed up, kid.  And we're here to fix you."  Pshaw.  "Remediation" has its place for sure, but we can't let our kids' gifts and joys get shoved to the back of the closet.

The best homeschooling (and parenting)(and life) advice I ever received was that God knows what our purpose is, what our calling in life will be.  And we are created perfectly to suit that calling.  We are equipped/hardwired for the job we're meant for.  To me that means (you know, just off the top of my head) that a child whose tears are mixed with pencil lead while doing math problems, and who writes notes such as this one, isn't meant to be a mathematician.  And that's okay.

   
Every kid (and grownup!) needs to find his or her niche.  A place to shine.  Music and performing (and nature) are my son's.  Here's a video of Nature Boy performing a solo in his most recent musical.  (Note: If you have an email subscription, the video might not appear in the email.  Not sure why.)