Posted on 02/20/2012 11:22:44 AM PST by NOBO2012
How do YOU feel? We cut our kids a lot of slack with some things. Other parents hated us at the dog park because our kids would be playing in the huge mud puddles with the dogs (clothes on, etc.) and their kids would want to join in - but mom didn't want them to get dirty. I understood to a degree (maybe not going right back home, etc.). But for us, it was going down there to play, and sometimes play means getting dirty.
They didn't get cut any slack if they whined at the store. That happened only a few times VERY early on. Give the rules ahead of time, and then follow your own rules. “Whine for something at the store and we will live right then, and no play date with Johnny”.
Of course now that they are older when they go to the store with mom they know that invariably if they can wait patiently while their brother or sister try on clothes, etc.; Mom will no-doubt stop by some place to get a smoothie or some such. (Mom is a softy!)
A similar article was recently written in the Daily Mail by an English mother and her observations of the superiority of the French over the English in raising children. Same observations. hmmm.
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