It's 6:19; Do You Know Where Your Children Are?
Monday, October 6, 2008
I don't. Haven't the foggiest.
Well, really I do. I'm just kind of revelling in the fact that I can send my kids outside after school and not have to a) worry about where they are or b) come up with activities for them. Especially when TV/computer time is forbidden for the evening for someone who has bus behavior issues (you get one guess).
I'm so pleased about the neighbour situation at the new house. Other than the last week of our house on Warsaw when my usually-in-daycare brood discovered the next-next-door hooligans or that summer in Steinbach with the German bullies (including the kid who climbed up our deck to watch us eat our supper and declared that he was hungry and why couldn't we give him a hamburger), we've never really done the on-site playmate thing.
So strange for me, who grew up with not only a plethora of neighbours, but also a block where all the backyards faced a park to which we'd escape as soon as school was out and from which we'd not return except for supper or dusk.
Despite having the relatively lax supervision common in small towns a generation ago (or perhaps because of it), I tend to be a bit, oh, hover-ey when it comes to my own progeny. I was aghast the other day to discover that The Husband merely shoos them out the door in the morning, instead of walking them to the bus stop that is three houses down the street. Today The Boy was having a somewhat negative reaction to the consequences for his aforementioned transportation misdemeanours (about which he was totally forewarned - coming off and protesting that you were "medium" on the behavior spectrum does not count), and I made sure that he pouted in the gutter in front of our house where I could see him, and not at the neighbours.
But slowly, I'm relaxing my grip a bit. Each time I do, I do it with a bit of fear, but then relief as the kids not only manage, but flourish. I quake a bit to think about the games they're playing and the injuries they're (just barely) escaping, but I also know that the road to adulthood is travelled incrementally, and that denying them backyard hooliganism now will likely result in a rebellion of car-stealing proportions down the road.
Nevertheless, better go check on them. Seeing as how it's October 6 and they're out there in swimsuits - might be prudent to show the neighbours that there's some adult supervision going on here. Or maybe they'll just chalk it up to those crazy Canadians again.
(Update: The Boy just came racing in, sopping wet, yelling "sorry, Mom, I'm so so sorry but I broke a glass and I'm so so sorry." Off I go...)
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4 comments:
Those certainly were simpler times in the 3rd Street park! I remember one Saturday night when you kids were already in PJs after baths, and Kerry Lepp came to the door asking you to come out and play jailbreak (at least that's what I think it was called) with flashlights. I let you go out because we knew and trusted the families in the neighbourhood. A couple of years later Kerry was so suddenly taken from this life, and we all remembered the special times. Remember the production of "Fame" while jumping off the picnic table?
We use the "quiet is bad" rule around here. For example, I was doing something in the kitchen while Oscar played in the living room, and suddenly things were too quiet. What was he doing? Methodically tearing the pages out of my math manual, one by one. Boy doesn't want mama to get good grades.
I was always slightly jealous that I was never part of your block. You had those cool tire things.
We *did* have cool tire things. And I totally remember those jailbreak nights and practicing for our grand Fame extravaganza. Kerry and I got married once, too. I think his brother officiated and we served garden raspberries at our reception.
Good times.
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