There's nothing wrong with telling kids to buzz off.
by
guamania
10/12/2007, 5:27 AM #
After you've played with them for a while, anyway.
It's important to get down on the floor with them, see the world through their eyes, show them that you're interested in what interests them, blah blah blah--but do it for fifteen minutes, then say, "Ok, it's time for me to do Mom stuff; you guys go amuse yourselves."
Teaches them that A) other people's feelings matter too, even, GASP, Mom's, and B) they are expected to use their own brains to amuse themselves and not have an adult entertain/be involved with them every waking hour.
That we're even discussing this makes me wistful for the zeitgeist of my own childhood, when in the summertime kids roamed around the neighborhood and the woods from after breakfast until dinner, only coming home for lunch. These days parents are either working or whatnot, so that many kids are in highly structured daycare settings from infancy, or so paranoid about their kids' safety that they don't allow any unsupervised play and keep their kids shuttling from one organized activity to the next (or sitting on the living room floor, eyes glued to the screen). The natural setting for many kids seems to be an adult constantly thinking up ways to entertain them, as opposed to giving them a reasonable amount of attention and then ushering them to 'go play.'
One of these days I'm going to be posting in the Fray from jail, because on the military installation on which I live, the official rule is that kids must be under the direct supervision of an adult until they are 12 when they play outside. RIDICULOUS. I watch my 6 and 4 year olds riding their bikes and making up games through the kitchen window and wait for the MPs to show up...
