Kids

First of all, I'm pretty sure that at some point in another time and life Josh and I were together. Yes, together. He LOVES my cleavage, for one thing, but I've noticed him loving it on other people too. Kimmy's always got the girls on display, and he likes it. But there have been times in his life where he is clearly in love with me. And he says things like "I'm so glad I picked you", even when he was only 3 years old. Or "Here we are again." and I'm like "What? Where?" and he smiles and says "Here."
Last night he got me again. He was ...God, it was so good. He was telling me about what they are doing in math, we were all sitting at the breakfast nook together eating stir fry. They are in the middle of graphing out their dream house. He's always insisted that you look at him when he's talking, this is probably because there are 4 kids and God Knows that undivided attention is sometimes hard to catch. So he made sure that we had eye contact, and he's telling me in a normal voice "I put in a bowling alley, and a skylight,"...now his voice trails off a little, and he's very, very staring into my eyes, "and a game.....room," he sighs a little, his voice is quiet, still starting at me, his head tilts a little bit, "and you'll really like it.." and then there was nothing, just staring. So I did what anyone would do and I leaned over to smooch him all over his face.
Love him.
Anyway, MFN likes to say that my kids are the goldstandard for kids, even though they too have been *gasp* found to be acting just like kids. :)
I happen to believe that my kids are NOT the gold standard, but are The Norm. I love my kids. They each have their own personality, and they are 9, 7, 6 and 4. I feel sorry for CJ, being surrounded with all of these younger kids, but hopefully this summer he'll get to hang out with kids his own age. Josh I have to work with because he'd rather play by himself than deal with other people's shit, so we work on participating in a group and being patient with the other people involved. Julia ..well, girls are sadly in short supply round these parts, so she covets going to play with Payten, at Payten's house so she won't have to share her with her brothers or neighbors. She is very self aware, which is awesome, and I don't worry about her being influenced by other kids as much as I have to look out for that with Jordan. Jordan has spent a good majority of his life watching How Not To Get Into Trouble. It makes me a little bit sad. He hates being disciplined, it hurts him a lot on the inside, but I refuse to take it easy on him just because he's the baby. But he is very moldable- he is a follower and will do what anyone else is doing. This has frustrated my mom, who is condenscending to him for trying to keep up with the older kids, while I encourage it. But he has to remember what is a good choice and a bad choice, as far as what anyone else is doing, and that he can make his own decisions.
But overall, I have great kids. I have never once had a report from school in their time there, I have never heard anything except raving about how well behaved and well liked they are. Which is AWESOME.
But it doesn't mean shit, really.
I was a STAR as a kid. I didn't complain, I didn't want to hear my mom's irritated voice, so I did everything I could to keep Michelle in line (she was such a pain in the ass), and keep the peace. I was great in school. Even when everything went wrong for me, unless you knew what was going on, you would never have known what was going on. Just because my babies are so good right now doesn't mean we aren't going to have our struggles at some point, over something. I know that. We go day by day. CJ has to learn responsibility. So he makes his own breakfasts and lunches and if he forgets, he goes hungry. Not my fault. ;)
Clearly parents only have so much control...especially if you're a working parent and you had to go back to work when they were barely out of the womb- someone else has seen them more than we have. And once they are in school full time, that's the same. Kids come out just how they are. It's our job to help give them guideline and boundries, but you can't make a strong willed child anything different. That's why there are books and books about kids, and their different personalities. They come out how they are.
But that's not to say that what we do or do not do doesn't matter, because it does. Everyone deals with everything differently. I hated school, even though I was "good" and "cute" and had attention (and I was NOT good, and I was eating disordered and had attention for all the wrong reasons, but no one asked, so whatevs). My plan is now, and will remain, that as soon as I think my kids will do better learning one on one from me, they will do that. I don't care if it means quitting a job I have that I'm successful at, there are ALWAYS more ways to make money. CJ I believe, would benefit in learning responsibility by learning at home. I'd help him with it, and then show him the ropes and soon he'd be responsible for his own learning, with me just being a guide. We've got all summer, whoo hooo!
There will always be kids that need more supervison. I have 4 kids, they have grown up with eachother. That alone helps. They are really good kids. But I think they are just normal, and not above and beyond anyone else's.
Now- Jordan gets raging "stomach aches" when he doesn't want to eat something. He's afraid of getting in trouble, because I make the kids eat. I'm THAT mom that raises kids who say "I'll never do THAT to my kids" until they have 3 and find out they don't want to be a short order cook either. I give them a little and they have to eat it. If it's especially horrible to eat, I'll sweeten the deal for them afterwards. Jordan? It has to be different for him. He cries and won't eat. So he just gets to go hungry. The other kids choose to eat and get a treat. But- IRRITATING. "MY TUMMY HURTS!!" makes me want to pack up a bag for him and send him away. My dad saved him last night. He'd fallen asleep in his room after his "tummy ache" hit and he simply couldn't eat more veggies, and away he went to his room. Daddy came over and made him a sandwhich. NAUGHTY.
Have we discussed how much I dislike Easter lately? Wanna? What a stupid f*cking holiday. First of all, it's like Christmas- at some point there was a religious meaning behind it. Now we have a whole slew of Catholics and Christians, who are only so when they want to be so, who pick and choose what parts of it to celebrate. Oh, Good Friday? The schools are closed. How many people will be at church celebrating Good Friday? And why do we have stupid holidays that float? Pick a freaking date and stick with it.
THEN...just like with SANTA (which I'm still telling the kids about this summer.)(At least CJ and Josh...and I'll tell them about the Easter Rabbit too, since they were asking about it yesterday), we dream up some stupid f*cking RABBIT? That hides hard boiled eggs? And baskets full of more sugar and crap that our kids don't need? HAPPY EASTER! Stupidest thing I've ever heard. Makes no sense at all. The religious reasons barely make sense, but that's a whole different topic.
Back to where we came from: Humans (on Earth, on our continent especially) are stupid. :D
Cheers!