Oh, good jeebus suzikins, yes. "I could never do what you're doing..." etc. What, I'm supposed to not marry the guy bc he's got a kid? "Sorry, hon, I love you and all, but I just can't deal with your six-year-old." Right. I'm getting a double dose of it now because I also get "you're so brave" type comments about adopting -- "What a wonderful thing you're doing for a child, blah blah blah Sally Strutherscakes." That? Makes me want to throw up. Or slug someone. Or slug someone and then throw up on them. Yes, it's my martyr complex that made me first marry a guy with a son and then decide to adopt. Had nothing to do with a non-fuctional uterus or, you know, life. I really feel like Mother Theresa when I'm nagging Ex Jr. to get his fricking basketball off the dining room table so that we can have a meal without playground dirt in it, y'know?

Yeah, it's the getting them back home that'll kill ya for sure!

Having said that, bribery works well. After you're at said destination, mentioning something exciting at home can motivate. New movie, treat, whatever.

The street fair sounds very fun!

All this talk about weight loss is making me hungry. I, too, have a <1 baby, and turned 40 in the last year. I’m 6’ tall and was always thin until I quit smoking (October 2 will be 10 YEARS! Yay!) Add two kids and now I have about 30 pounds to lose. I suck at dieting, but I love to exercise. I just don’t have the time, so if I’m feeling terribly motivated, I get up at 4:30 a.m. to get in a workout on my Gazelle (yeah, the Tony Little thing – I absolutely love it, but I wish I’d spent the extra money and gotten the one with resistance). By the end of the week, I’m so sleep deprived I can barely form thought. (It also makes it impossible to stay up Tuesday nights to see TAR, so I watch the repeats on Saturdays – thanks CBS.) I keep jumping on and off that wagon, but I try to think of exercise as medically/psychologically necessary.

Kids and shopping. This is a tough one for me, and I believe I agree with Zron and others who say it’s tougher being the parent trying to handle the child and not reward their bad behavior. I only shop once a week and it’s difficult when I get up at 7 a.m. on a Saturday to get myself showered and ready, wake the little ones, feed them breakfast, have a little play time, then – oops! Time for mid-morning nap. Wake from nap, now it’s lunchtime. Feed them lunch. I’ve been up since 7 a.m. and we’re out the door at the crack of 12:30! I do my best to take them fed, rested and ready to go, but sometimes the little darlings still manage to drive me crazy and/or melt down. But I don’t want to just leave a store in the middle of shopping because I’m really need what I came for and this is the allotted time to get said items. I guess I’m a bit of a drill sergeant about that.

I don't fault people just because their kids are screaming in the grocery store, because yes, I've been there with my sister and her kids.

But.

I do fault them if they bring their kids to a movie or something of that nature and won't leave when the kid is screaming, because as much as I want you to teach your kid well, there's also a point where it just ain't fair. You can also easily spot, in some cases, parents who are making no effort at all. My family basically had a ride on the zoo monorail with Little A and Little B totally sabotaged by a group of people whose kids weren't screaming-upset, they were just yelling obnoxiously, making noise for no reason ("AAAAAAARRRRRR") and generally acting like jerks. And the parents were chuckling at how adorable it was. And there were several kids involved, several of whom were perfectly well old enough to be told to shut it. And on our way out, one of them very rudely cut off my mom while she was hobbling (on what turned out to be the broken foot, remember?) out the exit.

So while I don't begrudge anyone their tantrum-throwing grocery store child, I do expect them to be seriously dedicated to teaching proper behavior in public, and not to just assume that other people find their loud, rude children as adorable as they apparently do.

Thanks. 'Cause that is seriously one of the toughest situations. Forty-five minutes up and down the aisles, fifteen minutes in line, finally get to the cash, half the groceries are rung up, and The Girl decides that she must be freed from the cart and given a Kinder Egg. Right. Freaking. NOW.

Hmmm. What are my options?

A) Tough it out; accept dirty looks from forty-seven other patrons and the cashier, who is still trying to determine if that vegetable is an onion or an eggplant.

B) Abandon groceries. Resign self to eating oatmeal for two days.

C) Give in. Nothing like positive reinforcement to keep bad behaviour at bay!

D) Pray for the earth to open and swallow us both whole.

Sadly, D never happens, however fervently I wish for it.

Okay y'all I've just seen the strangest thing. In my office everyone was sitting watching the Governor of NJ come out of the closet and announce his homosexuality. It's been a surreal day.

That can't be the only reason why he resigned. At least I hope it isn't.

Daria There are rumors that the governor is likely to have a sexual harassment suit filed against him by a former staffer. Here's a linkthat tells a little more about the resignation.

E) Leave them at home? Not being sarcastic but, unless you're a one-parent family, surely there must be a time when one parent can stay at home with the kids while the other goes grocery shopping for an hour.


Yes! Thank you! All day long I have screaming kids running into my office and the parents who run in after them always just look at me and smile, as if I'm supposed to think that their obnoxious little brat is adorable. Blah! HATE!

My governor plays for the other team? Get the fuck out! That's what I get for not paying attention to the news.

Wow.

Rachel, with some families, it really is very difficult to find the time for one to stay home and the other to go out. My sis took Little A and Little B out with her during the time when her husband was working full-time and she had the boys, pre-preschool, at home with her. Basically, by the time he got home, it was dinnertime, and then the endless bath-books-songs-bedtime routine, after which it was really too late to go out. And I think that on weekends, BIL did sometimes stay home while she went out, but honestly, the time that she had to herself, she kind of didn't want to spend grocery shopping. And if he goes, that's just more time that she's at home by herself, locked in with the kids.

It's harder than it sounds to find regular time to do those things without taking your kids, I think. Furthermore, in order to teach them how to behave in public, you do have to take them out in public. You can't hide them from the grocery store until they're eight -- that's not an answer, I don't think.

Like I said, all I ask from people is that they do their best when their kids are in public to recognize that they need to continue to act like parents. Furthermore, I try to draw a line between tantrums -- which everyone who's got kids knows are out of the parents' control much of the time -- and generalized chronic bad behavior (as on the zoo monorail) that the parent is not trying to curb. Because that shit, at some point, does reflect poorly on the parents.

Yeah, I commute a ways to work, so shopping after work just makes the dinner/bath/story/bedtime that much later. Mr. M works Saturdays, so I try to get stuff done then so we can have Sunday as "family day." Besides, like Miss Alli says, they gotta learn.

It's funny though, as mortified as I am when my child behaves badly, there always seems to be someone telling me it's not so bad, or it's okay, all kids are like that. I'm constantly amazed that other people can be so tolerant. Shit drives me crazy.

When I read the post about the NJ governor, I thought, that's cool, but why would he have to resign? Until I saw the news article with a picture of him being sworn in with his wife standing next to him holding a baby. Folks like that give homosexuality a bad name.

You can't (or I should now say couldn't) turn on the TV around here without seeing some PSA with the guv, wife and kid promoting something (literacy, tourism, children's healthcare, on and on and on). He was really pushing that family guy angle. From a purely selfish angle, I'm glad I won't have to see the PSAs anymore because they annoyed the hell out of me.

Hee, those PSA's have been making me laugh all summer. She's like glued to him in one, and they look so fake. Plus (no hitting) Jersey? I mean, I guess the shore, but really, I'm looking for a weekend away, not sitting on I-95 counting the exits.

The tristate area's governors are having a smashing year...maybe Pataki will get caught at SCORES during the RNC.

Actually, the full story is that the Governor is married (to his second wife) and has a couple of children. He gave the post of state Homeland Security Advisor to a gentleman who was not a US citizen. When there was a hubub about it (the federal government refused to give him a security clearance) he gave the guy a cabinet job as homeland security advisor (difference being he reported directly to the Governor but didn't have any responsibilities that gave him access to the Feds).

The guy quit his job a couple of months ago and went to work for a private firm although he stayed on the staff as an unpaid liason. Yesterday this guy filed a lawsuit that supposedly accuses the Governor of sexual impropriety. The buzz is that he is the consensual relationship that the governor was refering to in his speech.

That's why he resigned. It's not so much that he's gay as it is that he tried to give his lover a state job that he wasn't qualified for, and now everyone knows or assumes that's why.

That's what I meant when I said I hoped it wasn't just because he was gay. There should be a scandal attached, at least. And it sounds like there is one.

Btw, in June I met the Homeland Security Director for the state of Pennsylvania. He's a real nice guy. We talked about cats, mostly.

Ah, point-and-giggle politicians. They're so much fun when they aren't yours.

Hexele you're probably unplugged and gone by now, but good luck, and I hope you and yours come through safe.

And because the world revolves around me... I cover the State of NJ at work (that's why I got to spend all afternoon tracking down what the hell was going on). My other client? Connecticut.

So now I'm two for two on Governors.

Back to the dating/marrying men with kids: I dated a man who had previously lived with a woman who had a daughter. For three years, when she was aged 2 - 5, he was the only father she knew. After that relationship fell apart, he continued to see the daughter, she called him Dad, he helped support her, he made sure she had positive healthy experiences like hiking up mountains. And people thought I was nuts for dating him, because he had this 'daughter'. Here is a man that took his responsibilities in relationships very seriously. I knew he would never leave me high and dry. It didn't work out for other reasons, but whoever he ended up with is a lucky woman.

Forgive me for derailing the flow with a personal rant, but I just got back from seeing De-Lovely and it angered me quite a lot. It was something I had to see (or "had to have seen," more accurately), as I teach a fall course in History of Musical Theater and some students are sure to ask me what I thought of it. I was ready for it to be bad, but this was a level of suckage that creates hurricanes -- hell, galaxies.

With one Cole Porter biopic in existence already, wouldn't you think one of the points of a new one would be to get right the things that the old one notoriously got wrong? Nope. Yes, it presents us with the novel information that Cole Porter -- are you ready? are you sitting down? liked boys! His marriage was a "permissive" one! But the movie's determination to show Linda Porter as his angel of salvation, his one true and pure love and the source of all his good songs, while his Vices kept leading him astray in all those titillating ways, is actually far more offensive than the heterosexual blanket the old movie threw over everything. A pox on all of them.

I have to salute Kevin Kline for going through it with professional conviction, even though he must have known full well how ghastly it was (he started as a music major at Indiana, a year ahead of me). The "guest artists" were unstylistic and their songs were usually in the wrong decade (and don't get me started on the treatment of "Begin the Beguine" and Kiss Me Kate). The only ones who emerged without disgrace were Natalie Cole (brava) and a couple of stage veterans in onstage sequendes (John Barrowman and Caroline O'Connor, both excellent). Otherwise, how depressing. We now have two Cole Porter biopics, both of them worthless.

Hexele and anyone else affected, good luck with the evacuation.

I was in shock and expecting to listen to the McGreevey press conference when I heard about it, but then pulled out to the GS camp bus stop and had a long and interesting discussion about food allergies and banning peanuts in our school district. While I feel bad for the affected child, my daughter is a vegan, so no nut butters cuts down significantly on her lunch options. I hate the whoel family ad campaigns, too, even though I felt bad for what's her name because she was on bedrest when he was inaugurated or shortly thereafter.

rlb8031, I am in awe. I want to do that with my birth children!! My daughter wants me to buy her a horse (we have an elaborate playground, thanks to the backyard remodel we did just before Hurricane Floyd). I'll have to try explaining the mortgage concept. DD would go for it, regardless, DS (he's 6) won't buy anything - he saves everything, including pennies that turn up in the dryer (he empties the dryer into a laundry basket as one of his chores).

At 8 and 6, my children are basically well-behaved when we're out of the house (don't ask about at home some days). I remember one day when my daughter (she was 2 or 3) decided that she couldn't live without an Elmo balloon. When I told her no, it didn't take long before the shrieks became ear drum piercing. I had 3 little old ladies telling me how wonderful I was for sticking to my guns, but by the time we were out of the store, I would have bought the damn balloon, just so I wouldn't have a headache.

JudyZ, have you ever been to the Games for the Physically Challenged (I think that's the name) on LI? My mother worked (she was a sports referee for years) at them until recently.

I've been lurking forever, and I'm trying to get up the nerve to go to TARcon, but I'm going to grad school this year to get my teaching certificate (I love being in classrooms, and teaching makes more sense that running the PTA for another 10 years) and my classes start on 8/30.

This is what I try to do, but Miss Alli is right, it's not easy. I work at home, so I have a little more flexibility than most, and I still find myself hauling my kids into the occasional grocery store. My mother used to go everyThursday night, leaving Dad to 'babysit', as she called it. (Hint to Mom: You don't babysit your own kids.) However, this was back in the day, and I suspect that it was actually a pretty progressive arrangement.

Besides, Rachel ill mannered kids grow into ill-mannered adults. The idea is that you teach your kids how to behave in public while they are kids, so that they already know how to act when they grow up. Miss Alli is right on point here. By the time they are eight its too late. Then they turn into those kids who are all lippy with you when you say something to them if they are alone and misbehaving in public.

The problem is that far too many parents don't parent, but just let the little ones run wild. And unfortunatly, those are the same folks who aren't mortified by their kids behavior but just sort of throw their hands in the air and say "Oh, well".

Actually, the ones that annoy me more are the ones that argue their child is right, regardless of how wrong the little angel is. We had a parent starting a petition against a teacher last year because the teacher told her little angel his desk was a mess and they (teacher and child) would have to work on his organizational skills. I was in the class that day and the teacher said "XXX, your desk is a wreck. We have to work on getting you organized." Definately grounds to fire a teacher. Also, teacher had the nerve to take away child's cookies at lunch one day because he hadn't even taken a bite of his sandwich. She told him he'd have to eat a half sandwich before he got the cookies back. The nerve!

I don't necessary fault this, but I was at the grocery store today, and a couple had their 4 kids with them, who looked to range in age from about 3 to 10. My mom and I were in a hurry to finish shopping, but these kids took up the entire aisle while their parents were standing there looking at frozen pies. My mom said "excuse me," twice. The (presumably) oldest kid just looked at her, but didn't move. There was a lineup of people trying to go both ways down the aisle, but we were stuck waiting until this couple finally decided on their 3 chocolate pies and picked up the ones they had dropped on the floor. They just had not taught their kids the common courtesy to try to not block other people's way. Nor did they reprimand them. It's those kinds of parents that bug me. [/rant]

Yep, JenEx I know of what you speak. I even get it from my fiance's family. I mean wtf? Granted my stepson-to-be had some pretty serious health issues as an infant and received a liver transplant at 20 months. But now...perfectly healthy 5 yr old who takes immunosuppressants twice a day and is maybe 6 months delayed in his speech development (although his speech therapist has made AMAZING progress with him this summer). I don't deserve sainthood for loving a guy that has a kid with some very MANAGEABLE health issues. We always joke that I got the extra value package of love with the small fry on the side. But yay! I am glad there are others here who have been there, done that.

A thousand times word! A lot of poor behavior by kids could be headed off by parents actually you know parenting. A year or so ago I was on a flight from DC to Denver and ended up next to this 4 yr old little girl and her mom (oh joy! The idiot mother brought NOTHING to help alleviate the child's boredom...no book, crayons/paper, toy. NOTHING! Finally after the little girl screaming and getting antsy the mother asked me for a piece of paper so her daughter could draw on it. I complied because it made the kid shut the hell up. But seriously, I'm a grown-ass woman and I get bored on the freaking flight so you would think a mother would know better.

Rinaldo I was confused by your post. So should I or should I NOT go see De-Lovely. You weren't exactly clear. :- Hee! Sorry it sucked!

Thanks for all your help with the hotels, everybody-- my friend's friend has a lot to go on now, so she should be fine!

I feel a need to tell this misbehaving child/obnoxious parent story on Mr Rabrab now. This took place, oh, 20+ years or so ago, before I had met him.

He was doing his grocery shopping in the same little neighborhood store that he always went to, and he saw a kid, maybe 8 or 9 years old, pulling magazines of the rack, flipping through them, and throwing them on the floor. He suggested mildly to said brat that he should put them back on the rack, and went on about his shopping. In the canned veggie aisle, he's accosted by brats bratty father, who threatened him for daring to tell the kid to stop. Mr Rabrab is not a tall man. He is, however, solid. He was also, at this particular moment, holding a #10 can of veggies. Which he cold-cocked the threatening asshole with. He then turned the stunned Daddy over his knee and administered quite the spanking.

This attracted a bit of an audience. When he was done, the manager of the store politely suggested that Mr Rabrab may want to leave now. Mr Rabrab did. A neighbor who was also in the store at the time gave him the rest of the story later: The asshole came to, and demanded that the police be called. The manager complied, and all the witnesses gave the police their version, and a description of the man who did it. No two descriptions of the assailant matched. The police, realizing that they would be looking for a 5'7"/5'0"/6'4/6'9", green/blue/brown/one-eyed, clean-shaven/ mustached/bearded, blond/brunette/bald/redheaded man in a tracksuit/tee-shirt over shorts/a suit/jeans who did/didn't limp, and did/didn't have tattoos and was/wasn't carrying a cane, took their report and left with those oh-so comforting words: "We'll investigate this and get back to you." After they left, the manager told Asshole that neither he nor his brat were welcome in the store anymore, and quietly asked the neighbor to let Mr Rabrab know that he was.

I feel like I should be horrified by this, but, somehow, I'm ... not.

Would Mr. Rabrab like to come to a hockey game with us next time a bratty little kid with a father who doesn't give a damn kicks the back of our seats? We'd buy him dinner and let him stay on The Zzard's sofabed, though airfare might be an issue. Does he carry his own #10 can of veggies, or should we supply that, too? And which canned veggies does he like best?

I'll donate a few bucks for bail.

Word, word, word. And what I hate, nearly as much as I hate parents who exert absolutely no control over their kids, is that those people ruin it for the rest of us. People expect kids to behave badly and compliment me when mine does well. While I don't mind the compliments, and it's cool positive reinforcement for Ex Jr., it's still sad that most people expect kids to be holy terrors. You get what you think you're going to get in a lot of cases, you know?



Heh, suzikins, I always say mine were a package deal. And since I can't have bio kids, I do feel blessed that I got such a neat one right off the bat. Of course, don't get me started on Ex Jr's maternal family, who thinks that I am "too attached" to my stepson and using him as a replacement for not being able to have "my own kids." Grrrr.

I don't have kids, but a number of my friends and co-workers now all have teenagers. The ones who are polite, well mannered, thoughtful kids are the ones who had RULES and CHORES and all manner of horrible things perpetrated on them by their parents from the age of two onwards. They are not only well behaved but they are all working their asses off so they can get into good universities.

Two bimbo co-workers though have almost identical teenager stories. Both have older sons who never finished high school, who go through one job after another, and who are regularily in and out of trouble with the law.

They both have younger daughters. One daughter just failed Grade 8 and her parents just had her pulled out of summer school so she could go to her friend's cottage for a month because, well, she's just not having any fun this summer. The other bimbo's daughter? Just failed Grade Ten , has been sleeping around since she was 13 but refuses to take the pill because "it makes her feel funny". The bimbos both think "kids are just like that these days" and "people are too hard on kids these days, they're just having a bit of fun".

Question? Am I supposed to sympathize when I'm told that one of these "normal" kids is pregnant?

Oh my God, words fail me. How can it be possibly interpreted as bad to love a child and parent him and be a good role model? Do they think you should pretend he's not in the house? Or that you should step back and speak to him only at a safe distance? The more adults a kid has loving him and looking after his welfare, the better. Sheesh.

The point at which I get totally chapped about misbehaving kids in public is when I see (or hear) what they're doing and all I can think is...

My mother (who was a wonderful woman, by the way), would have dragged me outside and made me stand there until I stopped throwing a fit. It was standard practice. I knew that I was in big trouble when she had to resort to this, and it usually worked. That and the threat of getting smacked.

I think too many parents today try to either "reason" with kids who are way too young to understand such reason (particularly in a tense situation) or afraid of what other people will think of them. Whatever happened to parents being parents instead of trying to be cool friends? When your kid is 18 and not living at home anymore? Then you can be their friend (and actually, from about the middle of my college experience until she died a few years ago, my mom really did become my best friend. I probably still tell my dad more about my life than anyone else).

And really, I just turned 30. My parents were total pot smoking boomers. I'm not that old and they weren't exactly strict. There was just a firmly established line that we did not cross in public, and immediate consequences (usually of the embarassment variety) when we did so cross them.

I don't have a problem with screaming, tantrum-throwing children at the grocery store, as long as it looks like the parent is leaning over and hissing something like "if you think you are going to distract or embarrass me into getting your way, you have another thing coming, and by the way, no dessert all week for you" rather than saying something like "are you mad at Mommy? Did Mommy make you angry? How can Mommy make you stop crying? Mommy doesn't want you to cry."
I do have a problem with screaming, tantrummy children in movie theaters and nice restaurants. Don't take children there until you are sure they won't ruin it for everyone else is my theory.
Edited to add: my goodness, 47 (age of NJ governor) and just coming out is sad. Sad for him and sad for his wife as well, I imagine. I feel bad for both of them.

My kids never got smacked in public, but they got plenty of ear hisses. I'm a firm believer that a bit of healthy fear of the parental units serves nothing but the ultimate good of society if properly instilled in one's children. My kids knew that I was pretty easygoing up to a point -- but they knew exactly what that point was, and if they went past it, there would be consequences.

Today they're both fairly useful members of society. But they also still like me, so I guess I managed to pull it off successfully.

Wow! There are just no words. I'm sorry that you have to deal with that. Although my future stepson's birth mother told my fiance that it wasn't fair because we were going to have a healthy baby and then I would want nothing to do with a sick kid. Hello!! The stepson-to-be is NOT sick, he has some MANAGEABLE health issues. You just can't forget to give him his medicine *cough* looking at you birth mother *cough*

Yep, that is how my folks raised me and there were ALWAYS consequences for when we pushed the limits. I was just telling my mom tonight that I never considered my parents strict. They had rules and as long as you obeyed them, then you got a lot of other freedom. Hence, I NEVER ever had a curfew the entire time I was growing up. I did have to give a reasonable estimate of when I'd be home and if it was going to vary more than 15 minutes, I better damn well find a phone and update them on the situation.

I didn't have a curfew per se, but no matter what time I got home, I had to wake my mom up and let her know I was home. She was able to go right back to sleep, but there was no way I could sneak in that way. It was actually quite effective!

My kids both turned out to be stay-at-home types, sedate and conservative unlike their wild child mother. So it was never an issue with them. I think they also knew, having heard enough about my misspent youth, to realize they wouldn't be able to get away with half of what I got away with since I'd be far wiser to stupid teenage tricks than my parents were!

Same here. I did have a curfew as a teenager, but it wasn't so iron-clad that a phone call and a good reason wouldn't get me an extension. I also remember a couple of times when I was very glad that Mom had drawn the lines so bright and clear; it let me decline invitations to things that I wasn't comfortable with (like parties in empty houses -- eeep) without looking like a wimp. All I had to do was invoke the "Mom said 'No.' " clause, and my friends knew that that was the end of the discussion as far as I was concerned, because Mom wasn't going to change her mind. I didn't feel the need to tell them that I hadn't even asked her.


Yep, that was her rule, too. I did fudge on that once. I moved her alarm clock so that she couldn't see it before I woke her, and when she asked if it was about one o'clock, I answered that no, it was closer to two. She said ok and went back to sleep. I went out in the kitchen and had a cup of coffee and watched the sunrise, since it was closer to six than than it was to two by several hours.

And with my mom, I knew that point was reached when we got to a finger point and one eye slightly squinched up smaller than the other one. I could push until then, but not after. Heh. My dad? Only push if you were willing to stake your life on it!

And we've all turned into such model citizens today!

Well, maybe not. But it's a nice delusion, anyway. :-)

Holy crap! I am in utter and total awe of Mr. Rabrab.

Yep, except it was my dad with me. My dad was a teacher at the high school and had quite the "don't fuck with me" image among the kids (which is probably a good idea when you're dealing with punk teenage kids). Little did they know that my dad was really a big softie underneath his gruff exterior. Anyway I used the "dad said no" excuse many, many times without ever actually asking him. Heh!

Yep, we did all turn out to be model citizens! Or something close to it.

My parents rule was that I had their total and complete trust until I did something to make them take it away. This meant that I could go to a party with my friends and they would know that I was either coming home at a somewhat reasonable time or I was sleeping somewhere safe. This, combined with the fact that I had a cell phone and a credit card and didn't hide my friends from my parents so that they would become suspicious allowed me to have relatively carefree teenage years. Plus my dad can wake up due to the sound of a faucet being turned on 3 houses away so I knew coming home late would be a bad idea. Right mom?

This was my mom’s strategy and we turned out perfect ;)

I did see one interaction in a store between a mom and a sevenish little boy that really impressed me. He was doing the escalating whine and a tantrum was obviously imminent when she just pulled him close to her and started rubbing his shoulders saying “No...I love you, but no.” She was so calm and firm at the same time, and he did quiet down very quickly. I think that not only did she impress upon him that she was in charge, but that she was a benevolent ruler as well. Something in her manner just struck me as very cool, but I guess all kids are different.

Re: chores at an early age. My two year old niece just loves picking up. She is the best ‘Helper! Helper! Helper!’ ever. She has already thrown away a leatherman tool, a PDA, and a pair of shoes.

I have never heard this type of conversation and I hope that I never do. It is bad enough to hear moms and dads asking their kids if their (the parents) decision or choice is "ok". It is not up to the children to decide.




My mom did this too. I am definitely going to remember it for when my children are older.



Sorry for this, but....haahaaahaaahaaa!!! I only laugh because I have been through this too. When my oldest daughter was about two, the trash can was way more fun to put things in than the toy box.

Snicker. Yeah, not the biggest kid fan here, but that is cute. Exasperating, but cute.

To whomever upthread that has the Gazelle, I just wanted to say I agree with its greatness. I actually have one set off of the kitchen and can hop on whenever I'm boiling water or doing something which requires attention, but not standing over the stove attention. It's also nice and quiet so it can be used anytime. like late at night when I didn't make it to the gym and it's too late to walk around the block.

My parents were also pot smoking boomers, (albiet slowing cleaning up their act as I grew up, now my mother is a marathon running vegan). We also didn't have a curfew, but had to let them what, who, when and where. If it was going to be a late party, they prefered we stayed (we lived in the boonies, everying was a long drive) but then we had to have the car home by 8:00 in the morning, and be prepared to do our usual weekend work. I thought I was the only one who ever said I couldn't, when I hadn't even asked.

Snicker indeed -- but I hate to admit, when I hear PDA all I can think of is Public Display of Affection, so clearly I'm not functioning well this morning.

Speaking of kids and choices, I also learned quickly that when you want to teach children to learn to make good decisions, you have to give them a limited number of options. We were living in San Antonio and my daughter was a second-grader and in a Brownie troop, of which I had just become the leader. And like an idiot, I asked the kids, "What would you like to do this year?" thinking they might actually have some helpful suggestions. So what did one little girl come up with? "Let's go to Mexico!"

After that it was, "Do you want to do A or B?"

I think that is the key - the ones who let their kids rule them are the ones that get the kids who don't know how to behave in public.