A Difficult Situation

I have some free time and so many topics to blog about!

I think in light of our past weekend the topic today is Discipline.

Background: we were invited to a 7 year-old's birthday party on Saturday. We only stayed two hours and it was a bit painful for us to stay that long. There were only three sets of parents who were actually supervising their kids, including us. Now I don't care that there was beer for the adults there or if a parent would step away for a cigarette, but this was a free-for-all. The parents had rented a bounce house, there was a full size trampoline and a swimming pool. The oldest child attending was 10 but there were a handful of 3 to 5 year olds. My friend's five year old was purposely hit by another child with a pool toy, kids were turning off the bounce house and letting it deflate while other children were still inside, some children were violently wrestling inside the bounce house and at one point the older kids dumped about 50 worms into the swimming pool. Where were the parents?

I've been noticing for some time that I'm pulling away from parents who don't have well-behaved children. However, it's only been in the last few weeks that Aaron and I have really started to discuss the importance of discipline and have become frustrated with our friends who don't discipline their children.

I'll be the first to admit that I made a lot of mistakes when Little Shaver and I were living on our own and his dad and I had just split up. I was a single mom in college working two jobs, and I was working desperately to finish my degree while raising a 15 month old alone. I had $10 a week for groceries, was poor, worried about money and grades, exhausted, and guilt-stricken over not only leaving Little Shaver's dad but not spending enough time with him. Little Shaver was a terror. Aaron and I got into so many arguments when we were first dating over discipling Shaver. He backed off when I made it abundantly clear that I was the parent and Aaron was not.

After some time, Aaron gently approached the subject again with me, hinted, pointed out situations in which I was letting Little Shaver get away with misbehaving and was making problems worse for myself. It took some time, but I'm proud to say that now that Shaver is 4, he is fairly well-behaved. He has his moments--refusing to brush his teeth in the morning, sometimes hitting Aaron or I to get attention--which warrants an immediate 3 minute time out--, or general mischief. But I know that when I bring my child to a store, I don't have to chase him through the aisles. He doesn't trash other peoples' homes, asks permission for everything from a snack to going into another room when visiting family, and doesn't steal toys from other children. I actually get compliments from friends and family members on how well-behaved he is.

We have friends who really don't discipline their children. The children have never been put on time out, think threats are hilarious, and are accustomed to being cussed out. I don't know about you, but I've never told my four year old to "shut the f*** up!"

Some of you are reading this thinking, "Why would you even let these adults by your child?" I wish the answer was simple. I wish I could say that I would simply stop answering their phone calls and deal with the consequences, but things are never that easy. My husband is the godfather of their four year old. The husband and Aaron have been very good friends since high school. Only recently have Aaron and I realized the degree of inappropriateness of what's going on in that house.

These aren't the kind of people that we can just call out. Their seven year old is autistic, which, of course, I am certainly understanding of. Autism is so difficult to deal with and their child's severity is worse than Little Shaver's. However, autism is not an excuse to not discipline a child. Their child should not be playing in my dresser drawers or pulling everything out of my cupboards when they visit. At the very least, the parents should be redirecting him. But how do you say that to someone who is extremely guarded and opinionated and sensitive?

For now, we are avoiding this couple. We really don't know what else to do. We're hoping that slowly but surely they will see the difference between their kids and our's and our friends' children.