WOH and sleeping issues
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WOH and sleeping issues
| Sun, 05-22-2005 - 10:34am |
We were at a dinner party last night at the home of one of dh's coworkers. They have 2 boys, 6 and 4. They have a bunch of sleeping issues (kids 'scared' at night, won't fall asleep in their own bed, won't go to bed without mom or dad cuddling them, etc.) The mom blames herself because since she works all day and misses them so much she tends to cuddle with them late at night and they fall asleep in a pile on the bed all together. She said that if she SAH, they wouldn't have the same issues.
I sah. For us, bed time is a rigid, welcome respite at the end of the day. Dh has no desire to keep them up either, lol.

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Not dogma, but while I have hot button issues. . .they're not related to my controlling my children, per se.
My hot button issues are related to social & emotional development, predominantly.
If ds wants a second dessert, then he can make a healthy snack choice if it's been a reasonable amount of time since he last ate.
My oldest dd has a friend who I've had to learn to like. . .she's not an unsavory child, but she was unkind do dd in their younger years and I'm having to learn to like her again.
My kids had chocolate croissants today for breakfast and asked for ice cream later today, and I said "no." Because I do feel strongly about how much sugar they eat in the course of a day. They tried a little negotiation, saw it wasn't going to work, and bowed out gracefully, even though they are overtired and overstimulated. No casulties.
Our home is open to whoever the kids bring home as friends. If I think that a certain child is a bad influence, we talk about it, limit the places they have contact, make an effort to make sure our child has a lot of social interaction with more appropriate friends, and nine times out of ten, they get tired of being mistreated by the child in question. The tenth time, the child in question realizes that his/her behavior is out of line with our family standards and adopts behavior that is more in line with our expectations. Either way, not a significant problem.
I haven't been able to change my own definition of 'fun', I guess. Something else to work on.
I don't know if I'll ever think it's as fun to hang out with a bunch of kids and parents as it is to just hang out with adults. It's different fun, it's not the anti-fun, but it's not AS fun.
And I don't think it's true that I 'don't qualify' for having fun without kids, just because I have them and other people have them too. I think that it's important to have fun without the kids in tow. But to say that I'm not doing it right (how I would be able to 'do it right', I'm not sure) is simply not true. We get together with groups of friends and other moms and their kids on a weekly basis. I'm doing it as 'right' as I can.
But I would still prefer to hang out on the deck with my girlfriends and some cards and a bottle of wine.
Meldi
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