I had an incident yesterday with a neighbor that I just can't get past. This has been brewing for a long time and I am just about to the end of my rope with it.
The neighbor has two boys about the ages of my girls. She admits that she has trouble making and keeping friends both for herself and her boys. Over the last year plus she has latched on to me and my girls to be their playmates. One reason, I believe, her friendships don't last is because she is so very opinionated and will tell someone how their kids should be raised. She gets great pleasure out of tattling on the other kids - a trait both her boys have picked up on. Her boys cannot get along with any of the other kids in the neighborhood.
My girls have no enjoyment out of playing with her boys, and generally their play times end in arguments. I have watched their play and very often the boys start something of a war/chase game (very normal for boys - I have no problem) then when someone asks them to stop they won't. They just keep doing it. I have watched them chase my daughter right up to the door. If my daughter chooses to stop them by turning on them an doing to them what they are doing to her - they immediately dissolve into tears and crying and run to their mother (who is always there). Then I am told how "bad" my child is.
The neighbor does not allow her children (7 1/2 and almost 6) to play anywhere without her direct supervision. They have scooters and bikes but are only allowed to ride them in a driveway. (we live on a neighborhood loop road that my husband an I feel is very safe from our own direct observation). When the boys are over my girls are limited by them to what they can do and when they start to do something that we allow but they aren't the boys cry and the mother digs into me about why I allow it.
Constantly I am bombarded with horrific stories an how dangerous life outside the doors of a home are. Let me stop here and state: If anyone should know an fully understand the horrors and pain that can happen to a child in their own neighborhood, it would be me. I am still dealing with monsters of 25-years ago from growing up in my own neighborhood. But, I refuse to be a prisoner to my own past, and for my children to be prisoners to it or to the media explosion.
Soap box: great minds and lesser in this day and time wonder why children are fat, sit in fron of the computer or gamebox all afternoon and why their creativity is so blunted - people you have to let your kids out once in a while to explore and be without you breathing down their necks. They have to have bumps and bruises and learn to pick themselves up. They have to learn to be with friends - warts and all without a parent getting in their business. That doesn't mean that I don't watch them and that I am not here for them - they know I am and they know they can come get me when I am needed. I know more about what they are doing (right now) then they think and I use it as learning tools, later, when it might not be as upsetting (confrontational) to sitdown and discuss. End Soap box
Anyway, yesterday afternoon the K-escape artist struck again. She ended up down at our babysitter's house, which is also the bus stop. Babysitter's mother was there along with neighbor mom. I have found out that neighbor mom yelled at both K, and later MB who went to find her and upset both of them terribly, before coming over to my house to "let me know" and lecture me again about how horrible the world outside is. I sat down talked with the girls, explained the rules again, comforted MB (who thought, because of what neighbor had said, it was all her fault). I pulled out a game that we had not played before as a little treat, and a way to keep them under my eye for awhile.
A little while later, neighbor mom shows up with her sons. The kids play outside while neighbormom lectures me more and I ignore her while I am trying to get dinner made. After only a few minutes one of her sons comes running in with this scream. Going on and on about danger and MB. I thought MB had gotten really hurt. As I am running for the door I hear him tell his mother that MB is riding her bicycle in the road and that is not allowed. Sure enough she is turning in circles at the end of our driveway. I turn on the two of them (neighbor) and let go.
I told them that they both need to be quiet and calm down. These are my children and I will raise them as I see fit. I make the rules for the children and I do not need them to keep telling me what they are doing. I then go outside and get MB and K to come in. The neighbor actually took the hint and left.
My normal mode for ending any sort of friendship or aquaintainship is ignoring, or just not making an effort. That didn't work here. My polite - "MB does not like to play with son1 and son2 anymore" did not work. I seriously doubt my tirad yesterday will have much influence - how do I get rid of this woman and her children?
Peace,
Amy
2 comments:
Oh, man - you displayed patience for so much longer than I think I could have. I don't blame you one bit for telling her what you did. Some people have no concept of personal boundaries. I hope she won't bother you anymore.
Thank you guys. I think this was bothering me more about how I handled it in the end. The whole situation with K did scare me, but the neighbor just made it worse. Thankfully I have some other great neighbor moms who told me about their own escape artist children, which made me feel less like a failure on that end. They also shared similar stories with me about the neighbormom in question.
I have tried to stop this whole play together thing in the past, mainly because of MBs feelings about it. But I have to be more forceful.
We almost moved out of the neighborhood, and one of the main reasons was this relationship. But in the end I didn't want to be forced out by one person. Now her husband has a chance at a job out of town and I am really hoping he gets it so that they move.
To clarify, just in case, MB is not allowed to leave the road that we actually live on and go into the rest of the nieghborhood without an adult with her. I rarely have problems with them leaving our immediate yard, just these rare occurrences. I know that things can happen in a blink of the eye and that is why I talk about it with MB and more recently K. But these same things can happen anywhere and with me right there, so I prefer to be educated and teach caution and awareness, rather than limiting my children to a locked backyard or inside the house. If our neighborhood was different I might feel differently about this.
Amy
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