Parenting

A few days ago Benjamin was running around nakie and today it snowed. Thus is the weather in South Carolina!

All our azaleas are in full bloom so I wonder what that will do with our spring bloom. Our weather has been stranger than usual lately.

Larissa is off to a birthday party today. She was so excited, they went off to one of those jump places. This girl L was allowed to invite one girl and chose to take Larissa. Kids, so hard to watch all of their ups and downs sometimes. Larissa and this L were friends in class. A new girl R came into their class and promptly made friends with L and told her not to talk or play with Larissa. I had several days of crying from Larissa. She couldn't understand why L would suddenly turn on her. Ahh, girls.  After about 2 weeks L decided that R wasn't very nice and she started playing with Larissa again. It was a good week for Larissa, her friend came back to play with her and the boy who was annoying her on the playground told her that he had a crush on her and that she was nice and pretty. I would not care to go back to the 5th grade!

Sometimes it is hard as a parent to listen to all the drama at school. When do you intervene and when do you stay back? What do you tell your kids to do in these situations? Is it a race issue? The above situation with Larissa could have been thought as that, R is white. However, I have seen that type of behavior many times among my kids. I seen seen Emma herself try this type of manipulation. 

In this situation I told Larissa to concentrate on other relationships in the class and we talked about those. I also told her that if she gets to talk to L alone to tell her that she missed playing with her, don't get mad, don't accuse. I was hopeful that L would tire of R's bossiness and go back to playing with Larissa. The day after Larissa talked to her, L came back to play. When Larissa told me about it I told her that if R wanted to play with them to allow her to do so, don't act like R. Friday Larissa came home to tell me that they were all playing together at recess. Then I hear about the club where you tell each other your secrets.....ugh, no don't. Then comes the warning about telling your secrets to people and how to develop trust.

Parenting is tough.