Irritations

I've got a pet peeve, myself, that I need to vent.

I absolutely hate it (maybe detest is a better word) when people judge you from what they 'think' you are. I've had this happen to me on quite a few different occasions and I must admit, I have a hard time forgiving it after that. But I'm working on it.

One particular on-going relationship (if that's what you call it) happens to be with a certain neighbor. I've overheard her comments periodically on people who homeschool and has made it obvious that she doesn't agree. She also is very opinionated about having many children...again, she's not for it.

My opinion is this....

You are not required to homeschool. This is what's right for me. I won't judge you and you don't need to judge me. It is also not a requirement to have a gazillion children. I chose to have five and it's right for me. Again, I won't judge you if you only have one or two and you don't have to judge me. Now, I wouldn't mind it at all, if you enjoyed hearing me vent on one of my crazy days but I'll leave that up to you. I'd also love it, if you actually took the time to get to know me before throwing out your words or making an opinion about me that is hard and fast before you even find out for certain what I'm really like.

Yesterday was a park day for us. Our homeschool group has this regularly scheduled event every Wednesday throughout the nice weather period. Sometimes we attend and sometimes we don't depending on our schedule. We were able to go yesterday. It was a balmy 92 degrees. When we arrived, there was so many children there bussed in from a school having a school's almost out party. You can only imagine how difficult it would be to keep watch of all your children in the midst of all this chaos. Since earlier in the Spring, our three year old Aaron had wondered off and freaked his dear mother out, I told the rest of the kids to help keep their eye on him so we didn't loose him again.

Shortly into our fun, Aaron decided he was done with the park and he was going to go see his Dad. I caught an Aaron sighting as he was headed to the road. Fortunately, we caught him before he got too far. He says to me, "I'm going to see my Dad" and I responded that it was a long way home and he might get lost so he had better just stay with us until we were ready to go. He says to me "All you have to do is go here and turn here (as he's showing me a diagram in the air with his fingers) and I know my way home. I won't get lost." This thought scares me to death. To have no fear that you as a three year old could possibly get yourself home without telling anyone is a mother's worst nightmare. What if I didn't see him....how far could he have gotten?

He came back and sat with me for a bit. He told me he wanted to go home and about that time, Bob called me from home telling me that Kara was up from her nap. As I was trying to gather up my things and wait for the buses to leave since they were blocking me in, Aaron disappeared again! I thought to myself, Oh, for crying out loud! After sending out a search and rescue party that included several adults and many children, we found him...sitting behind a tree. The thing that makes this kind of sticky is that when he 'disappears' he usually is irritated so he refuses to answer when you are calling his name. Thank goodness we found him! I'm very grateful for my own personalized search party.

I finally made it home with ALL of the children. Aaron and Ryan announced most emphatically that they needed food. Cheetos were their snack of choice. I filled two little cups with the last of the cheetos and sent them out to play in the backyard. Ryan's dumped out all over the ground sending him into a crying fit. Since their was no more and I had about had it for the day, I made Aaron share the rest of his cheetos with Ryan promising to buy some more later. This did NOT go over well with him. He refused to eat what he had and threw himself on the ground burying his head in his arms screaming with a volume that could have potentially put a bull horn to shame.

After muttering a question to myself that sounded something like....whose idea was it to have all these children anyway, I left him to cry it out because no amount of threatening or disipline would help this situation especially in my mental state of mind. After a little bit, I get a knock on our door. It happens to be the neighbor kid. He asks me why Aaron is crying in the garage? So I told him. Then he responds with...well, my Mom doesn't like it! Of course, many things were running through my head at that moment but you would have been so proud of me....I didn't verbalize them outloud! I did, however, tell him to let his mother know that he was misbehaving and when he was done having his fit, the crying would end. I'm sure that some of my irritation is just overflow from previous incidents that build up over time but after all that I had to deal with yesterday, my patience for working through an aggravating comment from a I'm better than you neighbor, was beyond my abilities.

When is it not acceptable for a crying child to have his fit outside in his very own backyard? Why do I need to fuss about my crying child annoying the neighbors when he's perfectly fine just irritable? Why should I fuss about whether he's run out there to play and he only has a pull up on? He's happy, healthy and loves to have fun. Shouldn't this be enough for the neighbor to see that she doesn't need to be concerned about our families well being? If you happen to run into any of our children, you will know without a shadow of a doubt that they are not beaten down, but very exuberant, friendly kids who just want to have fun! We are NOT one of those wacky homeschool families that seems to always make it in the news that has some sort of dark secret life of beatings and unsocialized slave children running amok.