Written at the end of July... Just posting now! I think I remembered what I meant (it needed to be cleaned up because I did it through voice record) but some of it may still sound crazy!
Last night we had to drive down to Kenosha to drop the dog off so we could leave on vacation this week [before DC]. It's kind of tight quarters when you have my car, four kids and a dog all tucked into our five little passenger car. But, as always I try to make the best of it with the kids. On the way down there it started a little rough because Ava was a little bit crabby. After pulling over to the side of the road for a bit, she finally calmed down, switched places with Abby so she didn't have to sit next to Max, and all was well.
We got to Kenosha without too much difficulty as the kids played on whatever device they were holding in their hands. We met Dave's mom and dad at Mars Cheese Castle, which is always an interesting place. There's a little tavern, of food area that is more like a fast food restaurant, and then all kinds of cheese samples. Basically anything you've ever wanted from Wisconsin, you can buy at Mars Cheese Castle. So after shopping and then letting the kids pick out some cheese, we grabbed something to eat and headed back home. Nolan started playing some songs on his phone, and it got me thinking about the lyrics and some different things, so I just thought we could play a fun game and I started to play "What would you do?" The kids have been watching the show on TV with John Stossel lately that's called "What would you do?" It basically shows people in different situations and whether they would react or not. So sometimes it might be people in a restaurant who have their kid in there, it's loud and they are yelling at them.
I think my game started with Ava, when she said I don't like Barbies even though I know she likes Barbies. She was afraid that somebody was going to make fun of her and so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to let her know that she can be who she needs to be. So I asked her, "Ava, what would you do if you were on the playground or if you were in your classroom and asked somebody 'Do you want to play Barbies?' And they said 'Barbies are for babies.'?" The first thought that Ava had was that she would say "I don't like Barbies either." But Abby and Nolan and Max all said you can like Barbies, you don't have to either be friends with that person or you just don't have to play with them. By the end of it, Ava decided she could say "That's OK, we don't have to be twins. We can both play together but we don't have to play Barbies. We can do something else." I thought that was pretty good. Then we got into some deeper things. I asked Max what he would do if somebody like our babysitter's dad came and said "I'm here to take you home from summer school because Sara couldn't make it today." Nolan wasn't quite sure. He was going to ask for a drivers license, which I thought was funny because I don't know what he would do with that. We finally came to the conclusion that Nolan and Abby could just text me or call me before going home with anybody they didn't know, and Max and Ava need to go to an adult if they're at summer school... there's the office, there are teachers that they should go to, and not go just home with somebody that they don't know. Then we got even a little deeper yet. I had Nolan play a song that was talking about a woman's hot body. We talked about what that means and why you would say that to someone. We discussed whether it would be a compliment or not and you could tell that Nolan was a little bit torn. He knows that he shouldn't do it but yet still a little bit I'm thinking that women might like it. I asked both Abby and Nolan what they think that they should do if somebody wants to date you but you don't really want to date them. I said what if it's a good friend of yours, they come to all your sporting events, they're really nice to you, they're super sweet and they ask you out to a movie what should you do? They both were trying to figure out how to let the person down easy so we talked about some other things you could do. I let them know you can always blame me. "My mom is so strict she won't let me do anything." You can also come up with alternatives that you could do instead. What if you said Let's go on a group date" instead of turning them down completely or not call it a date, but "As a group of friends let's see who wants to come over on Friday."
Nolan liked it so much that once we got home he wanted to keep playing it. So next he talked about what if you were a senior in high school, and you went camping with friends, and you were 100 miles away and they brought out drugs. What would you do? I thought it was a really good question and I asked him what he thought. He thought he would excuse himself and go tell the police. I think it was funny because in every situation when I ask Nolan about what he would do if his friends did something wrong, he always said he would tell on them. I don't think Nolan would ever tell on his friends. In fact, I do believe that Nolan will be the one that will get in trouble because of peer pressure. So we talked about the drugs and what they could do and if there was only one car. And I let Abby and Nolan both know that if they ever get in a situation they can always call me. I don't care if they are 1 mile away or 100 miles away or a thousand miles away, I don't care if they are 11 or 21 or 51, although it would be kind of weird if they're 51 and their mom still comes and rescues them. But I would do it! So then we talked about what else they could do. If they didn't feel that they were in danger, they could just say no thanks, but still hang out with their friends. If it wasn't a dangerous situation you can still sit around the fire, you can go for a walk, all kinds of things that you can do camping even if you're not doing drugs.
It was really interesting to see how the kids' minds work. Sometimes I knew they were trying to do the right thing but they didn't have alternatives. So it was eye-opening to me that as a parent, I'm the one that needs to provide them with alternatives. I need to be able to help them know how they are able to say no. Sometimes they know it isn't as easy as saying no, sometimes you have to be creative about it. Sometimes you just have to say no out right and helping them figure out the difference is going to be a real challenge.
