Yesterday I brought the boys to the park… There was a mom there that I have never met before with her almost 5 year old that was a head taller than Xavier and a 8 month old babe…

The boys ran around like they always do… going up and down and all around…

At one point the mom struck up a conversation and upon knowing that Xavier was 5 she assumed he was in school… when I told her that we homeschooled she had no idea what it was… she had never heard of homeschooling.

As the boys played, they went down the slide as they often do… it is a double slide and they sit on the middle part and go down that way… or sometimes they go head first or sometimes they sit normally… they also *gasp* climb up the slide…

Well…. yesterday, they were going down the middle and running up the slide and having fun… no one else was on the slide, no one else was near it… the other little boy was playing on the other module and was not even paying attention to them… I got the “look”… my kids were not playing by the “rules”…

what are these rules anyway?

Not let kids explore? not let kids have fun? Why Micromanage every aspect of their life and play?

When the little boy came to the module where the boys were playing they stopped going up the slide by their own accord and started using the stairs.. they did keep on going down the middle though and waited their turn…

The other little boy pushed by Colin at one point and the mom said nothing but she was very quick to react when her son was about to go down the middle of the slide… he did it anyway and she glared at me as my boys went down… then they went and played on the other module… her son continued and she talked to her son quite loudly when he did it and then kept on glaring at me…  (there was no one else there… he wasn’t hurting anyone… he was having fun…why not let him?)  then she said really loudly something like “some other parents let their kids do anything… but you have to slide on one side of the other!”

ARGHHH!!!!

When Xavier came back to slide I told him that the little boy was getting in trouble because he was doing the same thing as him… so maybe slide on one side or the other for now… he went down one time normally and then went and played on something else…

I don’t get it at all… why do parents not let their kids play and explore? Who is going to get hurt by the kids going down the middle of the slide? Who is going to get hurt when a kid runs up the slide when there are not other kids around? Why do parent follow their kid up onto the modules and not let them explore by themselves?

I really don’t get the unspoken “rules”…

I am getting tired of reading and hearing about people that don’t care at all about the needs and wants of their kids but only think about themselves… people that have no respect for kids…

People that choose not to breastfeed and ignore the health risks of Formula Feeding (or know them and simply don’t care), their babies go from crib, to chair, to excersaucer, to bucket, to stroller, to high chair and must not be held to much because they believe that babies can be spoiled with too much attention and love, and *gasp* may even need human contact more than the preconceived maximum allowed time per day…. people ignore a child’s cries because they believe that at a certain time or place cries have no more meaning…. I have said it many times before and I will say it again…. making a baby cry themselves to sleep is one of the saddest things I can think about and as I said before, is pure neglect IMHO….

Babies, toddlers, kids are human beings and equals…

We choose to have children because it is part of our nature, part of what and who we are… However, in our society, many people seem to choose to have kids because it is the next step, or they really do want children but are caught up in what society and media portrays as the perfect child… that child that is seen but not heard… that is independent and never asks for anything but has every material thing on the planet… (of course they believe that you can “spoil” a child with love and attention but not with toys and possessions)

I am tired People that not only work out of the home and only see their kids for less than a few hours a day and then get babysitters on the weekends because they need “alone time” and then complain about their kids the rest of the time… They are often so unattached from the needs of their kids but try to make up for it it material goods.

How can you love someone and yet want to change them from the moment they are born? How can you love someone that you don’t respect and see as a possession?
Why do people mutilate their kids genitals with no medical reason and then try to make it seem as if it was nothing and it didn’t hurt, just blatantly making their kids out to be insensitive and not worth anything… or is it just that girls are more important and feel differently than boys since FGM is illegal…

How can someone love someone and not comfort them when they need it and make someone cry (or fuss) themselves to sleep? Would they treat their spouse like that? what if their spouse was in an accident and could no longer function, would they just make their spouse cry because they need to learn not to be be hungry, thirsty or need affection between certain times of the day? No, I would hope not, that would be cruel.. yet…. they just think that kids are not not worth respect….

How can people continue the cycle of violence by hitting their kids (and this means tapping, smacking, popping and all of the words that are used to downplay hitting) Again, if you hit your spouse, if you hit other adults you can be arrested… but kids again are not worth that respect it seems….  It is a hard cycle to break but it must be done… violence is never the answer and it only teaches kids how to fear… not how to make the right choices…

It saddens me so much the lack of respect that kids are shown….