need to vent

[shirleyz]

I find it fascinating that in America, you must have a license to drive a car, work on electrical or plumbing, build a house or even carry a gun......

But ANYONE can have a kid, with out even so much as a training manual........

My sentiments entirely! If people had to take an IQ test before being allowed to reproduce, the population would decrease rapidly!

Shirley

[Windy]

Well now maybe I should not tell you

this. However you brought it up not me.

You said you trusted a kid you all ready

knew would not take orders. The pool

incident. How could you a grown mother

trust a nine year old who would not listen

to you in the pool, with the key to your

house and to clean up after your animals

and feed them. As you said you did it to

save money. Yet you blame the kid and

his parents. It appears to me you are the

one to blame. How many times have you

heard "you get what you pay for". As a

craft person , I bet you have said it your

self.Now if you need to vent go ahead

and yell at me for voicing my opinion on

your subject. I know I can take it or I would

not have typed this.

WINDY

[CitizenKate]

I think you can get more from the situation than just "live and learn". I agree with Bree's perspective, that there is an opportunity for a serious breakthrough hiding behind every problem.

Kate

[Bob]

I agree with Bree's comments also. Lots of us make mistakes and just sometimes need nothing more than a bit of time to do the right thing...

Someone once said that "Wisdom comes with age", sometimes age comes by itself... LOL

Sometimes we just don't know why people do what they do and are too quick to jump to conclusions about it. Making a quick judgement on matters sometimes can only make the matter worse.

Again on this point, I agree with Bree. What your child sees you do in this matter is also quite important.

Way to go Bree !!!!

[UKRay]

One possibility that nobody has voiced is that the mother is feeling guilty for not supervising her kid whilst he carried out his task (lack of time, laziness, whatever - but I bet you would have checked once or twice that everything was okay) and is looking to shift the blame on to someone else... It is a whole lot easier to live with a mistake if someone else has made it. Just my opinion and worth precisely what you paid for it!

[TomSwede]

I find it fascinating that in America, you must have a license to drive a car, work on electrical or plumbing, build a house or even carry a gun......

But ANYONE can have a kid, with out even so much as a training manual........

I have had the same reflection as you here in Sweden Frog.

The only thing in this situation that I can think of that differs from what could have happened here is the religious aspect. Alltough there are christian people here they are not very open bout it so they would prolly invent another excuse to ban the child from going to the neighbours house, christian or not.

We had a tv series a few years ago that was called hockeyparents (translated from Swedish) wich dealt with the issue of parents that is backing up their children just a liiiiittle bit toooooo much and there we could see how they, like UKRay mentioned shifted focus from their own problems by putting blame on others. the name hockyparents came from the type of parents that live their lifes through the children by pushing them to hard in hockey, football, ballet or whatever the interest the parent was into but failed to make it and therefor more or less forcing the children into a certain role without any choice. One of our biggest football promises who was about 16 a few years ago and was training with a very famous football team in Italy to become a top player there suddenly dropped out and tried to take his life as a result of this. He realized he didn't like football at all but couldn't stand the thought of betraying his parents by dropping out of it. Think he's written a book bout it and perhaps that is what alerted the tv people to make the series. I don't know about that.

Ok I'm drifting off the subject here but you know me. I'm Tom and it happens all the time, lol.

I'll stick to others advice here, sit it through and the idea someone came up with to let them play outside but not at one and anothers house might be a way to go.

Good luck with it and hope your son has or can make other friends if it doesn't resolve. The children seem to be pretty much innocent victims here. I feel sorry for them.

Tom

[wildrose]

The father and mother have both waved to my husband in passing, and the mom waved to Ethan and I the other day (mostly I think because Ethan called out to them as they were driving away).

I was happy today to have a potential new friend for Ethan over, who is closer to his age, and they hit it off really well. Also, this boy's mom and I get along really well. She, like me, is pretty new to the area, so I think that helps.