Monday, September 10, 2007

It's All in the Attitude

In a recent artcle in the Hearts at Home Magazine, Holly Schurter lists some of the attitudes that are prevalent in our kids.

In Infancy: "It's all about me, me, me."
In Toddlerhood: "What's mine is mine. What's yours is mine too."
In Preschool: "What my mom doesn't know won't hurt her."
In Gradeschool: "My teacher knows a lot more than mom does. So do my friends."

Her article is about teenagers and how they can display all of the above attitudes. While I can't speak from personal experience about teenagers or gradeschoolers. The other three are very real to me right now. The Infancy and Toddlerhood attitudes came as no surprise - I knew to expect those and have had a lot of experience dealing with them to date. The preschool attitude she listed finally put words to the attitude I am noticing in my oldest!

Let me give an example:

Last Saturday morning our kids were up earlier than their parents wanted them to be (surprise, surprise). Being the attentive parent I am, I heard them go downstairs and heard them banging around, but didn't actually get up to check on them until I heard the eerie silence. I shuffled downstairs to find half eaten ice cream bars sitting on the table, two boys with chocolate all over their faces playing sweetly with their blocks, and one little girl trying to finish her ice cream in the kitchen.

"What are you doing?" I asked (although I didn't really need to hear an answer to know). My daughter quickly replied "I wanted to finish this before you found me!"

Allow me to share one more example with you. When asking my daughter from another room what she is doing, the answer I am starting to get more frequently is "I don't want to tell you." This is never a good thing to hear, but at least she is being honest!

It will be interesting to see how the "What my mom doesn't know won't hurt her" attitude will continue to manifest itself in the coming months. For now, I am just thankful she still thinks I'm smarter than her!

6 comments:

Jessica said...

Oh my goodness, Megan! That is too funny! I love Mya's response that she wanted to finish before you found her :) Now that is real family life : )

Taylor said...

Awe, I love it! How funny! How early do those kids get up anyway? I can't ever seem to get Morgan out of bed - she is a sleep queen! I love the pics too!

Jami said...

Oh Megan that is so funny!! It is such a shame that the times our kids are the quietest...they are MOST often getting into trouble! I love Mya's words...so true!! :)

Love you!!

smw said...

that is cute. :) although probably not real great to you, but when i read through those and saw that they can all manifest themselves together in teen years, i say, amen!

Anonymous said...

Ethne just started doing the same thing, and it's not just when she's in trouble. Did you have fun in preschool? "Yes." What did you do? "I don't want to tell you."

Anonymous said...

I can vouch for the grade school attitude..

Scene 1: my kids when helping them do their homework "the teacher doesn't make me do that!" (actually, yes she does, I see their teacher in action every week when I volunteer, and they do NOT complain for her!)

Scene 2: Trav was complaining over doing some easy homework, so I started the lecture (when will I learn, lectures rarely work!)that I had to learn this stuff too and it will be okay. He replied..."our school is different now days (WHAT, now days, I am only 30!!)you did not have to learn ALL this!"

All this attitude in the FIRST WEEK of school.

As for the teen years, I have heard Dennis Rainey say that parents suddenly take "stupid pills" Glad I will have some of my fellow "stupid friends" to enjoy the journey with :)

Cute story Megan. I do love real family life!