Am I a mean Mom? Am I too strict? Do I have too many rules? I wondered this tonight while Abby was angry with me for not letting her out to play with her friends. Spring finally seems to have arrived in our little corner of the world and the kids in the neighbourhood were certainly out to take full advantage of it. Abby had been to play with her friends across the street before dinner and now after 6 she was asking to go out again. Problem being it was bath night. So I ended up having to put my foot down, which she was, understandably, unhappy about. As we went through the motions of our getting ready for bed routine we could still hear the kids outside playing.
"Why do they get to play outside and not me Mom?"
And that's right about when the Mommy-guilt rolled in. Why didn't I just let her go out and play? What harm would there be? Very likely, lots. Abby is a kid that needs a lot of sleep to be the warm, funny, smart, pleasant child she is. If we miss that 8 pm deadline for being in bed even by half an hour well we're just inviting trouble in. She'll be a bear to wake up in the morning and then cranky with whoever gets the "pleasure" of her company for the day be it the sitter or her teacher and classmates. She needs an hour of wind down time before bed, 90 minutes if there's a bath involved. I understand all this and want to make sure she has everything she needs to be the happy girl she is. To Abby I'm just being "mean" because I am "mean". I think it's going to be a long spring.
1 comment:
Nope, I don't think that's mean at all, although I don't see how we're going to get our kids to realize we're not being mean when we say no. At least, they won't realize it until they move out, probably.
I know we'll have lots of times like this, times when "everybody else" is doing something that my kids won't be allowed to do. But we still need to stick to our values, right? And someday, sometime, they'll thank us for it, right?
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