Getting Rid of the Neighbor's Kid - Page 3
I don’t like this boy. He’s not a bad kid, really, but I don’t want his behavior – the offhanded rudeness, the do-as-I-please attitude – to influence my children’s. His mom doesn’t seem like a bad person, either. I know she works long hours and the family is not well off, but I still don’t feel the need to provide free day care for this stranger. I don’t want to feel intruded upon in my own home whenever the little vagabond shows up uninvited, leaving me to turn him away (for which I feel annoyed and guilty) or to adjust my own activities (i.e., cutting short my Sunday morning lounge to rush upstairs and change out of my bathrobe) to accommodate his presence.
I suppose it’s time to readjust my strategy. Next time he appears, I should hand him a slip of paper with our phone number and insist that he call before coming over in the future, and reinforce that rule when it inevitably falls by the wayside. And, I suppose, I should get my hands on a prescription for a big giant chill pill. I can’t choose my kids’ friends for them and I don’t want to make the mistake of influencing them with rude behavior of my own. I wonder, though, if they’d notice if I started trailing after the little stinker with a can of Febreze?
This is an original New Jersey Moms Blog post. Deanna Q enjoys exploring all the ups, downs, and jughandles of parenting in the Garden State, and is in the market for a Caller I.D.-equipped phone.
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