Nanci Kuykendall

I've been busy and have not posted in quite some time,
but I thought this was an interesting discussion and
thought I would chime in.

Joylyn wrote:
>And if your rules were reasonable, then my children
>would have absolutely no problem following them,
>because they are also reasonable.

Ah, but by whose definition reasonable? Cultural
differences, physical differences and personal
prefernaces can make a rule seem nonsensical to you,
but of varying degrees of importance to someone else,
perhaps of great importance. In general I encourage
my children to be good guests by abiding by the rules
of their hosts. If they are onerous rules, I doubt
anyone would want to be a guest long, if they choose
to be at all. It's also important to me to help my
children learn to be good hosts, who in my opinion,
try to make their guests as comfortable as possible
within the scope of their lifestyle.

We keep a pretty casual social circle, so friends in
general are free to question us if they think a
practice we have may be strange or a "rule"
nonsensical. More likely it's our lack of "rules"
which people question, but one example might be that
we have some dangerous allergies in our home and as a
result we used to ask (when our kids were younger and
needed more oversight) that no one offer food to our
kids without letting us know, unless they are very
good friends, well acquainted with their allergies.
Now they are old enough to ask people for themselves
what is in a food and clarify with us if they are not
sure if they can eat it without being sick. We also
had to police the snacks that friends brought to the
house to a certain degree, asking that they not snack
on messy nut mixes or eggy pastries for instance,
without washing their hands well with soap afterwards,
or just not eat them in our house at all, if they had
a tendancy to drop bits on the floor. We asked that
kids at the house for playdates not be allowed to run
around with dangerous allergen foods in their hands or
on their clothes and that they wash up after eating
such, which we often had to do for the guest kids
ourselves, as the other parents, not accustomed to
thinking about it, would forget to pay attention to
it.

Having never had a child who has had numerous
alaphylactic shock reactions to various foods, merely
from skin contact in some cases, and very close calls
with agressive ER intervention, like ours, most people
thought we were eccentric and anal, to say the least.
But if they had decided that our rules were not
reasonable because they could not see the danger or
thought we exaggerated it, they didn't stay guests
long.

>However, if you put a big dish m&ms down in front of
>my kids and said "these m&ms are for adults who are
>over 50 years old only and no one else may touch
>them, I have no reason for that rule, I just do it
>because I like to control people", both my children
>and I would probably find some reason to leave rather
>quickly and would also probably find a store pretty
>quickly to buy our own m&ms.

Not a very likely or realistic scenario to back up a
position of reasonable civil disobedience. Do you
have any more realistic examples from experience? I
also noticed that you said you would leave and get
your own M&Ms, not that you would disobey the rule set
forth and have the kids help themselves regardless
when their host was not looking, or even that you
would get some for them and hand them over. So you
are still obeying the rule.

>Other times we fudge things a bit so they can
>participate (like saying Janene is in 1st grade this
>year so she can be a Girl Scout Brownie, when she
>really would be, if she were in school, a K. Or
>saying Lexie is 9, instead of 8, so she can
>participate as a pre-teen at the conference.)

What you have described is teaching your children to
be dishonest in order to get what they want, the ends
justifying the means. I'm not attacking you, really
Joylyn, I just am curious as to why you think the
above is a better approach than teaching them to
standing up for themselves and openly question the
standing rule, or even refusing to participate in a
situation that excludes or limits them based on false
qualifiers like a 1 year age difference. Why not try
to opnely challenge, stretch, change or topple the
existing policy, even if just for your small girl
scout troup, rather than use subterfuge? I would
think it would be a much more usefull experience for
them in the honesty of being true to their principles,
the subtleties of interpersonal politics, group
structures and even legal issues, if age limits are in
regards to those, than a lesson in misleading others.


Nanci K.

[email protected]

<< Or
>saying Lexie is 9, instead of 8, so she can
>participate as a pre-teen at the conference. >>

It seems if you told the people she was nine but would like to participate in
some of the pre-teen things, they would have gone along with it and you could
model honesty.

Sandra

averyschmidt

> << Or
> >saying Lexie is 9, instead of 8, so she can
> >participate as a pre-teen at the conference. >>

> It seems if you told the people she was nine but would like to
participate in
> some of the pre-teen things, they would have gone along with it
and you could
> model honesty.

Honesty can and does work.
There is a junior lifeguard program at our beach in the summer for
kids 9 and up, but last summer my 8yo wanted to do it with his older
brother and friends. Everyone we knew said "Just lie about his
age... what's the big deal?" but it didn't sit right with me,
especially since my children were watching/listening and honesty is
*very* high up on my list of priorities.
I spoke to someone in charge aboug how my 8yo was a very good
swimmer and socially mature for his age, and pointed out that if he
was over his head he would stop going, and even *that* person told
me to just lie about his age on the application!
I decided to fill out the application with his real age and
birthdate (as if he had every right to be there despite being
younger) and nobody ever said anything. It was possible that his
age was just overlooked, but hey, at least I was honest! :-)

Patti

Joanna Wilkinson

--- In [email protected], "averyschmidt"
<patti.schmidt2@v...> wrote:
>
> > << Or
> > >saying Lexie is 9, instead of 8, so she can
> > >participate as a pre-teen at the conference. >>
>

This part of the post bothered me too.
I was imagining a child having to live a lie and maybe be put in a
potition to have to keep up the lie. In kid groups, questions get
asked, friendships form. I would be annoyed and put off by someone
who lied to get into something I was running.
My daughter is in charge of a drama group for kids. It's totally run
by kids. It's suppose to be a teen group, but they lowered the age
down to 9 to get more kids.
If someone came to her and said I'm 8 and really want to do this, she
would say yes if she thought they were mature enough, or "sorry you
have to be 9" if she thought they weren't. If someone lied and she
found out, I know she would feel angry. I sure would.
Joanna