Weekend Report
Apr. 5th, 2010 10:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouseLet's see, for starters, I got nothing done this weekend. Apparently, there was some kind of holiday on Sunday which involved a lot of stores being closed, which nixed our one big plan for the weekend: fixing the toliet seat. Apparently Minicon was this weekend as well, but I kind of forgot about that too. (I'm a little sadder I missed that.)
Mason had Friday off (which should have been a clue about the above holiday), and my writer friend Gary and his wife Brin came over and we talked a good portion of the day away about writing, gaming, comics, health insurance, and life. It was a great excuse not to write a damn thing. (Actually, to be fair, with Mason off the likelihood of getting work done was already shot.) Plus, I got to introduce Gary and Brin to the Russian Tea House on University -- at the end of my block, actually -- which made me happy, especially as it was Friday which meant I got to get the stroganoff. Yum! I have no idea if they liked it, but I'm always happy to give those folks business. I really, really want them to stay in the neighborhood.
Saturday, I discovered that Shawn and I aren't normal, modern parents. Shocking, no?
Here's what happened: Mason had a birthday party and I (*gasp*) DROPPED HIM OFF. Yep. I left my son to have fun ON HIS OWN. Apparently this is one of the seven signs of the apocalypse. All of the other parents stayed and watched over their children. This, however, did not seem to make a more orderly party. When I came back a half hour before the party was scheduled to be over, I noticed that a lot of the parents stood on the sidelines and watched their kids run wild. There was no less screaming with a 2:1 adult to child ratio. And I kept asking myself why all these parents decided it was necessary to stand around with glazed expressions, when they could have just dropped of their children and stared at the wall somewhere else. Apparently, it's expected to hang around (and I did KNOW that on some level because I did ask the host parents if they needed/expected me to stay, and I left with their startled blessing.)
I have no memory of parties like this when I was a kid. Though birthday parties were never the PRODUCTION they seem to be now when I was younger either. I can't imagine my folks dropping hundreds or thousands of dollars on a birthday party for me -- well, maybe they did. I was pretty clueless about all the awesome things they did for me, but I certainly don't remember everyone's parents hanging around while I blew out candles (unless they were family, ala my cousin's folks or my grandparents.)
This is just one of the truths of the new reality Mason is growing up in that I continue to resist. We've decided to thwart our colleagues this year. Thanks to our friends from Colorado, the Jacksons, we're members of the Children's Museum again. The Children's Museum has awesome (and cheap) birthday packages with a maxium number of PEOPLE. We do need to have one grown-up/adult for every five kids, but we can have no more than 20 people total. Our invites are going to encourage dropping off.
Take that, helicopter parents!
It probably still won't work because Mason doesn't have fifteen close friends, but it's worth a shot.
In other parenting news, I found a pagan Sunday school for Mason. It's at Sacred Paths Center called "Kids and Kin." We checked it out on Sunday, and Mason LOVED it. They do a little craft/instruction at the beginning and a short ritual at the end (oh, and of course, the traditional pagan "cakes and ale" kid style: carrots and ricecakes/water and brownies). Anyway, Mason got to represent fire in the circle and you'd have thought he was crowned king of the world. This weekend was about "Tricksters" and it was, apparently unusually, almost all boys. The age range was pretty huge -- there were teenagers and two year-olds -- but Mason adores older kids and tolerates the younger ones, especially when they'll play chase with him.
"Kids and Kin" runs every other Sunday, and I think we're going to try to make it a regular event. As I told Shawn (who is still nursing a cold), there were two things I really liked: 1) they encouraged dropping off (see above rant), and 2) if Mason decides when he's older to become an evangelical Christian, at least he'll have had a solid base understanding of his "religion of origin" to leave behind. A religion to abandon/rebel against a gift every parent should give, I think. :-)
Mason had Friday off (which should have been a clue about the above holiday), and my writer friend Gary and his wife Brin came over and we talked a good portion of the day away about writing, gaming, comics, health insurance, and life. It was a great excuse not to write a damn thing. (Actually, to be fair, with Mason off the likelihood of getting work done was already shot.) Plus, I got to introduce Gary and Brin to the Russian Tea House on University -- at the end of my block, actually -- which made me happy, especially as it was Friday which meant I got to get the stroganoff. Yum! I have no idea if they liked it, but I'm always happy to give those folks business. I really, really want them to stay in the neighborhood.
Saturday, I discovered that Shawn and I aren't normal, modern parents. Shocking, no?
Here's what happened: Mason had a birthday party and I (*gasp*) DROPPED HIM OFF. Yep. I left my son to have fun ON HIS OWN. Apparently this is one of the seven signs of the apocalypse. All of the other parents stayed and watched over their children. This, however, did not seem to make a more orderly party. When I came back a half hour before the party was scheduled to be over, I noticed that a lot of the parents stood on the sidelines and watched their kids run wild. There was no less screaming with a 2:1 adult to child ratio. And I kept asking myself why all these parents decided it was necessary to stand around with glazed expressions, when they could have just dropped of their children and stared at the wall somewhere else. Apparently, it's expected to hang around (and I did KNOW that on some level because I did ask the host parents if they needed/expected me to stay, and I left with their startled blessing.)
I have no memory of parties like this when I was a kid. Though birthday parties were never the PRODUCTION they seem to be now when I was younger either. I can't imagine my folks dropping hundreds or thousands of dollars on a birthday party for me -- well, maybe they did. I was pretty clueless about all the awesome things they did for me, but I certainly don't remember everyone's parents hanging around while I blew out candles (unless they were family, ala my cousin's folks or my grandparents.)
This is just one of the truths of the new reality Mason is growing up in that I continue to resist. We've decided to thwart our colleagues this year. Thanks to our friends from Colorado, the Jacksons, we're members of the Children's Museum again. The Children's Museum has awesome (and cheap) birthday packages with a maxium number of PEOPLE. We do need to have one grown-up/adult for every five kids, but we can have no more than 20 people total. Our invites are going to encourage dropping off.
Take that, helicopter parents!
It probably still won't work because Mason doesn't have fifteen close friends, but it's worth a shot.
In other parenting news, I found a pagan Sunday school for Mason. It's at Sacred Paths Center called "Kids and Kin." We checked it out on Sunday, and Mason LOVED it. They do a little craft/instruction at the beginning and a short ritual at the end (oh, and of course, the traditional pagan "cakes and ale" kid style: carrots and ricecakes/water and brownies). Anyway, Mason got to represent fire in the circle and you'd have thought he was crowned king of the world. This weekend was about "Tricksters" and it was, apparently unusually, almost all boys. The age range was pretty huge -- there were teenagers and two year-olds -- but Mason adores older kids and tolerates the younger ones, especially when they'll play chase with him.
"Kids and Kin" runs every other Sunday, and I think we're going to try to make it a regular event. As I told Shawn (who is still nursing a cold), there were two things I really liked: 1) they encouraged dropping off (see above rant), and 2) if Mason decides when he's older to become an evangelical Christian, at least he'll have had a solid base understanding of his "religion of origin" to leave behind. A religion to abandon/rebel against a gift every parent should give, I think. :-)
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no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 04:18 pm (UTC)When she was around Mason's age, I do remember that my daughter was envious of the kids who got to go to Christian Sunday School each week. Everyone got to dress up and then make crafts with glue and Popsicle sticks, and she was bummed that she didn't get to go too. I'm pleased to hear that there is an alternative available.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 05:28 pm (UTC)Re. kids & parties: I find it depends on the parents and the party. I've dropped my kids off at some parties, stuck around at others, especially if it looked like the host parent needed help. With Cam, of course, it's a different story. However, I think people assume they need to stay at the party, whereas when I've asked, people have said, "No, go. Get out while you can!" I've also had kids dropped off at parties by parents who didn't seem to even consider hanging around -- the sole question was "What time do you want me back to get him/her?" I think it depends on age of the kids, whether it is a first or later child for some people, and location of the party.
I think you are right, though, that especially for the younger kids, the assumption is that the parents need to hover. I don't get this. I've always found it easier to manage my kids when there are other kids (without parents) around to help entertain & distract them; it's when I have just the two of them that they more quickly drive each other (and me) nuts.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 10:29 pm (UTC)I bet at Mason's friend's party, the first parent was a hoverparent and then everyone else felt like they HAD TO. (It's possible parent #1 even had a good reason to stick around, like a kid who is unpredictable and sometimes really poorly behaved in new situations....but everyone else looked and thought, oh dear....better stay or I'll look bad.)