Thursday, October 1, 2009

Kids

Fall is always a busy time for me. On top of husband, dad and work responsiblities I coach 2 football teams. I love it and wouldn't change it. One thing I have observed over this past month is that kids think they run the world. For instance, one of my children, whom I will leave nameless, told me they couldn't do something the other day. Let me explain. Our family were all together one Sunday after church. We had to stop at Walmart to pick up a tire for my wife's van as it had developed a flat overnight. I had started to ask this particular child to put down what she was holding and go into Walmart to...they interrupted me with an I can't. I said ok stay there we didn't need that anyway. This person said need what? Lunch I said. We didn't need Subway anyway. Oh, I can go they said. No we can eat leftovers, I said. Now this may seem silly or even mean to you but how often do I let my kids get away with this crap? I need to be on top of it all the time. One of the kids on my football team was out of control for the first two practices. Yelling at other kids, cussing and being disrespectful to adults. After several attempts to get him to stop I finally pulled him aside and said, "I am not your dad, I'm not your mom. I am not going to put up with this behavior any more. If you don't knock it off I will have you doing up downs for the rest of practice. If you don't want to do up downs and still want to act this way you can go home but don't come back." He has been a perfect angel ever since. Why do we put up with kids acting this way? This isn't kids being kids. This is called parents and adults just tolerating bad behavior. It needs to stop and the great thing is that we have the intelligence to make it stop. I need to remember to always take the timeto do it right with my kids especially.