Acting Like Children

My mother took the children to dinner tonight while I went to a meeting with my husband.   She had to get them into the car and drive them to the restaurant, where my father was meeting them.    My children are great sometimes but they’re children and they were having a time getting ready to go.

My mother doesn’t lose her temper often but they weren’t listening and were being unkind to each other so she snapped at them.   She told them to stop, that they were acting like children.   My son said, “but we are children!”

The Big Boy Update:  My son and daughter were in the back of the car, bickering about getting the seat belts strapped in.   They were in my mother’s car so my daughter wasn’t as aware of where things were.  My son was trying to help her and she didn’t want any help.   My son got frustrated at her and said very uncharacteristically, “I wish you could see better”.   It didn’t seem to upset my daughter any more than the rest of the argument.   Later I had a little conversation with my son about how we all wished she could see better.   I asked him if he thought saying that might have made her feel bad.   He hardly ever says anything about her vision to her and is helpful a lot of the time.    I didn’t want him to think I was upset at him, but I do want him to think about what he says in the future, just like any other hurtful comments he might have about someone.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter made a, “starship” with Mimi yesterday.   It was constructed of pieces from a set of Tubation tubes that she and her brother like making into various contraptions from time to time.   My son’s creations invariably are sword-related.  Her starship though was sort of here, there and everywhere with it’s most notable feature being a whistle on one side.   She wanted to bring it downstairs to show Gramps when he arrived.    Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs it had fallen into a few pieces.   As she felt around for the pieces she told us, “it’s a delicate thing”.