Consequences
posted in Friends, OmegaDotter, Parenting, School, Socializing |The scene: OmegaDotter picks up the phone, dials a number.
“Hello? This is OmegaDotter, who is this?…Can I please speak with A.?”
“Hi, A.? It’s OmegaDotter. I blew it.”
“I made a poor choice.”
“You can’t come to the fair with us tomorrow. I’m sorry I said you probably could.”
The backstory:
A.–OmegaDotter’s current best buddy–is coming over for a sleepover tomorrow night, as a result of some parental badgering on the dotter’s part. The Big Fair is running from yesterday through September 8. We were planning to go tomorrow. The dotter asked us prior to dinner–while on the phone with A.–if he could come to the fair with us. We said we’d make our minds up later, but it was dinnertime and time to get off the phone.
During dinner, she asked again. And again. OmegaDad said that he had been wanting a “just family” day. I personally was leaning towards saying, sure, why not, let’s bring A. along, it’ll be fun, but said we needed to decide later.
Dinner was over, the dotter cleared the table, I stepped out for a smoke, OmegaDad stepped out with the dawg to do the dawgly duty.
When we got back inside, the dotter was on the phone with A., telling him that yes, he could almost certainly come to the fair with us.
Oops. Big mistake, kiddo. Don’t go making plans with someone else based on no decision from your parents. We told her to say goodbye to A., that she’d call him back later, and to get her cute little butt back to the dinner table so we could Talk To Her. At which point, we laid out the fact that (a) we had not made the decision yet, (b) she called A. and told him we had, (c) as a result, our decision was that he was not coming with us, even though I had been leaning towards taking him along, and (d) she had to call A. back, tell him she was wrong, and apologize.
Oh, lordy. Y’know, sometimes being a parent is just a plain old pain in the ass. Damn. Chores need to be supervised, so it’s more work than just doing it myself. We need to remind her to do the chickens. We have to explain that not everything is going to go her way. We have to explain courtesy, and patience, and junk like that. (We also have to explain that talking in class is a Bad Idea, that while it’s polite to listen to someone who is talking (!!! Yes! She claimed she was listening and talking to A. in class because he was talking to her and it was the polite thing to do!), the teacher talking takes precedence, and quiet time in class takes precedence, and, and, and…)
Bah.
On the good side, though, we applauded her phone call (she was saying it all very quietly, in another room, so it wasn’t for show), we all played five-card draw, and B.S., and Crazy Eights, and I read another chapter of her Karito Kids book to her before bedtime. I guess it all balances out.
