On Sunday we inspected all the ride requirements so we knew ahead of time which ones each child could go on. My worry was the bumper cars as Maggie and Charlie were tall enough to ride with an adult, but not alone. What was I to do? Have Will or Mary sit with the 3 little ones for 10 minutes and wait while I went on the ride and then switch? But the guys let each child ride with a sibling and the same thing happened at the giant slide after I took Timmy down a few times. Timmy needed help getting on the carousel horse, but after I pointed to Julia Ellen one of the workers stood behind him in my place. Will and Mary were very generous in taking the little kids on so many rides, taking them to the potty, and independently buying bottles of cold water.
One worry homeschooling mothers have is raising children who can't function alone in public, after all they don't set off on the big yellow bus every day and have to navigate the halls of academia alone. Going to the fair and allowing a 2nd grader to ride the giant swing on the other end of the midway alone and giving a 5 year old permission to ride the bees by himself is good practice.
Yes, this non-helicopter parenting method did come back to bite me when Maggie didn't come back to the meeting spot, leaving us all searching for one short sprite in the aisles filled with flashing lights and ominous looking pierced and tattooed teens. But Will found her and we headed to the car with bags of cotton candy to munch. A few minutes after tucking the children into bed, I peeked in to see them all sound asleep and dreaming of fair rides, cotton candy, and another chance at the pig scramble next year.
2 comments:
You are one brave woman going it alone! Great work and even better kids!
I totally agree that large families more often than not are the antidote to helicopter parenting. Unfortunately, society sometimes doesn't appreciate it.
I was picking dd up at the airport this week. (16, flying by herself for the first time, changing planes in Atlanta, did just fine). I had the 8 year old, 3 year old and 1 year old. The 1 yo was getting antsy so I let him out of the stroller to walk around. I followed him and the three year old as they wandered about the ticketing/security area of our moderately sized airport. We were right in front of security with no less than 10-15 TSA's within 10-20 feet of our waiting spot. I followed the two littles as they walked around while 8 yo dd sat with the stroller and read her book. We wandered about 30 ft from dd in a wobbly oval. As I came around I saw two adults hovering over dd and one talking to her. They were concerned that she was alone and were ready to sic the TSA's on us. She is almost 9, perfectly happy reading her book and what was going to happen to her? Someone was going to kidnap her? There? Puhleeze. I defused the situation. Dd said that she heard the woman say "Poor thing." as she walked past her the first time. ????
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