Friday, June 25, 2010

Completely off topic

The other day I was having a conversation with two friends, both of whom had two young children. One friend had to have her mom watch her kids for a week. This led to a discussion of the convenience of having parents around to watch their grandchildren, but also of the fact that the grandchildren always need to be re-trained upon returning home.
Why do grandparents do that to their children's children? Revenge? Wanting to be a favorite? A question asked was, "When do they go from thinking 'the child needs to eat his dinner before getting ice cream' to 'let's give him ice cream and dinner at the same time and let him decide what he prefers?'" I found this extraordinarily funny. It is true that before we become grandparents, we can have some common sense about children. I wonder why all grandparents behave in the same way. It makes me think that I might not escape the loss of reasoning. Maybe instead it is all a conspiracy theory to make their children pay for the suffering they caused.
Another child I know used to throw bad temper tantrums. The child's grandmother would watch her for a week at a time. Once, when the child, mother and grandmother were all together, the child threw a temper tantrum. To this, the grandmother exclaimed, "She never behaves that way with me!" There was certainly a reason for this. The grandmother gave the child everything she could possibly want, so there was never a reason to throw a tantrum. It seemed like for every week that she watched the child, another week was needed to re-train the child.

Morale of this story: Think of how much problems your children give you. Write them down and remember them. Then when they have children of their own, conveniently throw out any logic reasoning and your grandchildren will adore you.

3 comments:

Michael, Kili, Truman said...

Haha, wait till someone watches Manzi for you for 6 months! The same thing happened when my brother watched Kili for 2 weeks for me. I came back and the bird was out of control. She'd go places she never used to go when I was around. After a few weeks of being back with me she went back to normal.

The reason I think grandparents or other care takers do these things is because they suffer no consequences of running a spoiled child for a short time as they don't have to deal with the long term consequences themselves.

Adele said...

I should have extended it to Manzi. I limit the amounts of treats he can have and even use a measuring spoon so people don't give him too many. It doesn't work. I come home after a trip and Manzi doesn't want his pellets. I ask the caregivers and they say that he didn't want his pellets and only wanted treats so they kept giving him more.

Manzi gets over it within a day or so.

Adele said...

By the way, Michael that is very funny. Kili the terror. She really doesn't strike me as being troublesome or possibly destructive. But a macaw owner might feel the same way about Manzi.

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