A 10 Year Old’s Wisdom

First a little background on this story:  My wife as previously stated is a Jehovah’s Witness, although not as dedicated as she once was.  She is an old fashioned disciplinarian with our kids.  By that I mean if our kids step out of line, they will get punished via a spanking (not as much any more, but used to be), grounding, items taken away, or a combination of all–with no chance of getting said items back until the date specified when punished.  Our kids know this and are the best behaved children of ANYONE I know.  And I know a lot of people with kids.

My oldest children are a son, 10, and a daughter, 9.  My son has a friend who lives up the street who is the same age, and he has an older brother who is 12.  Both of these boys are good kids.  Over the past year both my son and daughter go over their house and they frequently are at ours as well.  My wife and the boys mom get along good, although not in a best friend let’s go shopping type of way.  They attend an evangelical church.  A fairly popular one that even a few of my co-workers go to.   

The 12 year old has another friend that sometimes goes over to their house at the same time my kids do, and apparently he often teases my daughter.  From what my son says, he puts on a good show when the other boys mom is around but starts in when she isn’t there.  Reminds me of Eddie Haskell actually (the link is for all you under 25 individuals that have no idea who Eddie Haskell is).  My son and the eldest friend have apparently asked him to stop but to no avail, and who knows how hard they really tried.  And they did not tell the boys mom.  

We have attempted to solve this by not allowing my daughter to go over if we know or think the third friend is going to be there.  While truthfully I am not 100% happy with this solution-as I don’t mind a confrontation, it does at least eliminate the possibility of causing some parents to have some bitterness towards each other or each other’s children.  Although for my wife and I it is too late I suppose.  So my son went over yesterday and the boys mom asked why my daughter didn’t come, and being the honest boy that he is he told her the story above, sans the Eddie Haskell reference. 

This brings me to the reason I decided to write about this.  Her response to my son was something along these lines (keep in mind I am paraphrasing a 10 year old):  He (the third boy) is in the Catholic Church so he isn’t as disciplined or basically as spiritual as our kids and hers.  My son’s response was what does the church matter?  When my mom disciplines us it has nothing to do with the church.  Of course that’s what he said he told her, I don’t know if he was that blunt about it.

First and foremost:  That’s My Boy!

This situation brings up many different topics-including if we or my wife should confront the mother of the third child, but of course,   I will focus on the religious part.  I think the most important thing is exactly what my son said.  When it comes to raising and disciplining your children, religion doesn’t matter!  What matters is the parents.  Luckily I have a job where my wife can stay home with the kids.  I have excellent children, and I attribute a large part of that to her and the fact she can spend time with them.  Of course I say this now but reserve the right to retract it in their teen years.  My wife will credit her religion for the way she has raised the kids.  But I know her and it wouldn’t matter if she was in another religion or not in one altogether.  She instills them with her morals, which have nothing to do with a belief in a supreme being, and she never pressures them in the religion the way my nieces and nephews are.  We know a good number of Jehovah’s Witnesses too and our kids are much better behaved than them also.

So, as has been brought up in other blogs lately, including but not limited to here and here, why do many still attribute morals (or a lack thereof), to religion?  And while I found the remark about the third boy being Catholic being part of his problem humorous, I don’t really believe that to be the case.  Everyone gets taught the difference between good and bad at an early age no matter what religion you are in.  It is then up to the parents to reinforce these beliefs.  And if no one is reinforcing, you get incidents like this.

S-S-Spiders and S-S-Snakes

I am going to be on the road for the next 8 days, mostly for work but some days off also.  I should have time to comment but I am not sure how much time I will have to put together good posts, so we will see.

I mentioned in a previous post that I live in El Paso.  I actually have an acre of land on the far east side outside of city limits.  Basically I live in the desert.  The city is catching up to me though and I imagine within 5 years I will have a Wal-Mart within 2-3 miles of my house.  But for now, the area I live in is allowed to do some of the best fireworks you can buy including bottle rockets and artillery shells, which are basically mini-versions of the firework shows at parks and baseball games.

Since we will not be home on the 4th, I bought some fireworks to shoot off last night for me and the kids.  All went well and it was a great show for 5.  I went inside the house and had my kids pick up the trash when I heard frantic screaming!  I run outside and my kids had come across a tarantula.  Why is it the dad has to be the one to dispose of the spiders and such around the house?  I get the heebie-jeebies too.  Hopefully there are no animal rights or PETA people reading as I squashed the beast and threw it away (survival of the fittest you know), only to find another one cruising across my property as I walked to the trash can.  I have never seen a tarantula on my property in 8 years and now two in one day!  Great, must have a family of spiders around, and without doing any research, I know normal spiders lay hundreds of eggs at a time, but I have no idea if tarantulas are that way.  After a little googling I am pretty sure the ones at my house are tiger rump tarantulas, although it could have been a different species, it was a little hard to tell because they weren’t as mature as the one in this photo.

I get up and go to work this morning, and on the road leading from my house I now see a snake crossing the road.  A good four footer too.  I used to know a lot more about snakes than I do now, but I didn’t see a rattle and most others in my area are not venomous, so I made a last second decision and didn’t run him over, thinking that even though it’s unlikely, maybe this one eats spiders or at least spider egg sacs 

Everyone have a good 4th and I will check in when I can.

Crazy, but that’s how it goes

I was reading my posts from the other day, and I noticed that I may have appeared a little disenchanted about my 13 month old son.  As of now I only have about 5-6 readers anyway, but I probably phrased my post wrong.  I love that little kid, but he has been so much more trouble than my other two were.  Either that or it’s been so long I forgot how hard it is.  He is just now FINALLY starting to sleep through the night.  For the first 9-10 months he would get up regularly twice a night, and usually the second time, at around 5-5:30am he would be up for the morning so either myself or my wife would have to get up with him.  My other two were much easier, my daughter used to put herself to bed pretty much by the time she was 12-18 months old.  And she slept through the night from 3 months on.  This kid just doesn’t sleep.  My wife read a book that said many “wired” or constantly hyped up kids become geniuses.  I hope so, but his infatuation for the toilet isn’t bearing that out yet….

XBOX 360 News–I bought Guitar Hero last week, and my son and his friends, along with myself have been playing pretty much nonstop when I am home.  It’s an addicting game for any music fans, even if you are not a video game enthusiast.  I am working on the Hard songs now, and they are kicking my butt so far.  Woman by Wolfmother is probably the easiest song on the “Easy” level, but on hard it is by far the hardest song so far.  On a side note, they released some songs from Guitar Hero I, which is good for me as I have never had a Playstation (always been an Xbox/Nintendo family so far), but they are a bit pricey at more than $2 a song, and you have to buy three, and you don’t have a choice on the extra two songs.  In other words, if you want Killer Queen by Queen you are stuck having to buy Frankenstein and Take it Off, whether you wanted those tracks or not.  Same with Bark At the Moon and Higher Ground.  Ah, well, you gotta love the marketing strategy.  For more info on this go here

 

Trust I seek and I find in you

OK, I sent an email to the first candidate (the actor), we will see what happens with that.  I just sent an email asking him if he remembered dating my mom in the 60′s.  I didn’t go into too much detail, and I asked him to respond (in case there is a screener) as I had a question about my mom.  I will post and update as soon as I (hopefully) get a response.  One thing this blog does, is it is kind of like setting goals.  Since I wrote everything down, I actually followed through with it.  I would have definitely procrastinated at least a week or two if I hadn’t said I was going to email him yesterday.

To other topics:

Other than this venture to discover my biological father, my current life is pretty normal, almost mundane.  Or at least as much as it can be with a 13 month old hyper boy in the house.  I also have a 10 year old son and 8 year old daughter.  And I am married to a great gal who thankfully puts up with me.  It’s probably my past that is more interesting to readers and what I will tend to rant about.  I have a rather lengthy one about the IRS but I want to make sure I am off their $#%* list first.  Plus it’s almost NFL draft time, so there is another topic.  I knew I could live up to the title I made!