The kids went outside today…and ignored my instructions about playing with neighbors… SO THAT WAS…FUN.
SETTLE IN, Y’ALL…here’s what happened on our first day of self-distanced shelter-at-home Spring Break.
The day was going as expected with sibling squabbles and whining about iPad time and complaining about little chores and me not getting to the taxes because work stuff popped up. So I finally sent them outside…and that was the beginning of the fall.
What happened you ask? Well, I might have gone a little crazy bonkers yelling at the kids when they ignored my instructions about playing with neighbors…
Granted it wasn’t one of my better parenting moments but we have just been stressing the importance of staying away from EVERYONE—learning how quickly germs travel and talking about it all the time and why it’s important and how we’re sorry you can’t play with friends now…and then to see them wilfully disobey me? Not good.
Yes, I know they’re kids. Yes, I know they forget—SQUIRREL!!—which is exactly why I said just talk across yards. But then it became “we’ll stay apart” in the driveway and I said no because you’re kids and we can’t trust that you will STAY apart even though you think you will. Heads hanging they went back outside. And the next thing I know I hear screams of kids having fun in our yard so I went to look—really hoping they were being good—and I saw five of them all too close.
Now am I really and truly worried that something bad is going to happen? No. I’m practically the farthest thing from a germaphobe you might find—but I’m trying to be proactive here because too many people think it’s no big deal and look where that got us?
So I was THAT mom who opened the front door and screamed to her children to get their butts inside and for the neighbor kids to GO HOME. I might have been loud enough for long enough that Tom came up from the office downstairs to see what was going on. And then we both proceeded to let the kids know why we were upset with them—for probably a good 10 minutes. Again, not terribly proud of how we handled it but I was just shaking I was so mad. Like I was kind of scared at how mad I was. We then made the kids strip and put their clothes in the wash and take showers (total overkill even for me but we wanted to prove a point).
After they showered and I had calmed down a bit, I hugged them both and apologized for losing my cool but explained that I just wanted to keep them and us and everyone around us safe so they need to trust us when we tell them what they can and can’t do. And emphasized yet again that we are also missing our friends—we’re not punishing them.
The whole thing was rough. And it totally sucked. But tomorrow is a new day and I’ll give myself some grace and we’ll move on. And keep a closer eye on the kids.
So use this post to prepare yourself for if and when this happens in your house so you can avoid acting like a crazy person to your kids.