Adventure number one started with a frantic phone call from daughter Kristi. Brett was about two years old and good mommy that she was, she called me instead of beating her little darling within a inch of his life. Seems little Brett found the syrup bottle and took it to his parents bedroom, popped the top and proceeded to squirt it across the shoes in the closet, on their clothes, jumped up on the bed leaving a trail of syrup everywhere he went. There was syrup on each blanket, each sheet, each pillow, each shoe, each wall, well, pretty much every inch of their bedroom. When I answered the phone, I heard, "OKAY! Give it to me straight! What am I doing wrong as a parent and what can I do differently because I don't think this is what normal children do!!!!" I assured her that normal toddlers can get into things you would never imagine but she assured me that she had been around toddlers all her life being the oldest of six children and she didn't care if it was normal she honestly wanted to know what I had observed in her parenting and what I would do differently. Wow! How many mothers ever have that questioned posed to them? (That is just an example of Kristi's humility and willingness to learn from others. We have often commented on this positive trait of hers.) But truthfully I had not witnessed any grievous parenting mistake but she pressed me to come up with something because "She was turning this child around!"
So, I told her the only piece of parental advice I have ever given any of my children. You are the boss! The child is not the boss. If you want them to do something or want them not to do something, say it once and mean it. Choose your battles carefully, because if you tell them not to do something and then later decide that it really was no big deal and let them do it, it sends the wrong message to them, the message that if they just keep trying they will get you to cave. Don't worry about what other people expect out of their children, different families have different rules and expectations. Each family will learn what is important and what works for them. But make sure they know what you expect out of them, and again, YOU are the boss, they aren't. In too many families it's the other way around.
Grandpa loves to tell the syrup story as well as the one below. He always finishes it by saying he doesn't know what Kristi did to Bert (what he calls Brett) that night and he probably doesn't want to know, but he was a completely different kid after that, a model child who never got into anything. I don't think that was probably the case, but you know how grandpa's love to exaggerate!
The next story I'm not for sure where it fit into the timeline of the syrup showdown, if it was before or after, but it definitely deserves a place in the archives also. This time Brett was just trying to mimic his daddy whom he adores. Shane is an avid hunter and so of course little Brett loved to imitate him and played hunting all over the house. One day Kristi saw him with her squirt bottle of water that she used for her hair, squirting it all over the living room furniture. " Brett, stop squirting that water all over the furniture" she said as she took the bottle away from him. "But Mommy", he cried, "It's not water it's my buck pee so the deer will come." "At first Kristi laughed but them she glanced at the bottle and hoped she was just seeing things when she thought she caught a glimpse of faint yellow in the bottle. She took off the top and sniffed and sure enough, Brett had dumped the water and proceeded to make his own "Buck pee".
Today Kristi has four little boys ranging in age from Brett's eleven to baby Branden's one. She is a wonderful mother to boys. Whenever she was working outside and wanted the boys to keep the youngest one safe she would tell them to pretend he was an "injured soldier and they had to keep the enemy from getting him" thus she has a knack of making a chore into fun. Brett now, is a very independent little eleven year old, getting up and making his own breakfast of bacon, eggs, and pancakes. Kristi has seen him outside when the others are playing and he's picking up the yard and when she asks what he is doing, he'll answer "Oh, I thought I should be doing something constructive." Kristi has commented many times that she sometimes worries about how old he acts and wishes he would just be a kid.
When our family of twenty seven all get together, we are quite a boisterous bunch, noisy, silly, and probably a bit embarrassing for the pre-teens among us. Last year for his tenth birthday we gave Brett a surprise party. We decorated our family bus, loaded everybody up, drove into his yard, his uncle went in and grabbed him, carried him upside down onto the bus as we all screamed "Surprise!" We then headed to a bowling alley forty miles away for pizza and bowling. As usual when we all get together we had a blast. But the one thing I will never forget about that particular time was how much fun Brett had. How he turned lose and we actually saw this ultra-mature"thirty year old in a ten year old body" transform into a child in front of our very eyes. So thanks for the memories Brett and now this grandma is going to go in and bake you some chocolate chip cookies for your eleventh!
As a mom of two boys I loved this post!
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