Miss5 has been very concerned about our home being broken into for about a week now: ever since the well meaning ladies at her school filled her in on certain night time activities.
At night she won’t walk past the window in the kitchen without someone with her. She won’t go into the bathroom by herself. She won’t go near the doors.
Unfortunately not all the stuff they come home with from school is gold.
“I’m scared of the Easter Bunny!” Miss5 announced after a day at prep.
“But he gives you chocolate,” I said, thinking to myself how I’d just undone all that good work on the stranger danger warnings.
“He comes into my room when I’m sleeping,” explained Miss5.
“To give you chocolate!” I said, again playing what I thought was my trump card.
I quickly realized the chocolate approach wasn’t working when she burst into tears.
Have you ever notice how at school your kids really seem to listen in a way they don’t ever at home? Years ago my oldest two were spending a week of their holidays in a ramshackle old farm house with my parents. While cooking dinner my mother discovered a fire alarm virtually above the stove when it suddenly started screaming it’s ‘Wake up! Get out!’ message. Instantly my two apparently dropped to all fours and crawled outside. Why? Because their school had talked to them about ‘get down low and go go go’.
They did it without prompting or instruction. Meanwhile I’d been trying to get the ‘put your washing in the washbasket’ message through their skulls for years without any success.
Maybe I needed to make it rhyme – get your washing off the tiles and put it in the pile!
This bears looking into. I think I might be onto something.
When you have a drink put the dirties in the sink.
Don’t get out of bed till the sun’s above your head.
For Pete’s sake flush the loo when you fill it with a poo.
If this works I might have my first book.
Meanwhile on Easter Eve we’ve agreed to contact the Easter Bunny and he’ll be leaving his eggs outside for us to bring in for the kids.
I think my mum secretly rolled her eyes atme over my primary school years. I took everything so seriously at school but at home it was ‘just’ mum and dad! No respect haha. The thing that annoyed my mum was when we did this program in year 5 about not just stranger danger but being assertive and not always trusting an adult if something didn’t feel right. I went home telling Mum I could say “no” to her when she asked me to do something I didn’t want to do…went down a treat! I think the lesson got lost in translation somehow!!!