It's Not A Smart Phone Park

We've spent the last week in Florida.  We had a lot of fun in our last hurrah before the start of school - and now I'm scrambling to do all the school prep I haven't done over the past week - and I am going to do a few write ups of our experiences at some of the new parks we hadn't been to previously, with a slant towards the perspective of taking someone with special needs to the park.

Overall, we had a blast.  Most of us anyway.  I noticed that whenever the wee ones were on a ride at Legoland (many are truly designed for little kids and parents can't join them), my husband was constantly on his phone.  Apparently my reluctance for him to join the smart phone age was well justified...

Rather than watching the wee ones cavorting - in this instance, driving in the Ford Motor School Driving Test, heading the wrong way down streets and blowing past stop signs they swear they didn't see - my husband was checking the weather.  Or maybe Facebook.  Or maybe reading news.  Or who knows, maybe it was online poker.

For him, watching the wee ones have fun and sharing in their enjoyment is something he wasn't raised with.  His parents didn't interact with him in the same way that my parents did - nor do they interact with the wee ones when we visit.  It's a completely different style of parenting, and from my perspective, it's not a fun or filled with joy.  It isn't that it's wrong, but it's not how I am.

I've given up trying to change him, for the most part.  The second he's finished eating, he's up clearing dishes and moving on to the next thing, regardless of how many of the rest of us are still eating and trying to enjoy a family meal.  When he plays a board game with the wee ones, it's about getting to the end of the game instead of having fun along the way - you don't want to be the one having a conversation when it's your turn! And that's all he ever knew.

How about you?  How were you raised?  Do you follow the same tenets of child rearing that your parents used?  And what's your take on hanging out on smart phones around your children?

Mom, Are You Friends With Smokers?

The other day, the wee ones and I were out shopping.  As Mister Man returned the cart to the row of carts, Little Miss and I waited for him in the vestibule between the store and the outdoors.  She turned to me, her nose wrinkling, and said, "It stinks in here, Mommy. I can tell lots of people have been smoking by here.  Are you friends with people who smoke?"

I stopped for a minute.  She was right; it did stink.  I personally am not a smoker.  The smell nauseates me, to be perfectly frank.  My dad smoked heavily for years and years, and I used to dream about the day when I owned my own car and house and could tell him he wasn't allowed to smoke there.  Fortunately for all of us, he quit smoking before I graduated college (for good this time), so I never had to have those confrontations.

My goal - for a whole lot of reasons - is for the wee ones to dislike smoking as much as I do and to never have any interest in even trying it.  So far so good, right?  Little Miss hates the smell of smoke.  But this question isn't as straightforward as it seems.

I have this thing about lying to the wee ones.  I just flat out don't like to do it.  It makes me feel wrong, and I don't want them to look at our conversations in three or five years and say "whatever, my mom just tells us what she wants us to think.  She's a hypocrite, and I'm not going to listen."

So I took a deep breath.

Well, Little Miss, I said, not sure how this was going to turn out, I'm going to tell you that I'd give you a very different answer now or when you're in high school or college than I would if you were an adult. When you're in high school and college, the people who smoke there tend to define themselves by the fact that they smoke.  They hang around with other people who smoke, and they want their friends to be like them - helping them justify their own choices and feel good about them - by smoking, too.


When you're an adult, smoking may be something you do, but it typically isn't what defines you.  You have so many more interests and hobbies and facets of your personality. (Why yes, I do use unusual words when talking to the wee ones. It helps build their vocabularies.)  You care less whether the people you're friends with do the same things and think the exact same way you do.  If you're a smoker when you're an adult, it's more something you do rather than something that defines you.


I'll be honest with you that I do have a few friends who smoke.  But I don't hang around them when they're smoking.  They don't ask me if I want to smoke.  I don't like the fact that they smoke, but I'm friends with them because they're good people who care about me, and I care about them.


When you're in high school, if you're friends with smokers... it's far more likely that they're going to try to get you to start smoking, too.  And we both know you don't want to smoke because it's gross.  And it's expensive.  And it makes you sick.  If you have friends in high school or college who smoke, the only times they have to smoke are likely to also be the only times you have to hang out with them, so you're going to be around all that smoke, and you'll smell like you smoke, too.


So no, if I were in high school or college, I wouldn't be friends with someone who smokes.  As an adult, I do have some friends who smoke.  Does that make sense, Peanut?

And with big eyes, she looked up at me and nodded.  Smoking is gross.  I hope none of my friends ever do it.  Because then I wouldn't want to be friends with them anymore.


And internally, I heaved a sigh of relief.  At least for now, Little Miss gets it.  And I'll keep reinforcing this message.  I hate having to give her shades of grey answers, but life is like that way too often.  I just hope by the time she has to figure out where in the land of grey she stands, she's mature enough to get it.

How would you have answered this question had it been your child asking it?