Rescinding First Post...

For slightly paranoid reasons.  If you want to read it (it discusses my reasons for leaving MIT), leave a comment.

Still haven't gotten sun...sorry!  I maaay go to the beach tomorrow, and if so, I will take pictures. Promise.

Babysitting was interesting.  The first thing the parents said to me was "we don't really have rules" and my mind week "EEK!"  I don't know what to do without rules! Hard to believe, I know.  But really, I didn't know how hard I could push with things like dinner and bed time because I didn't know how much the parents would be distraught about their little girls crying about half a banana.

I'm a big proponent of boundaries with kids. You say "this is what we're doing" and you stick with it, no matter how much crying, pouting or "no"ing you get in response. And kids respond well to it!  I mean, not happily, hence the crying, but when they know crying doesn't work, they stop crying unless something is actually wrong.  Take the girls tonight, twins a couple months away from 3 years old, really smart girls. After eating mac & cheese, they wanted a banana each. You know this is unrealistic, I know this is unrealistic, they do not.  So I say, "Each of you can have half a banana, and if you finish, you can have another half of another banana" to which, of course, they say "NO!" and start crying.  I say, a couple times, "You can either have half a banana, or no banana." and stand there, stoic, because that's how I roll.  Ciara* gets it, stops crying, and says "I want a plate" while Christa* continues to cry and ends up with no banana, but gets over it. Same thing happened at bed time - Ciara stopped crying and said she wanted to be tucked it (5 times) and Christa cried herself to sleep.  Sometimes getting the kids to do what you need them to do is more important than making them happy at that moment, like getting to bed at a reasonable hour or not wasting banana.

None of which is to say that that this is not how their parents would have responded. Turns out there was a bit of a misunderstanding on my part about what she meant when she said that; she was just trying to say there weren't a lot of things I needed to know about what they could and couldn't do/eat, not "let them do whatever they want to do".  A subtle difference, but a difference none-the-less.  I hope I can sit for them again. The girls are wonderful and smart and those parents are obviously doing something right.

I get passionate about child-rearing. Don't mind me. :)

And now, to bed.

*names changed