Sunday, March 23, 2008

I Don't Understand My Children

Easter Morning. 7 am. My son wakes me up. 7 am. 7 am?

If I remember right, when I was a kid, my siblings and I would have been awake for at least two hours by the time 7 am rolled around.

The egg hunt. They hunt, not even bothering to look at the big stash on the kitchen table until they've found most of the eggs.

The big stash, the one with the bulk of chocolate and cheap toys, ignored!!! And get this, the eggs from the hunt went into a communal bowl and Catherine and Harry decided they'd divide them evenly later. Good Lord.

They finally approach the big stash. They each grab their huge Kinder eggs, open them, put aside the chocolate, and put together the toys.

When I was a kid we inhaled chocolate. No putting it aside silliness for us!

They ask for breakfast.

What!?! When I was a kid the chocolate WAS our breakfast! And our lunch. And our supper. And breakfast the next day.

It is now almost 11 am. Most of the chocolate remains untouched. A couple of suckers were consumed (who eats the suckers when there's chocolate around?) but the big bunnies and creme eggs remain.

I went wrong somewhere in the raising of them. They're considerate, reasonable and lacking in the proper helping of greed. And the worst thing is, I have no idea how to fix this.

8 comments:

JJ Ross said...

Duh! - just send them to be parented by the schools and punished by rewards. ;-)

Anonymous said...

Back awaaay from the children.

They are fine.

It's the adults I'm worrying about. :)

Happy Chocolate Day (even if this can be a trying day for those of us with children who actually sleep late and force us to WAIT to "share" the chocolate :) ) !

And, no matter what DD says, I did NOT buy enough candy for 6 kids!

Nance

Anonymous said...

LOL. I woke up at 4:30am to the squeaking of Michael's bed and then the thump thump thump of running out to the living room. Then I saw a light go on, then off, then run run run into my bed to tell me that he saw chips in his basket, LOL. Nothing else, just the chips were seen, a quick run-by to see if Mr. Bunny came I guess. Same thing here with the thoughfulness and eagerness, the egg hunt was the most exciting thing and it was indeed stockpiled and divvied evenly as well. Can't do junky chocolate here though, so it was PC Organics chocolate bars and Lays Stacks and Strawberry Spritzers for brekkie. Yum. :-) The E.B. knew to bring a couple Lil Kinz though, boy he is smart. Wish I was a kid...

Heather said...

Weird, weird kids. Mine are not nearly as candy-obsessed as I was. I chalk it up to my mom witholding candy except for very special occasions, so it *was* special. My kids get candy off and on whenever, so it's not such a big deal.

That's my theory anyway.

Dawn said...

Ditto on the chocolate not being so special. It's always around in one form or another.

One thing I forgot to mention was that my husband picked up a white chocolate bunny for the daughter. I had mentioned that I'd forgotten to get white chocolate for her (her favourite), The only problem being that we realized at 9 last night that we had no corresponding treat for Harry.

We stuck the white bunny in the communal pile and figured they'd divy it up. Catherine spotted it and said, "Oh! That must be for me!"

Harry agreed and that was that. If it had been me I would have fought over it and/or felt bad that one sibling got more than me.

Lack of school or parenting or both?

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure which, probably both. As a kid I was limited, and when we had unlimited it was a free-for-all! We also snuck off to the convenience store to eat candy and play video games when we were supposed to be out for a bike ride ...needless to say I didn't think the way my parents did things worked too well.

Our kids don't need to ask to have some candy but they ask anyway. When they ask 'how much' I just say "Use your best judgment" and it works. Near meals I say "It's awfully close to dinner" and they're (usually) okay with that. I think it's great that they have so much more self-control than I ever did.

Oh, and my yougest two were griping because the oldest woke them up at 7:15. We would have raided the candy at 5 am.

Anonymous said...

"And the worst thing is, I have no idea how to fix this."
have more kids. when they have to fight others off they tuffin up. you didn't learn anything from them though, you could of shared the leftovers with your sister. you should just steal any that's left and give it to your sister anyway.

Dawn said...

Give the chocolate I rightfully stole to my sister? Yeah...Right.