New Rules.

This may not embarrass anyone else and God Bless You if you've got cajones big enough for that. I mean to tell you, however, that my five-year-old has been embarrassing the shit out of me lately. I would've thought we were done with all this nonsense. Don't get me wrong ... I still love the little guy and I'm definitely expecting far less than perfection. But should I really be having to write on the white board little reminders, like "No climbing on furniture" and "Dirty clothes go in the washing machine"??? We've had five years of practice. Sometimes I think we should be past this point by now.

The deal breaker came yesterday at his kindergarten Open House. He's been psyched for days about this damn thing, which is cool. I'm glad he's taking pride in his school and his class. I'm all for that. I am NOT all for, however, this new hugging thing he has going on where he runs up to me, full steam ahead, and jumps up for a hug, thinking that whatever else I may have going on, I should immediately be able to stop and catch a 45 pound object being slung thru the air in my general direction. I have told him time and time again that if he chooses to give a great big hug, he needs to be sure that the receiver knows he's on his way. This is only fair, correct? And it sort of seems to be common sense. Apparently not, though, seeing as he did this to my mom in his classroom last night at Open House and knocked her on the floor. Can you imagine? Yes, I probably had the worst kid there. And yes, I agree with my boyfriend that his kindergarten teacher DID look like she was on Xanax. All I can say, then, is bless her heart and thank God for prescription medicines. I absolutely could not spend five minutes in a class with kindergartners. I'd be smoking again. Inside the school. Twice.

Is this normal, to feel this way about your darling child? To actually be embarrassed by them? I mean this is still kindergarten for crying out loud. I'm thinking that this behavior is going to grow exponentially with each passing year and if that's the case, when he's seven I'll be hiding out in the backyard somewhere, praying no one will ever find me. I guess it is an eye-opening feeling, though. I'm guessing that this is the point in life where a lot of parents fail and just give up and allow their children to NOT have the discipline and correction that they need. That makes me sad. TANGENT ALERT: I lived in Orlando after high school and I remember being out in front of our apartment complex one night, shooting the shit with another couple of which the guy happened to be working on his car. They had a little boy who was probably 3 years old. The kid kept running laps around the car, then running up and biting me. Hard. And the parents weren't doing anything! I kept thinking, "WTF is wrong with this picture??" At that time, I wasn't a parent ... I didn't understand the apathy that goes along with essentially giving up on your child, letting THEM win at 3 years old. Are you kidding? You've been on this Earth for 20-something years and you can't outwit a three-year-old? What is really wrong with people?

I do get it, though. And my child will NEVER be "one of those kids." His teacher told me he's one of the accelerated readers in class. That's terrific. I'm very very very proud of him because he does love to read and write (and draw and color). I just wish I could get him to be more apt to do the right thing in certain situations. I'm not asking for a robot ... I just don't want to be the parent of "that kid" anymore. We're implementing a new program today though. I'm calling it "From Now On, Every Second After School Will Be Spent Playing Outside." Yes. It's true. It doesn't cost a dime to implement and we will have no more afternoons of tv or video games. From now on, the goal will be to get as dirty as possible with prizes being awarded to whomever gets the dirtiest over the course of the afternoon. I want to see digging! I want to see running! Climbing! You name it. Just no more sitting inside coloring. I treat my dog like that: I know from watching Dog Whisperer that my dog, Sage, a border collie/Australian shepherd mix, needs to run all her energy out daily or she's going to be prone to mischief. It's her nature. She was given lots of energy to do the herding that her breed is known for. That's fine. Makes perfect sense. Now I'm going to apply that to my 5-year-old and see where that gets us. I think we will be learning lots of new things: skateboarding being one of the first. There's a huge skate park here in town and he's already said he'd like to learn. I think it's great. Maybe I should learn, too. :-)

I'm out, all. That's my daily bitch. Now I'm off to study for a math test. Should be terrif. Have a great weekend and I'll keep you posted (or KYP as Dave Arnold and I say) on the outdoor fun. Later!