Small observation among the chaos.....

My oldest is twelve and a half so a teenager next birthday. He's got a few "issues" but basically he's a good kid who hates school work/homework/housework like most twelve year old boys. He does the same sometimes stupid things that twelve year old boys do too. I can deal with that. What I didn't deal well with was his little brother grassing him up last Thursday for throwing rocks at school. THROWING ROCKS FOR GOODNESS SAKE!!!! Over the course of that kid's life I cannot honestly remember how many times I've told him not to throw rocks around and I'm pretty sure it wasn't all that long ago that I had to tell him that yet AGAIN. But he's got a typical twelve year old boy's memory so was mucking around at school with a mate and they were chucking rocks around and he hit a light cover and cracked it. Well when his brother told me what he'd done - including the offer of a pay off to keep quiet about the incident which obviously wasn't a big enough payoff cos Lachie dobbed - I was the one who cracked it! I went through the usual "that's a stupid thing to do/dangerous/damaged property/ irresponsible behaviour" yadda yadda yadda. Then I made him do the last thing he thought I'd make him do - I told him to walk up to the very first teacher he had class with the next day and confess to breaking a light cover and take whatever punishment the teacher dealt him. I even emailed his teacher to be sure he wouldn't suddenly come down with amnesia about the incident.

The funny thing is that I know one of the teachers and the general consensus in the staff room was "wow can't believe she made him do that" in a congratulations kind of way. Well what on earth else would I make him do???? He broke something that didn't belong to him and the last time I checked if you do that as an adult you generally have consequences for doing stupid things. I'm glad the teachers think I did the right thing cos I'm sure I did do the right thing but the funny observation was that apparently the majority of parents don't seem to make their kids be responsible for what they do. Apparently I'm in the minority of parents while the rest make excuses for their kids, deny their child was involved despite eye witnesses or act plain ol' shocked and say "oh how awful". Come on now, people like that have to be the minority surely?

I'm a bit guerilla when it comes to my kids getting life lessons. I'm sure they're going to grow up thinking their mother is a hard-ass bitch about some stuff but in the real world there are consequences and punishments far worse than a detention for doing something stupid. I don't want my kids to think it's okay to do stupid/dangerous stuff because someone will "take care of it" for them and they won't be held accountable. They're not professional footballers yet...lol

So just having a wee vent about that to the blogsphere in general. The older I get the more I realise I don't suck at this mother thing nearly as bad as I think some days. I'm nowhere near as good a mother as people I know or even as good as I want to be but at least I realise I'm on the right track and hopefully it will keep my kids (mostly) out of trouble as they head for teenage years. Far out I hope at some point that kid of mine stops throwing bloody rocks............