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mamaslearning
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| Posted: Dec 15 2007 at 2:34pm | IP Logged
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I'm wondering what your thoughts are about allowing children to play with neighbors and friends. How much is too much?
I currently only have a 4 year old and 19 month old. We typically see friends once and sometimes twice a week. We also have a neighbor that we play with at least once or twice a week.
Does anybody set a limit on time with friends? I know they are young, but I really want to try and instill in my children that family comes first. I also want to create a strong homelife so that the peers will not be the most important influence in their lives. How do I do this?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions you have.
Lara
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hsmom
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| Posted: Dec 17 2007 at 6:34am | IP Logged
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I think you are on the right track. There is a book "Hold on to YOur Kids, Why Parents Need to Matter More than Their Peers" that explains a lot about this issue. Also, when my dd does play with others I make sure it is within earshot or eyesight at all times. I think I got that suggestion from "raising Godly tomatoes". I can't remember the exact website. It has served me well. When kids aren't willing to play in the living room while I visit with their mom in the dining room that's a red flag for me. And any toy can be brought into the living room.
Raymond Moore also wrote something similiar in one of his homeschooling books. Time spent with family should be much more than time spent with friends. Your lucky you have a sibling. My dd is the only child left in the house and she's 9! I schedule the playdates to mostly take place in my house as well.
God bless, Valerie
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Rachel May
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| Posted: Dec 17 2007 at 11:45am | IP Logged
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Interesting question. We've never found it necessary to limit the time our kids could play with friends beyond what happens naturally as a part of our daily rhythm.
In the small housing areas where we have lived, we could either be shut-ins or play with friends every day. Since most other moms and kids are busy in the mornings, we've always done a lot together then. After lunch, we have a general nap and quiet time where no one may come over. Sometimes, now that mine are bigger, they do go out and play with friends during that time and into the afternoon until dinnertime. I try to be willing to have kids into our house as often as possible because I'm more choosy about whose house they may go into and when and for how long.
However, I think our strong family culture has more to do with how we live as a family than how much they do with friends. As homeschoolers we spend most of our day together, we pray together, we play together, we eat and talk together, we work together. Our family and its needs always comes first, and we all recognize that.
And as parents my husband and I are clear about who is the authority, but we are very gentle with that authority when dealing with difficult situations with neighbor kids. We've found that it's better to talk with our kids about good and bad behaviors, about what kinds of people we want to associate with, about good and bad influences than to create defiance through heavy handedness. Occasionally, we will encourage more time with better behaved friends if there is a friend whose bad influence is starting to show.
Our kids aren't perfect, but they are growing the way we want them to, and we have good relationships with them. Our family is closeknit and faithful. The kids are happy, fairly well behaved and social. I don't feel like there is more that I want in this area. Just my $.02
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CrunchyMom
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| Posted: Dec 17 2007 at 12:25pm | IP Logged
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hsmom wrote:
| When kids aren't willing to play in the living room while I visit with their mom in the dining room that's a red flag for me. And any toy can be brought into the living room. |
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I guess it depends on age and how well you know the children. I know that I liked to play very innocent imaginative games with my friends but we were embarrassed to "play pretend" in front of adults. It seems that a certain amount of independence is healthy. My oldest is only 3 1/2, and I try not to interrupt his play with his 18 month old brother when they "think" they are alone. Once they realize I am around or listening, it often "breaks the spell" or spoils their fun. Jme.
We do find a need to limit outings with the homeschool groups and such sometimes. I don't want them to think that you can't enjoy yourself unless around others--especially since I am a homebody and the constant going really affects my responsibilities around the home negatively. I am a complete extrovert and have to be careful not to jump at every opportunity to hang out with other Catholic moms! They ask to be around friends more, too, when they've had a busy week. Like they forget what to do on their own, lol.
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SallyT
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| Posted: Dec 17 2007 at 11:17pm | IP Logged
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I tend towards what both Rachel and Lindsay have said. The friend/play time is kind of self-limiting, in that there are things we have to do at home, and the friends have things to do, too. I'm much more likely to limit organized activities than I am playdates. Often, either we all go en masse to a friend's house, where there are kids of various ages to play with mine, or they come en masse to us.
We, too, make much of our strong family "culture" -- our rituals, our praying together, lots of fun with each other -- rather than trying to limit outside influences too consciously. Not that we don't limit, but we have a very open door, especially for people coming here. I keep one of my older kids' best friends every day after school (she goes to school; her mom is single and works fulltime), so we have a lot of "built-in" friend interaction anyway.
I don't necessarily feel that having my kids form strong and important friendships is a threat to our family or parental authority. The dangers of peer influence are real; on the other hand, we're out of the school culture, where that's the norm. Our culture IS home and family. We don't watch tv shows where kids are "smarter" than their moronic parents. We don't read books about or narrated by smart-alecky kids. Most of our kids' friends are from strongly attached families themselves, so that having our kids hang out with them provides positive peer reinforcement to what we teach them already.
I'm still close to friends from my high school days, so maybe that's why I feel strongly about having my children form those kinds of relationships. When my dad died, having my oldest friends all either call me, if they lived far away, or come to bring food to my mother, meant the world to me. It was like having MORE family, in a time of crisis.
Also, we're converts, and not only is the rest of our family not Catholic, but there are also very few children. My kids have exactly one first cousin, who hardly deigns to acknowledge their existence when they're all together, so we tend to seek out the kinds of friends who act as surrogate cousins -- where we're friends with the whole family, not just one kid with one kid.
And I would never have played pretend in front of adults, either. I do keep an eye on where teenagers are in my house, but there are plenty of innocent games which littler kids engage in, which to them are private, and I respect that. Actually, whenever we visit a particular family who are good friends of ours, the teenagers (their 12yo son is one of my 14yo daughter's best friends in the world) go out to the backyard trampoline, no matter the weather, to sit and talk. We sit on the den sofa and watch them out the back window while we drink our coffee, and the little kids play upstairs.
Anyway, my thoughts.
Sally
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SallyT
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| Posted: Dec 17 2007 at 11:30pm | IP Logged
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Addendum on the subject of rituals and their importance to our kids --
We put up our Christmas tree today, and my teenager was adamant that we get it decorated before my "part-time daughter" (the child I keep after school) got out of school. They are devoted to each other, spend virtually every day together, Emma is more or less part of our family (we've pretty much adopted her mom as well) -- and yet when it came to something like this, the teenager was very clear that this was a FAMILY thing. So the kids decorated it as a surprise for Emma when we got home.
Anyway, you'd expect a teenager, maybe, to be the first person to go, "Why don't we invite all my best friends to come decorate the tree, because it will be so much less boring that way?" But we've always made a real ritual of the Christmas tree and the other festive things we set out as Advent progresses (lighting candles, opening calendar doors; now we're putting O Antiphon ornaments on the tree and singing the appropriate verse of "Veni, Veni, Emmanuel" every night), and obviously it's meant something to the kids that we've made a point of doing these things as a family.
Other examples of what I mean by "ritual" --
sitdown family dinner as close to every night as possible (here's where limiting organized outside activities like sports comes in handy!)
prayer morning and evening
daily Mass as a family at least once or twice a week, with me if not with their dad
read-aloud books in the evening
listening to audiobooks together
having friends over, as for a party -- there's something about everyone pitching in to get the house ready for friends to come over for a festive time, and all of us extending our hospitality to them, that's really bonding somehow
family observance of feasts and fasts in the liturgical year
telling goofy stories of things we did as kids, or they did when they were little (personal history lessons?)
in the winter: building fires in the fireplace and sitting by them together, having tea or cocoa by the fire for breakfast
in the summer: eating breakfast outside, like Betsy and Tacy in the books by Maud Hart Lovelace, gardening
That's a partial list, but obviously I use "ritual" fairly broadly!
Sally
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mamaslearning
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| Posted: Dec 19 2007 at 12:54pm | IP Logged
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Sorry for the not replying sooner, I've come down with a nasty cold.
Thanks to all for the suggestions and replies.
I like the idea of letting play self-limit, but most of our play is scheduled (at this age). I can see that the more we are active in the week, the more she craves being around other children. If we limit activities to once or twice, then she usually doesn't keep asking to go play with someone.
Sally, I really liked all the "rituals". It gives me some ideas to start in our own family.
Thanks,
Lara
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4Real Forums : Mothering and Family Life
Topic: How much play is too much?
