A - Z Challenge - Kids

My theme for this challenge is family and relations.

Kids “children or young people”

Growing up I wasn’t particularly exposed to young children that much.  Obviously I had school friends but I didn’t have anyone that I had to babysit for.  My eldest brother has two children but he moved away from London when they were quite young so we didn’t see a lot of them and although we saw more of my younger brother’s two girls again I didn’t really have a great deal of contact, particularly with babies.

When my own babies arrived it was a steep learning curve.  Which was scary.  Especially when finding myself alone with my daughter for the first time and finding it hard to stop her crying.  But like all Mums I learned.  And I had lots of support. 

From then on children have played a big part in my life.  My three arrived one after the other (I had 3 under four for a short time) and of course there have been lots of cousins to them arriving ever since and now there are children of the cousins.

I was also actively involved in the playgroup my children attended and later on I went to work in a primary school so more contact with young children.  My role in the school was one of administration so I didn’t have as much contact with the children as for example a classroom assistant but we would still see a lot of them and we were expected to enforce the school rules just the same as everyone else.  This meant ensuring good manners at all times. 

I’m a stickler for good manners.  I’m a great believer that they cost nothing but will take you a long way.  Many a child though has come into the office and asked “Have you got the key to the PE shed?”  My response to that has often been “Yes I have thank you.”

Some children catch on quickly and realise their mistakes and rephrase the question adding a please.  Others look at you most perplexed.  That was not the answer they were expecting.  Why have I just not given them the key?  Some children eventually get there and take it in good spirit and go away happily with the key.  Others get quite cross that you are not giving them what they want and are, in their eyes, wasting their time.  They might be asked to go outside, think about what they are trying to achieve and then start again.

I’m sure if any of my own kids were reading this they would recognise events!

 
Of course this is not only an example of not tolerating bad manners, it’s also about grammar.  I can be quite pedantic about that.  (Although I’m not as bad as my husband.)  I love the “grammarly” quotes that pop up on facebook.  I know I’m not perfect but I have been conscious of trying to make sure my writing on these A-Z posts have been grammatically correct and also trying to avoid other things such as starting a sentence with “So…” for example.  Hopefully I’m not making too many mistakes.