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Kid going away with friends



 
 
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  #11  
Old August 15th 04, 10:20 PM
H Schinske
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"Nevermind" wrote in message
. com...
My 9 YO has been invited to go about 12 hours away for an entire week
with the family of a friend of his. Any thoughts? Are we just being

babies about our "baby"?


To me, it's not the going away for a week that sounds like it's the problem.
It's that he *can't* get out of it without it being a total emergency, whereas
with most camp situations, the parents are a few hours away. (Also, with camp,
you're not always with the same few people.) I would feel a little odd about it
too.

--Helen

  #12  
Old August 16th 04, 01:03 PM
Jeff
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"Nevermind" wrote in message
om...
My 9 YO has been invited to go about 12 hours away for an entire week
with the family of a friend of his. This friend is a good friend, but
not someone he spends a ton of time with. Two overnight get-togethers
have gone well. My son is very sociable but also gets cranky and needs
alone time on a regular basis. The family is not an issue; I trust
them safety-wise, and they're also nice people. However, 9 seems too
young to me to have a child be that far away from home for an entire
week, and I worry about him getting sick of the family (his friend and
two younger sisters, mom, and dad) half-way through the week.

Problem is, the place they're going is a great place to go, both fun
and educational. I feel guilty about not letting him go, both because
I know it would be a great place for him to go (not that that means he
has to go this year) and because the other mother really wants him to
go for her son's sake.

Any thoughts? Are we just being babies about our "baby"?


I have noticed that you haven't said anything about whether the 9 year old's
feelings on the matter.

I guess they would be important too.

Jeff


  #13  
Old August 16th 04, 08:10 PM
Nevermind
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"Jeff" wrote
Any thoughts? Are we just being babies about our "baby"?


I have noticed that you haven't said anything about whether the 9 year old's
feelings on the matter.

I guess they would be important too.

Jeff


If we weren't going to allow him to go, then there was no point in
getting his opinion. Only if we felt we would allow him would we then
consult him and let him decide whether or not to go. However, I did
tell him after it was decided once and for all that he wasn't going
that he had been invited. He was angry with us. sigh

  #14  
Old August 16th 04, 09:52 PM
slykitten
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In response to your DH's "gut instinct" feelings about the trip.... and I'll
share a story in which I had a gut instinct where my brother was concerned.
One morning I got up at the insane hour of 4 am. My brother is a Hot Air
Balloon Pilot. When I awoke, I was in a cold sweat, hit the shower and got
ready for the day. My brother got up at 5 to be at the field by 5:30 am. He
asked me why I was up so early and why in heaven's name I was dressed and
ready to go. I informed him that I had a bad feeling about that day's flight
and I wanted to go. He insisted that things would be ok.
The reality was that I'd had a dream about him running out of fuel over
power lines, a road down the center, a field on one side and shops on the
other. I told him about the dream and he laughed it off.
To make a long story short, he couldn't tell me no. I went anyway. I was
also dating my exhusband then as well and he came along. I insisted on going
up on the last flight (or in balloonist lingo, on the "last hop") and it was
a nice flight, even if a little short. My cousin and I were talking when I
heard my brother (he was about 16 then) say, "oh sh*t. We're out of fuel!
we're on fumes!" My guts lurched. He said, "we need to land..." My brother,
cousin and I looked over the edge of the basket and there we were, no
updraft, no down draft, no wind at all. No fuel, no place to land,
everything a private zone (PZ), a gas station on one side, farmland on the
other and Corrales Road under us. My brother basically parachuted us down
into a field behind the gast station. We screamed to my ex to get his butt
moving as he was the one driving the chase vehicle.
When we crash landed, the balloon mushroomed over us, the basket tipped, we
all kinda toppled in a stack. My brother cooled the burners and we braced
for the material to come down on us. we huddled down in the basket so the
balloon would be held off of us by the uprights. I'd never prayed so hard in
my entire life when we came within inches of hitting the powerlines! In my
dream, I saw us hit the powerlines!
I'll be honest, Even though my brother didn't want me going and insisted
that everything was fine, He later thanked me for sticking strong to my
resolve. He's learned to trust my gut feelings, as has my father, who is
also a pilot.
My best recommendation is that your DH has his gut feelings that something
bigger than homesickness or misbehaving may happen. Please, even though you
don't believe anything will happen, you and DH need to talk it out but trust
his instincts. One thing my dad taught me... "when your gut starts talkin,
you'd better listen." My grandma used to say that it was a guardian angel
whispering a warning into the ear.
BiG Snip

  #15  
Old August 16th 04, 11:17 PM
Scott
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Nevermind wrote:
"Jeff" wrote

Any thoughts? Are we just being babies about our "baby"?


I have noticed that you haven't said anything about whether the 9 year old's
feelings on the matter.

I guess they would be important too.

Jeff



If we weren't going to allow him to go, then there was no point in
getting his opinion. Only if we felt we would allow him would we then
consult him and let him decide whether or not to go. However, I did
tell him after it was decided once and for all that he wasn't going
that he had been invited. He was angry with us. sigh


I think there's always a reason to get a 9-yo's
opinion about something that may or may not
impact their lives, even if it turns out that
it doesn't. One big reason is that it means
you trust and value his opinions. I think the
message you just sent your son is that what
he thinks and feels is irrelevant as far as
planning his life. A good question would be:
at what age do his feelings/thoughts become
relevant and important?


Scott DD 11 and DS 8

  #16  
Old August 17th 04, 01:18 AM
dragonlady
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In article ,
Scott wrote:

Nevermind wrote:
"Jeff" wrote

Any thoughts? Are we just being babies about our "baby"?


I have noticed that you haven't said anything about whether the 9 year old's
feelings on the matter.

I guess they would be important too.

Jeff



If we weren't going to allow him to go, then there was no point in
getting his opinion. Only if we felt we would allow him would we then
consult him and let him decide whether or not to go. However, I did
tell him after it was decided once and for all that he wasn't going
that he had been invited. He was angry with us. sigh


I think there's always a reason to get a 9-yo's
opinion about something that may or may not
impact their lives, even if it turns out that
it doesn't. One big reason is that it means
you trust and value his opinions. I think the
message you just sent your son is that what
he thinks and feels is irrelevant as far as
planning his life. A good question would be:
at what age do his feelings/thoughts become
relevant and important?


Scott DD 11 and DS 8


Actually, what struck me about this is that you didn't ask his opinion,
or even offer to let him tell you his thoughts before you decided -- but
told him AFTER you'd decided he couldn't go that he'd been invited and
the answer was no!

What was the point of telling him about it after you had decided he
couldn't go? That just sounds mean -- unless I'm misunderstanding your
post, and you know he DID know about the invitation. In which case I'm
surprised he wasn't lobbying, even without you asking his opinion on the
matter; I know my kids would not have been shy about letting me know
what they thought.
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

  #17  
Old August 17th 04, 01:19 AM
dragonlady
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In article ,
(Nevermind) wrote:

dragonlady wrote
I feel more inclined to let him go, but my DH really doesn't. I feel
my DH is overcautious and too loathe to let go (he didn't want him
going on overnights until he was 8 -- he's our oldest), but the fact
is that I don't want to force the issue and then have my DH spend the
week feeling extremely nervous about our son. The issue of missing him
is one I think we would have to accept; it wouldn't be fair to prevent
him from doing something good for that reason alone. But my DH just
doesn't think he should be away from us for that long, that far away,
at that age. I will talk to him one more time about it today, but if
he still feels "no" as a gut reaction, I guess I'll have to go with it
even if I don't quite agree.


I guess I'd talk to DH about what he thinks could be a problem with him
going with a friend's familiy for a week. What does he think will go
wrong? Is he afraid your son will get homesick? Is he afraid that
he'll lose touch with you and DH? Does he think your son will misbehave
without you and DH there to keep him in line?


It is pure gut feeling on his part. I recently read a relevant quote
somewhere that said (perhaps not the exact words): "You can't reason
someone out of something they didn't reason themselves into." Now, he
would defer to me if I insisted, and I have in the past insisted that
the kids be allowed to do things he was not ready for them to do, such
as overnights. But I persoanlly do not feel comfortable insisting in
this case because it is such a biggie. It's one thing to do without
your kid for a night when you didn't feel OK about them going. Quite
another for an entire week, with the kid being so far away. I cannot
take responsibility for that without his true consent -- not yet
anyway.


I've been hanging on to this for several days, and thinking about it --
and I'm going to disagree. If you can't justify your "gut feelings"
with some sort of logical reason, then I think it's time to act on what
your head tells you is the right thing to do, NOT your gut reaction.
(Yes, I realize that you are saying it was his Dad's emotional response,
not yours -- and I agree about not being willing to insist on some
occassions -- but I'm going on with this anyway!)

There have been times when my "gut" tells me something, and when the
kids demand that I justify it I have been unable to do so. On rare
occassion, I've told them I'm going with my gut, because I'm just not
comfortable with it -- but told them they should come back and ask again
after I've had some time to think it over. (Basically, my kids know
that if they don't give me time to consider something, the answer is
likely to be "no" -- so they usually give me lots of time to think it
over, sometimes going so far as to say, "Mom, I don't want an answer
right now, but some time next week I'm probably going to ask you "x",
and I want you to start thinking about it now." And they'll go on to
tell me all of the reasons I should say "yes", but since I don't have to
give them an immidiate answer, we don't have to fight about it.)

Sometimes, upon consideration, I've traced the roots of my discomfort to
something real, and have stood by my initial decision. Other times,
I've realized that there IS no rational reason to not allow something --
I just need to get comfortable with it. In fact, I can remember telling
my oldest that I wasn't ready for her to be old enough to do something.
When she started to argue with me, I told her to listen more carefully
-- I didn't say she wasn't old enough; I'd realized that she WAS old
enough. The problem was purely that *I* wasn't ready for her to be old
enough. Since the event in question was a week away, I promised her
that I'd get myself ready in time, or just live with my own discomfort,
and gave her permission to do it.

I guess I'm saying that not being able to logically justify your
decisions isn't good enough with kids -- and saying that, since it isn't
a logical decision, logic doesn't help isn't good enough, either.
Would you accept that reasoning from your kids? As parents, we owe it
to our kids to be willing to "check" our initial, emotion based
responses, and think and consider hard about what is and is not
appropriate.


I would also suggest he do some "reality checks" with other parents of
kids your son's age (what you are doing here).


Yes, I think that might help in general, if not this time. I myself
was pretty surprised to have gotten only positive responses to my
question (keeping in mind it was an incredibly small group of
respondents). I really expected the responses to be more like, "A
whole week that far away at that age!?" LOL. Thanks!

--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

  #18  
Old August 17th 04, 04:07 AM
Rosalie B.
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dragonlady wrote:

In article ,
Scott wrote:

Nevermind wrote:
"Jeff" wrote

Any thoughts? Are we just being babies about our "baby"?

I have noticed that you haven't said anything about whether the 9 year old's
feelings on the matter.

I guess they would be important too.

If we weren't going to allow him to go, then there was no point in
getting his opinion. Only if we felt we would allow him would we then
consult him and let him decide whether or not to go. However, I did
tell him after it was decided once and for all that he wasn't going
that he had been invited. He was angry with us. sigh

I don't blame him a bit. And actually his dad should have told him
since it was his dad that didn't let him go. There's no point in your
taking the heat. He should have to justify himself to his kid.

The only reason I can think of NOT to do it that way is if you are
afraid that this will be another in a long line of unreasonablenesses
which will eventually drive the father and son apart.

I think there's always a reason to get a 9-yo's
opinion about something that may or may not
impact their lives, even if it turns out that
it doesn't. One big reason is that it means
you trust and value his opinions. I think the
message you just sent your son is that what
he thinks and feels is irrelevant as far as
planning his life. A good question would be:
at what age do his feelings/thoughts become
relevant and important?

Scott DD 11 and DS 8


Actually, what struck me about this is that you didn't ask his opinion,
or even offer to let him tell you his thoughts before you decided -- but
told him AFTER you'd decided he couldn't go that he'd been invited and
the answer was no!

What was the point of telling him about it after you had decided he
couldn't go? That just sounds mean -- unless I'm misunderstanding your
post, and you know he DID know about the invitation. In which case I'm
surprised he wasn't lobbying, even without you asking his opinion on the
matter; I know my kids would not have been shy about letting me know
what they thought.


Yes I completely agree. Although if the other mom did as I think I
would prefer, she would have gone to the parents first, and possibly
since school is out, the other kid might not have actually told the
kid of the OP.


And the flaw I see in the post about the dream about running out of
fuel is --- why didn't you take some precautions not to run out of
fuel? Like not going as far, or taking extra.

And why did you want to put yourself in harm's way when you were sure
they were going to be in danger. What good would it do for you to die
too? If I couldn't dissuade someone from doing something I thought
would be dangerous, and I really believed it was life threatening, I
certainly wouldn't go WITH them.

There have been times when dh has talked me into doing something (on
our boat) that was not a good idea. But even though I was correct
that we should not have gone, I never had any fear that the boat could
not carry us through safely. Otherwise, I would have gotten off the
boat and refused to go.

grandma Rosalie

  #19  
Old August 17th 04, 12:13 PM
dragonlady
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In article ,
"Rosalie B." wrote:

And the flaw I see in the post about the dream about running out of
fuel is --- why didn't you take some precautions not to run out of
fuel? Like not going as far, or taking extra.


I would add that there's a BIG difference between a premonition that
Something Bad is going to happen and just a general feeling that your
kids are "too young" for things.

I'm not sure I believe in pemonitions/precog. dreams, but if you have
one and DO believe in them, it makes sense to trust them. In that case,
you would not allow something that otherwise you WOULD allow.

That is not the case he the father does not think a 9 yo is old
enough to go with another family for a week, and it has nothing to do
with a premonition that something will go wrong -- it is just general
discomfort with that amount of independence and freedom.


And why did you want to put yourself in harm's way when you were sure
they were going to be in danger. What good would it do for you to die
too? If I couldn't dissuade someone from doing something I thought
would be dangerous, and I really believed it was life threatening, I
certainly wouldn't go WITH them.

There have been times when dh has talked me into doing something (on
our boat) that was not a good idea. But even though I was correct
that we should not have gone, I never had any fear that the boat could
not carry us through safely. Otherwise, I would have gotten off the
boat and refused to go.

grandma Rosalie

--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

  #20  
Old August 18th 04, 03:35 AM
slykitten
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"Rosalie B." wrote in message
...
dragonlady wrote:

In article ,
Scott wrote:

Nevermind wrote:
"Jeff" wrote

Any thoughts? Are we just being babies about our "baby"?

I have noticed that you haven't said anything about whether the 9

year old's
feelings on the matter.

I guess they would be important too.

If we weren't going to allow him to go, then there was no point in
getting his opinion. Only if we felt we would allow him would we then
consult him and let him decide whether or not to go. However, I did
tell him after it was decided once and for all that he wasn't going
that he had been invited. He was angry with us. sigh

I don't blame him a bit. And actually his dad should have told him
since it was his dad that didn't let him go. There's no point in your
taking the heat. He should have to justify himself to his kid.

The only reason I can think of NOT to do it that way is if you are
afraid that this will be another in a long line of unreasonablenesses
which will eventually drive the father and son apart.

I think there's always a reason to get a 9-yo's
opinion about something that may or may not
impact their lives, even if it turns out that
it doesn't. One big reason is that it means
you trust and value his opinions. I think the
message you just sent your son is that what
he thinks and feels is irrelevant as far as
planning his life. A good question would be:
at what age do his feelings/thoughts become
relevant and important?

Scott DD 11 and DS 8


Actually, what struck me about this is that you didn't ask his opinion,
or even offer to let him tell you his thoughts before you decided -- but
told him AFTER you'd decided he couldn't go that he'd been invited and
the answer was no!

What was the point of telling him about it after you had decided he
couldn't go? That just sounds mean -- unless I'm misunderstanding your
post, and you know he DID know about the invitation. In which case I'm
surprised he wasn't lobbying, even without you asking his opinion on the
matter; I know my kids would not have been shy about letting me know
what they thought.


Yes I completely agree. Although if the other mom did as I think I
would prefer, she would have gone to the parents first, and possibly
since school is out, the other kid might not have actually told the
kid of the OP.


And the flaw I see in the post about the dream about running out of
fuel is --- why didn't you take some precautions not to run out of
fuel? Like not going as far, or taking extra.

And why did you want to put yourself in harm's way when you were sure
they were going to be in danger. What good would it do for you to die
too? If I couldn't dissuade someone from doing something I thought
would be dangerous, and I really believed it was life threatening, I
certainly wouldn't go WITH them.

There have been times when dh has talked me into doing something (on
our boat) that was not a good idea. But even though I was correct
that we should not have gone, I never had any fear that the boat could
not carry us through safely. Otherwise, I would have gotten off the
boat and refused to go.

grandma Rosalie


That was actually the first time I'd ever had anything like that happen to
me. I didn't know what to do. Needless to say though, I was also only about
18. I didn't really know what to do. In a situation where you're ballooning,
the winds can be perfect.... You can't predict that the wind currents would
stop. In the dream when we draped the powerlines, it was because of a
wind... there are always reserves in the tanks but when the reserves are
used to try and get out of harm's way and there isn't anymore left, there's
not much to do but to land as safely as we can. That's what we did. At most,
it was more like a "dogpile" rather than actually injuries. In fact, we
didn't even get so much as a bruise. After the flight, my brother made calls
to various pilots who had 30+ years of experience (such as World Balloon
Corporation) and he asked questions. The advice he got was sound but
basically reaffirmed that there really wasn't much to do in this situation
other than the best. I think it would have been much different if we were
1000 feet above ground. We were only about 15 ft, maybe a little more, I'm a
terrible judge of height. The most important thing is that everyone was
safe, the only injury happened to the balloon when there was a 6 foot tear
on one of the panels when we hastily pulled the material off of a fence.
Ever since that time (because I'd doubted my gut instincts before) I've
learned to especially trust my gut instinct, that while something may not
actually happen, it's best to be safe than sorry. The gut instinct may
happen this time but not the next. It's kinda hard to predict. Who knows why
the dad had the gut feeling. I don't even want to speculate. I guess that
for me, I'd rather have my kid mad at me for a little while than to find out
that my gut instinct was right and something terrible did happen
IMO.........

 




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