I guess that's what they are calling it nowadays

I tried working outside our home.  I substitute taught.  I also worked for 3 years as an advancement director at a Catholic grammar school.  My take on the Catholic school administration thing (my kids once went to a different Catholic School from the one I worked in and we switched to public school, so I have experience with more than one of these places) - everyone has their own agenda.  No one is on the same page.  Communication sucks.  Why not stay home and be frustrated (and be slightly poorer, but only slightly)?

My kids would call me to say they forgot their lunch, or they missed the bus, or they couldn't find something.  I would arrive home to find our garage door up, the milk out, and the kitchen a disaster.  When I wasn't trying to read the minds of the powers that be at Saint-This-Place-Is-Full-of-Politics, I was stuck in traffic and racing to beat the school bus home.  Yes, this is where I scored my first of the string of tickets that caused me to lose my license for 7 weeks.

Three years ago in Sept '15, I started to babysit for a kid named Theo while his mom worked in a school  (I realize after looking back at older posts I am sharing that I sometimes refer to her as Gretta and sometimes I refer to her as Geraldine - same nutty parent different alias).  I found the parents a bit odd.  Understatement of the year.  She was about to have baby Carter.  After her maternity leave, I was watching both of her boys three days a week the first year and four days a week the two years after that.

I took this photo in Sept of '16. 
He had already worn
them EVERYDAY the school year
 before.  What kid fits in the same
 shoes for over a year? 
These people were not destitute.
They both have decent paying jobs.
 Just cheap.
 Buy your kid a pair of shoes!

Theo wore thread barren shoes.  The same pair for well over a year, and they were used when he started to wear them.  What 2 year old can fit in the same shoes for over a year?

Eventually my physical therapist husband informed her that she should be buying him new shoes.  She was prone to used shoes.  Used shoes might be okay for special occasion/single use shoes, but not a great idea for a kid who is a new walker who needs support, etc.

She used cloth diapers.  I rolled with it.  She wanted me to change Theo into pajamas for his afternoon naps.  I went along with that for a few weeks, and then I ceased the wardrobe change for a 2 year old's nap.

The list of weirdness is fairly endless.  She spoke to Theo and eventually to Carter in a way that made me cringe.  I hear parents at the grocery store talk like this, and it is all I can do to stop my old-school self from correcting them on the spot.  When Theo tried to interrupt her when she was talking to me during pick up one day, she squatted down and made him feel valued.  I guess that's what they are calling it nowadays..  In a sickly sweet voice, she told him, 'I hear what you are saying and I am sorry you are sad.  I am almost done talking to Ernie.  I know that you are ready to go home, and I will be ready in another moment.  Thank you for your patience.'

A finger (NO, not that finger - I'm not that bad), raised up in the kid's direction would have been all my kids needed to understand that they needed to wait a minute.  Geraldine was like that though - never interested in upsetting the youngster.  Offering long, squeaky explanations where I felt none was necessary.  Bending over backwards to make Theo's needs met.  'Needs' a term I use loosely.

Memory - sometimes we play it and sometimes we don't.  

Is the game 'Memory' a need?  One day Geraldine showed up just as we had set up a game of memory.  Theo was not happy.  Geraldine texted me the next day with her ETA.  She wanted to allow us enough time for memory.  Newsflash:  just because a game works one day, doesn't mean I have time for it the next day.  Curly had homework and I was finishing my dinner prep so that we could bolt for our soccer games that night.  I did NOT jump thru that memory-game- hoop and force a quick game to appease both mother and son.  Not the way the cookies crumbles, people.

I promise this leads somewhere . . .