On Sunday, as one does, we hosted a neighborhood virtues-based children’s class for our daughter and a handful of her friends. It is the type of class where kids learn about generosity, kindliness, and humility so that afterwards they can fight over who gets the snacks first. Anyway, our friend had brought over his two daughters (ages 4 and 6) and, despite not having twins, looked shattered from a lack of sleep. When the class finished, we encouraged him to leave his kids with us and to go home and take a nap. At first he protested. How could he burden us with two more children when we already have three of our own to look after?
The truth is, once you have three kids in your home, one or two more hardly makes a difference. I explained that he was actually doing us a favor. If Reina has friends over to play with, she won’t make so many demands on our time to keep her occupied or complain that she is not getting sufficient attention while we look after the boys.
This is one of the ironies about having multiple children and why the bigger the family the more likely the parents are to host play dates. I love it when my daughter plays at one of her friend’s homes, but then there is also the trouble of getting her to and from said play date. Honestly, most of the time it is simpler for me if her friends come and hang out at our place.
Maybe things will change when the boys are old enough to go on play dates of their own, but for now, we might as well let the kids come to us. At least this way I don’t need to worry about where they are or what they are doing. It also makes it easier for me to leave the kids home alone if I need to step out for a coffee or just a nice stroll. After all, if there are several virtuous six-year-olds at home, what could possibly go wrong?
Photo courtesy of Scoot Van Der Chij (Flickr)
