Sunday, July 19, 2009

The Performance

So the other day BioMom was in a dilemma, and I'm curious as to how you parents out there in the Blogsphere would react to this situation.

A local high school has these amazing summer classes for kids. They are inexpensive three hour classes that go Monday through Thursday for grades K-8 on a variety of topics from "gooey treats" to "la crosse" to "hollywood" to "rocket making". In short, a super opportunity for kids and parents alike!

Last week, Nine was signed up for two dramaish classes, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

She was in heaven.

She and I have reached the honeymoon-is-over stage of summer where I have gotten entirely sick of picking up after her and attempting to entertain both a nine year old and a three year old, and she is tired of all of my boring adultish jokes and lame attempts at creating fun experiences:

Me: Baba's takin' us to the zoo tomorrow, zoo tomorrow, zoo tomorrow!

She: NOT THE ZOO AGAIN!!!!! What will we DOOOOO there?

So, off she went.

The problem with the dramaish classes, is that there is a performance at the end of the week.

I say "problem" because I'm a bad parent.

To me, the "performances" defeat the purpose: stretches of time away from each other.

And with TWO dramaish classes, that means one "performance" at 11:30 and another at 3:00.

So now, BioMom's dilemma: She had a long meeting scheduled last Thursday, to go from 2:00 p.m. indefinitely. So she decided to take the morning off to a) let me have a little free time and b) spend some quality time with the kids. Big and I had already planned on joining little nature kids club that was heading out to the Arboretum, and then make it back in time for the second of Nine's two performances.

So, BioMom had to choose: either come with us, or go to Nine's first performance.

She was torn. And, of course, Nine's "YOU NEVER COME TO ANY OF MY PERFORMANCES!!!" rant didn't help.

I didn't help either, pushing her to come with me. In my opinion, one of us getting to one of the performances was good enough.

So what's your take on attending all kids' EVERYTHING? Is it important to go to as many events, however small, as possible?

My 1950's-Era brother was in town last weekend, and he reminded me that we were lucky if our parents made it to state track, so with his opinion cataloged, I open it up to you:

What do you do?

1 comment:

mhs said...

Yes, I was lucky to find a ride to such things - my Mom wouldn't even drop me off. I can't tell you how many of the post-performance Dairy Queen trips I made with the weird neighbor family. What did you do?