Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Hanging Out At the Mall

There he is... just 10-years of good-looking!
So it finally happened... my 10-year-old son was invited to hang out with some girls at the mall.

A day we have sort of been dreading a bit - not that we dislike his friends or anything, but this is a step in a new direction. Of course - at only 10-years-old - his mother will not allow him to go to the mall by himself. And she considers going with friends at his age to still be going "by himself."

One of the young ladies' mother was accompanying them - but the plans were for a five hour extravaganza of shopping, eating, more shopping and more eating... frankly, I do not have that kind of time to be following a bunch of kids around. Luckily, once we were there, the parents all put their heads together and decided the day would be significantly shorter.

Side note: my son is (still) grounded. When he brought up this idea of going to the mall with his friends we were not too happy about it. We required some above & beyond good behavior from him in order for him to get to do this.

While he did not completely deliver on acting right – it was enough that we decided to go ahead and let him go. Mostly, because he had done nothing but talk about this event and all the plans all week and we were curious to see how it would go… But he was going to be accompanied by our whole family!

The other parents involved were great – and happy enough to all leave their children in the company of the one parent. I do not know if they were happy to see that my family was tagging along as well (me in my kilt & Doc Martens, my girl all gothic out, and the little sister along as well), but it did give us the opportunity to meet with some of his friends’ parents.

I am having a great time!
I was a lot more willing to let the kids run around partially unsupervised than my son’s mother! The girl’s mother who was accompanying them was even more hands-off than I was. And, really, it was not a problem because, to their credit, the kids acted respectably. They looked through a clothing store, trying things on and looking through accessories.

Next, to the bookstore (which I was very happy to see them interested in), then to dinner, before dessert at another place, and lastly there was running around and playing open square of this outdoor mall.

Over dinner, I asked my daughter (since we were sitting at one table, the mothers at another, and the other kids at a third) if she thought that my son liked the one girl. My daughter said absolutely. I asked my daughter if she thought that the girl liked my son... and my daugher said no.

He is destined for heartbreak.

From the conversation with this girl's mother, her daughter is very dominant - something her mother says she learned from her. Strong-willed and willing to go after what she wants. This is good - I want my son to meet these kind of strong women and have them in his life.

But at the same time, this girl is only putting up with my son. He is too willing to just do whatever it is she tells him to do. A couple times while they were all running around in the square, I called him over to point out to him he needed to stop doing whatever it was that they asked (as it involved him taking a diving roll off a wall and running at full speed through the square - apparently for a Vine video or something they were shooting. Once or twice, fine - but by the seventh & eighth time he was doing it, I was like, "enough!").

My son told me that he did what they asked because he respected them - and I realized he is not at the point yet where he understands being respectful does not mean just doing whatever you are told.

A lesson he will (hopefully_ learn soon.
Dating?! Aaaauuugggghhh!!!!!!

1 comment:

  1. *oof* Impending heartbreak. That's a shame. Hopefully it doesn't take too long for him to start setting boundaries because it just gets harder to say "no" as the years go on... :/

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