2nd week of the year and I am proud to announce that the kids are still crying whenever we drop them at school in the morning.
Where did we go wrong? Thinking positive for my own sake, I must have made home time so enjoyable to the point that time spent anywhere else without us is devastating to my kids.
Yes, I have succeeded as a parent.
Now I was very close to failing my kids over the past weekend, and I feel extremely bad in doing so.
Summer, as with 99% of kids her age, loves water parks. We’ve brought her to some of those twice or three times in the past, and she has been requesting to visit again for months.
As it rained almost every weekend in December, we procrastinate and delayed her request until this new year.
All prepped for the water park on Saturday morning, our contractor suddenly requested us to meet in the morning to discuss the renovation plans.
Which of course meant that water park could not happen in the morning or afternoon because following that my Mum had her 60th birthday celebration which ended up as a 3 hour feast.
So like any good Father would, I explained to the kids that the water park plan unfortunately needs to be scrapped.
Of course their faces sank and I knew I had to make it up somehow.
And so at the expense of my in-laws, I promised them that they could blow up the inflatable pool we have there and play around in the afternoon.
Phew. Crisis averted.
And just like that, they ended up happy and thanked me for allowing them so play in the pool.
As adults, we sometimes break promises made to our kids and don’t feel bad about it because we deem them trivial.
Sometimes we forget how our kids look forward to us delivering our little promises.
A visit to the water park might be inconsequential to you and can be postponed easily, but spare a thought for the kids – a simple activity like that might be something that they have been looking forward to in months.
Don’t break your promises, guys.