We made the posh kid cry!

[Brandane]

Thanks @Marmion for the comment it really made me think. Maybe my words were harsh, he is a child after all. It comes from a fear of not being good enough (child of a broken home, oh gosh, yes I'm one of 'those' people). My fiancé, his father, passed away in a car accident when I was 7 months pregnant so I've always worked hard to provide for my son. I'm self employed now and I work about 60 hours a week to provide a good living. 5am starts and working when he's asleep is effortless when you have a strong independent young man smiling at you every day. Sometimes I feel like I need to make up for the fact my son has no family in his life so I fill his days with as many good life experiences as much as I can. My bike was always my escape when I was younger. I can't afford a car so I bought him a tricycle as soon as he could waddle. 14 years later he now has a great custom build I've worked really hard to provide and he works very hard to look after. It doesn't make up for the fact he hasn't got a; Dad, grandparents or any blood relative in his life but he sure doesn't think about that when we're doing off road trails together I can tell you!!

Maybe I'm jealous that some people seemingly have it easier because they have the support of family who have been there all their life (my delusion perhaps). I'd love to visit the places in the world this child has been to and once my son is old enough to go his way in the world I will have many adventures of my own. (We've been lucky enough to travel but I couldn't afford it recently) 14 years has been a long wait to fulfil my globe backpacking dreams but I've only 4 more years to go and I can go off Indiana Jones style! Id love all the abundance this boy speaks of and their 4 bed new build on the much nicer estate next to ours. But I rent a small council house and save like mad so I can put a tiny mortgage on it and give the house to my son as his first step on the property ladder/ Uni fees or whatever he chooses.

Yesterday I felt overly vulnerable. It was a year since my Mum passed away. It's been building up but my goodness on Thursday night did it overwhelm me. I never really knew her. She didn't know herself. I spent 15 years locked in an abusive home but I was soooo lucky, I met the love of my life at 15 and moved out as soon as I was legally able to. Into our new home with my new fiancé and soon out new baby was on the way!

When my Mum got cancer two years ago I gave up work to look after her because she had no one. I lost my clients and we lived off my 'go traveling when he's older' savings pot. She was due to come home the day she passed away. I'd waited 31 years for a Mum but the blessing was in her very last moments I was a Mum to her. Sadly something she lived all her life without. I'm very proud I could give her that.

Last year kicked off a huge chain of events for me. I realised all the things my Mum never did in her life and it's inspired me to do so much this last year. I've always done voluntary/charity work but this year I'm doing two charity runs!! Me, running, who knew? Next week actually! First time ever and I'm a bit wobbly nerved, but I'm going for it!

I'd not met this boy before and I've always had a niggle that they might not have a good time when they first come over. We never had people over when I was young so I've got no model of how it works. But he's asked to come back again!! Maybe I shouldn't feel bad that I can't provide all this boy seemingly has. That is pretty shallow. But I tell you what. I'm proud as punch that my boy took care of his friend when he got upset.

I've just finished my work for today so I'm off to make a mammoth Sunday breakfast for two hungry young men!!

Have a great day peeps!

Your post makes you out to be very strong......
(Which makes little sense now that the opposing reply has disappeared!).

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

A shop? The OP was lucky to have a nearby shop. I had to make do with an imaginary shop stocked with an extensive range of detritus picked from the gutter and proudly rebranded as comestibles and placed with precision on a cardboard box to be sold to my imaginary friends.

[picks up the phone for Social Services...]

For both Slowmotion and Vernon, I think it is too late!

 

[summerdays]

It doesn't sound like you have had an easy life, certainly in comparison to mine, and I do think I've been lucky in the hand that life has dealt me so far, though we don't jet off on holiday to foreign places every weekend - camping in the Peak District and house in North Wales this year for us but we had a lovely time).

However I'm posting here to possibly represent the boy. I've no idea if he is similar to mine but my youngest (of a similar age), doesn't like walking to the shops on his own. Really really doesn't like it, to the extent that I can't get him to run any errands etc. if we go to the shops together, he is fine out but when he selects a ice cream he tells me what he wants, not the shop keeper, I sometimes push him a little and refuse to buy the item unless he asks. Or I make him hand over the money. He is so so painfully shy. We went up to the shops the other day and he say a very good friend but he didn't even call out to him because he was with some other people. All his school reports and parents evenings always say he could do with contributing in class more, but that he seems to have good answers if questioned directly.

He's always been that way, when he first started nursery school they used to do group planning and he would not join in and they would do his individually, he was the child that had to be rescued from the middle of the nativity play by a teacher as he stood there crying cuddling his lamb, or at the other end of primary he was in charge of lighting the year 6 play. Some of my proud memories of school are when he was able to take part in something on stage even if it was a tiny role (not speaking of course), knowing how much it cost him.

Perhaps your son's friend was really outside his comfort zone. But if he comes back maybe you could have a back up option of having a desert in the freezer if he didn't want to go to the shops but tell them to go and eat it outside to give you some peace to clear up? ( and then you can sit down with that cup of tea).

 

[Smurfy]

In a virtual world any problems that spring up can easily be swept aside/forgot about. Repeat those or similar problems in the real world and you may just find yourself in trouble.

How's s/he going to cope with the real world when the time comes?

There's a name for the support he'll get, 'Helicopter Parents', permanently hovering above and just behind in case he encounters a crisis.

 

[cd365]

@luckyfox I think you should be proud of what you have achieved. I don't think you needed to explain youself either. There is a generation of children being raised who do not play outdoors and I think it is a shame. They will struggle in adult life.

@summerdays, I'm not including your son and other children who are very shy. There was a boy down the street from me like that as I was growing up. He was happy for us to play in his bedroom but when there was a few kids out no matter how much I tried to convince him to come out he wouldn't. Shame really.

 

[Tin Pot]

I wasn't entirely lucky with my upbringing, in fact some of the events would easily be headline news these days.

But my half sister had it worse.

And I consider us still luckier than the majority of humanity starving/disease ridden children of the world.

Other people had it easier.

I don't think being made to mature very young is better or worse than being allowed to remain naive for too long.

People are different for all sorts of reasons, I try to understand rather than judge - not that it always works or helps!

I'm glad your son was a support to his friend - an admirable quality in a child of any age.

 

[BigonaBianchi]

I sometimes think that there should be an optional course in parenting somewhere....I know I could have benefitted.

 

[Tin Pot]

@luckyfox I think you should be proud of what you have achieved. I don't think you needed to explain youself either. There is a generation of children being raised who do not play outdoors and I think it is a shame. They will struggle in adult life.

Perhaps, perhaps not. Our children have a very different upbringing to us, disappearing off all day on bikes just isn't what kids do anymore, not around here and no matter how much I enjoyed it.

Today's Lego seems to be Minecraft. Will that make them better or worse people? Who knows. But we shouldn't be surprised that things appear different now we're adults - we heard all the "In my day"'s when we were kids, and in spite of it all society is a better place now.

 

[Fab Foodie]

But he's asked to come back again!! Maybe I shouldn't feel bad that I can't provide all this boy seemingly has.

Au contraire, it seems like you are able to provide exactly what this boy DOESN'T have .....

Think about it ....

 

[Sassy14]

A child of 13 should be able to walk to the local shops with no problems. By the time kids are ready to go to secondary school, my daughter was 11, there are things they should be able to do to socialy take care of themselves. Walk to school, go to the shops, get on a bus all without mummy and daddy holding their hands. I take it this kid has never walked to school alone!

My daughter is about to leave for Uni fully equiped with the skills to wash, clean, cook, shop and get herself to uni and home. This kid better get some life skills under his belt soon it could be him going off to uni in what 4 / 5 years?

IMO his parents have failed him. But his parents will argue he will have is own car by then and can do online shopping from M&S. He'd probably have a cleaner too. Oh what money can buy....

 

[vernon]

in spite of it all society is a better place now.

That's debateable. I've spent thirty years working in inner city schools and I would argue that society is not a better place for those scratching a living on benefits and low pay. Poverty still wreaks as much havoc if not more with youngster's lives. Intelligence has not improved with the illusory ever improving exam performance. Grade inflation does not make youngsters more employable it just makes employers more cynical about the quality of the qualifications. Job opportunities for the less able are far and few between and are decreasing, not increasing. The recently raised age for compulsory education and training does little more than remove a tranche of the population from employment statistics.

Increasing numbers of children are unable to use cutlery correctly. Increasing numbers of nursery school children are arriving with no toilet training, severely restricted vocabularies and a limited range of social skills.

Life isn't great at the bottom and it's not improving no matter what the politicians tell us.

 

[vernon]

A child of 13 should be able to walk to the local shops with no problems. By the time kids are ready to go to secondary school, my daughter was 11, there are things they should be able to do to socialy take care of themselves. Walk to school, go to the shops, get on a bus all without mummy and daddy holding their hands. I take it this kid has never walked to school alone!

My daughter is about to leave for Uni fully equiped with the skills to wash, clean, cook, shop and get herself to uni and home. This kid better get some life skills under his belt soon it could be him going off to uni in what 4 / 5 years?

IMO his parents have failed him. But his parents will argue he will have is own car by then and can do online shopping from M&S. He'd probably have a cleaner too. Oh what money can buy....

Quite a lot of assumptions here.

There might not be a local shop to walk to. Certainly the housing estate ( 4 bedroom executive type houses) built over the back from where I live has no shops that are a short walk away. There might not be a local bus service - why send a bus route past an estate which will not use it? His 'local' school might be several miles away.

Who is to say that his parent's have failed him. None of us know him, his parents or their family dynamics. We don't know anything about his range of life skills and cannot, therefore, judge them.

The politics of envy are just as life limiting as poverty itself.

 

[luckyfox]

I don't judge his parents at all, he's a lovely, bright, polite young man. My concern was for his welfare. I wouldn't want him feeling uneasy! Given the baking and house prep id done for his arrival I completly overlooked something very familiar to me

Even given the very very basic human needs, children do survive. My own insecurities played into it. It's a good lesson for me to worry less and pay attention more. But it was just a blip at a vulnerable moment. I appreciate the heck out of the lesson tho!

My son won't have a huge family/wealth behind him when he goes off in the world but the boy can cook, wash his clothes and rewire a plug etc.

Life's life, people are different and yeah I didn't need to explain but you know what, it's took a weight off to say it out loud. Glad I posted and glad to be on here cos you're a lovely bunch!

 

[Tin Pot]

That's debateable. I've spent thirty years working in inner city schools and I would argue that society is not a better place for those scratching a living on benefits and low pay. Poverty still wreaks as much havoc if not more with youngster's lives. Intelligence has not improved with the illusory ever improving exam performance. Grade inflation does not make youngsters more employable it just makes employers more cynical about the quality of the qualifications. Job opportunities for the less able are far and few between and are decreasing, not increasing. The recently raised age for compulsory education and training does little more than remove a tranche of the population from employment statistics.

Increasing numbers of children are unable to use cutlery correctly. Increasing numbers of nursery school children are arriving with no toilet training, severely restricted vocabularies and a limited range of social skills.

Life isn't great at the bottom and it's not improving no matter what the politicians tell us.

Well , not a debate I'm interested in - though I know lots of people feel very strongly about it.

British society is better in absolute terms in virtually all ways, I'm not interested in the relative terms. Once the rest of the world has food and water I might be bothered with who can afford Sky Sports and who cannot.

The point is that for all the crimes we accuse the previous generation, things haven't turned out all that bad.

So perhaps we don't need to be so idealistic of ourselves and our peers, as parents.

 

[Crackle]

I don't judge his parents at all, he's a lovely, bright, polite young man. My concern was for his welfare. I wouldn't want him feeling uneasy! Given the baking and house prep id done for his arrival I completly overlooked something very familiar to me

Even given the very very basic human needs, children do survive. My own insecurities played into it. It's a good lesson for me to worry less and pay attention more. But it was just a blip at a vulnerable moment. I appreciate the heck out of the lesson tho!

My son won't have a huge family/wealth behind him when he goes off in the world but the boy can cook, wash his clothes and rewire a plug etc.

Life's life, people are different and yeah I didn't need to explain but you know what, it's took a weight off to say it out loud. Glad I posted and glad to be on here cos you're a lovely bunch!

I think that nails it. Confident kid in not quite as secure as he looks shock. Why is a value judgement which is not worth making.