An Honest-to-Goodness Rant

The only thing worse than your own kid mouthing off to you is the neighbor kid sassing you. And what's terrible is when you raise your hand in a "STOP" gesture during a heated conversation with the neighbor kid and he flinches.

Two brothers in our neighborhood want to play over here all the time. My boys sometimes welcome them enthusiastically, but often reluctantly because these brothers, age 7 and 9, fight, argue, cry, whine, and call my boys names. Constantly. They can not play nice. And they probably also run with scissors.

I was in the kitchen at about 5:30 p.m., working on dinner. DaycareKid and CuteBaby had gone home and I was sweating over a gourmet meal of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and fishsticks when I heard the 9 year old boy screaming, "MY MOM CAN SUE YOU!" I went to check and found TwinBoyA holding YoungestBoy's arms behind his back while the neighbor kid stood shouting at them.

I stood between them and asked what was going on--but neighbor kid kept interrupting. "I WANT MY MEMORY CARD BACK!" (Now, this was a Nintendo dispute and the key information is that memory cards store information for games and furthermore, last week, the neighbor kids returned my boys' game--Animal Crossing--with a lot of their progress and data messed up. YoungestBoy cried all night about being turned into a virtual piece of wood and having their town deserted and full of weeds because of what the neighbor kids did to the game.)

Every time I started to get answers, neighbor kid would interrupt and shout. HE SHOUTED AT ME. Uh, hello? I'm the grown-up here. (Would you have ever dreamed of shouting at a neighborhood mom when you were a kid?) This kid shows no respect for adults and, in fact, I've caught him stealing and then lying about it in my house. (He stole my husband's lollipop and then lied to me about it.) Neighbor kid shouted, "He's trying to wreck our game!" I said, "Well, you wrecked his game when you had his memory card last week!" He said, "We did NOT!" Which is a lie. Meanwhile, YoungestBoy is crying.

Then, neighbor kid grabbed for the memory card--but I stopped him by reaching out and holding his arm. (I couldn't believe I reached out and touched him because everyone knows you should never touch a child who does not belong to you. Even in your own home. Even if said kid is making your own kid cry. I immediately let go.) I still didn't know what had happened because neighbor kid wouldn't stop talking. I turned to him, looked him right in the face, raised my hand in a "STOP" sign and said, "Stop talking! I'm trying to figure out what happened here!"

At last, I was able to ask YoungestBoy if he was finished with the memory card. He was, so I took it out and gave it to neighbor kid. YoungestBoy didn't do anything to sabotage neighbor kid's game--he just wanted to send a letter to someone in the neighbor kid's town and then get back to his own town.

Such drama.

So, neighbor kid left with a red face and tears in his eyes. I'd be happy if he never came back again.

Later, I asked each of my boys separately what happened before I came into the room. TwinBoyA informed me that YoungestBoy hit the neighbor kid. I called in YoungestBoy. "Did you hit the neighbor kid?" He said, "Yes, because he called me an idiot! Twice!" I asked why and he explained that neighbor kid was mad because he thought YoungestBoy was ruining his game.

"Next time you have a problem, don't hit, okay? Call for help, all right?" Hitting is extremely out of character for YoungestBoy. I was surprised.

So now, I'm going to have to call the neighbor kids' mom and explain to her what happened. Neighbor kid is a liar, so who knows what tale he told? I know it's horrible, but I am sick to death of dealing with this bratty kid!

I marked the calendar for two weeks. We are taking a two-week break from the neighbor kids. I don't need the pain of dealing with someone else's undisciplined kids, especially when I'm not getting paid for it!

Okay. Rant over.