Yesterday when I fetched Miss mouse from school, I happened to notice she was only wearing one sock. Odd. However, I knew it had been a PE day so figured it was in her PE bag. I still asked her why she only had one sock on and she told me she didn't have time to put it on. Needless to say, it wasn't in her PE bag, or on her hook, or in her classroom, or the hall, or the music room.....it was poof! gone.
Then, in front of her teacher she angrily told me it was her PE teacher's fault for not giving her enough time to change, then it was the socks fault for being "grippy". I was really taken aback, Miss Mouse has never openly blamed anyone/thing before like that. I left it and we discussed it at bedtime - we talked about taking responsibility.
It gave me food for thought because Mr A. and I don't blame external forces for our mistakes......do we?
Fast forward to this afternoon, I was hurrying to get dinner on the table and grabbed the juice bottle....the lid wasn't on properly and it slipped and messed some juice "argh, you girls are in my way!"
I also had to make a cake for bake sale at playgroup tomorrow morning - made a lovely plum cake....with the last of my flour, vanilla essence and oil...taking it out the oven, it slipped off the cake base tin and landed upside down on the counter. Instead of calmly and rationally trying to figure out how to flip it over and onto the cooling rack I just grabbed at it and, of course, broke it into five big chunks and in my head thought " *^&^**%, if only Gigi weren't distracting me with her twittering in my ear!!!"
-aside: Gigi is our lodger - she came with the house and was meant to stay a month....three months later she is as firmly ensconced in her bedroom as a pig wallowing in her mud....this is going down like a lead balloon with me but it's a long story.
I actually stopped with a start. Oh my, oh my, oh my. Guess where Miss Mouse has learnt to blame her tools.
It is so easy to think our own behaviour is exemplary....hahaha did I just say that?!? let me rephrase: it is so easy to think our children do not learn their more trying behaviour from us, but nine times out of ten, when your kid is being a bit obnoxious, perhaps a look in the mirror is in order....
