Bad Auntie

RantWoman's sudoku thread has a new twist which can only be called Bad Auntie. Bad Auntie refers among other things to things that adults who do not have children of their own sometimes do intentionally or not to set less than preferable examples or to subvert some or another standard imposed by parents.

Bad Auntie has a relative, Sensible Auntie, a caring, conscientious adult who can support the difficult job of parenting while also reflecting examples slightly different from parents. The first Quaker RantWoman ever knew could certainly be called Sensible Auntie, at least in societies where any woman might be called an Auntie. Today's situation is definitely a Bad Auntie moment though.

RantWoman's nephew, sister, brother-in-law live right next to a big park where political marches sometimes start. One time RantWoman went to a march at that park. For some reason the number for the legal contact for the march was being announced over and over so RantWoman wrote it down in very large numbers in fat pen along her arm.

RantWoman was on her way to babysit Irrepressible Nephew and in fact was going to miss a good bit of the march due to babysitting duties. Alas, Bad Auntie the babysitter with the phone number written along her arm showed up just the very week when Irrepressible Nephew had been having lessons about not writing all over himself.

What do you know? Sister went out, Auntie was doing something on the computer and Nephew was watching television. (One downside of being Auntie is not getting much say about the television rules. Sigh.) Then the level of TV-related giggling dropped off suspiciously:

Auntie: What are you doing?

Nephew: Nothing!


Yeah, right. Auntie discovered that Nephew had gotten out a purple marker and had made himself a seriously purple arm so that BOTH Auntie and Irrepressible Nephew had to shift immediately to serious arm scrubbing practice.


RantWoman was reminded of this last nigh talking about how one of those concerned about her Sudoku habit was a child bristling at having to do what one's parents say regardless of what other kids or adults do in the child's presence. RantWoman had exactly that sort of parents herself. RantWoman thinks it might be way too much to talk much about the intentional reasons RantWoman can cite for Sudoku, but she is wondering whether it would be appropriate somehow sometime to talk to such a child herself.

RantWoman will season the following thoughts before taking more steps to talk with the child:

It's definitely appropriate for parents to say " do as we tell you, regardless of what other kids or adults do." As previously mentioned, RantWoman had such parents herself.

RantWoman has been thinking about having to be told several times by different people about Sudoku. RantWoman thinks she knows both children and adults who sometimes also have to be told more than once about a problem. RantWoman bets a child MIGHT relate to that and to the idea that we can always continue growing in Light or faith or whatever word falls into place.

When RantWoman is feeling most charitable she has come to feel a certain amount of gratitude to Dear Friend for getting in her face. RantWoman is also still sitting with aggravation, frustration, confusion, and RantWoman definitely does NOT waht to overdo it.

One of the things RantWoman likes about the best of how Friends inter
act with children in Friends' Meetings, though, is that adults do a better job of listening to children than in the churches RantWoman attended as a child. When RantWoman is feeling most gracious, she would say Thank you to the child, thank you for speaking up, thank you for exercising inner Light, thank you for getting grownups to talk about some hard stuff. RantWoman is not going to hurry into this, but...