Bikes, Sign Language & Boundaries

Kennedy participated in the St. Judes Bike-a-thon at her school and raised $101! She decorated her bike in honor of her big brother Lance Corporal Dustin who is serving in Iraq. She has also started saying these "words" and told us she was speaking Vietnamese! She thinks she is funny. She is! She does tell me she is hot, cold, thirsty hungry and other things in Spanish. Amazing.




I am not talking about normal sign language. I am talking about the sign people give you when they are upset with you.
The other day I was driving and the man in front of me had his signal on to turn left. There was a ton of traffic coming the other way so I turned on my blinker to go into the right hand lane. I got over and the guy that was going to turn left jumped in front of me and had his right blinker on. In the old days this would have aggravated me to no end, but I just put my blinker to get back in the left lane and as I drove by him he was giving me a not nice gesture! I was shocked! There was no reason for it. I guess he was mad because I didn't feel like sitting behind him. The amazing thing is that I didn't react. A very big deal for me. Yup, the good Lord is really working on me! I felt sorry for this guy. He must be a very angry person.
But that incident got me thinking of the one place I do get irritated with people very easily and that is the drive thru at my daughters school.
What you are suppose to do is pull up in front of the school as far as you can and drop your little darlin off and go on. But this is where a few have decided that this is the place to discuss things with their children, brush their hair, rearrange their backpack, or feed them their breakfast. There can be 20 cars behind them but they just don't get it or care, I am sure it is a little of both. And even though it says you are not to park between the signs,especially during the drop off and pick up time, parents will.
I work for an optometrist. I have had patients come in as a walk in and yell at us because they will have to wait while we see the patients who made appointments first. They let their kids run all over the office and jump on the furniture, tear up magazines and yesterday a guy cut his toe nails in the waiting area! I kid you not.
Parents come in an let their kids rule what they are going to get,contacts vs. color contacts, even if it is apparent that they can't afford it. The kids get all hateful and cop a nasty attitude with their parents who have the moxy to say no. And this my friends is the lesser of the not so nice stuff.
I was raised where you respected your parents (didn't say we always liked it) got punished if we back talked, we would never have ran around in any ones house, office or store, we were patient (well maybe not me) and respected the rules.
Discipline? So many parents have no clue how or what discipline is. They are afraid of hurting their children's feelings or disappointing them. They want to be their friend not their parent. Guess what happens when you don't set boundaries and discipline your kids? You raise spoiled, obnoxious, disrespectful adults who have this self entitlement attitude and will flip you off for no reason or clip toe nails int the waiting area of the doctors office. Sad state of affairs. Very sad.