Lauren had a friend to play this afternoon. She is enjoying the opportunity to meet new friends, being in a bigger school now. She seems to get along with everyone, not like her very much more selective sister.

I have noticed that in general, my kids eat way (way) more vegetables and salads than other kids. The girls don't think a ham or cheese roll is worth eating without lettuce and tomato in it, and Danny will regularly forage in the fridge, grab something like a yellow pepper or a head of lettuce, and eat it like an apple. When I offer other children some lettuce or tomato or cucumber in their roll I am rewarded for my efforts with a blatant expression of distrust and a quick, pained shake of the head.

I don't know whether these eating habits are just luck of the draw or good nutritional practices on our part.

Not to mention fruit. Things are Very Bad in our house if there is no fruit. There should ideally be lots of different varieties; but to run out of apples is almost as serious as running out of bread and milk. Peter's method of ensuring a bag of apples lasts more than 36 hours is to buy cooking apples.

The child today seemed pleasant enough most of the afternoon. She did, however, have this curious habit of asking one, on an ongoing basis, 'What are you doing?' Robyn and I found this hysterically funny for some reason and had to keep disappearing behind closed doors to roll around on the bed laughing.

For example, if I was sweeping up crumbs from the floor after lunch ...

"What are you doing?"
"I'm sweeping up the crumbs".

... and then later as I locked the door ...

"What are you doing?"
"I'm, er, locking the door."

... and walking on the grass ...

"What are you doing?"
"Er, I'm walking along the grass".

... and playing chess with Robyn ...

"What are you doing?"
"We're, ah, playing chess."

(And Robyn and I, alone ...)

"What are you doing?"
"I'm, er, breathing, probably thinking a bit, scratching my chin ..."

When the child's dad came to fetch her, she was breathtakingly rude to him. It was extremely embarrassing. I didn't know where to look. More embarrassing was his complete inability to respond effectively to her rudeness. There were some mumbled comments about kids today, especially girls / first born children / school-age kids, things along the lines of 'what can you do, heh, heh, heh', whimpered noises about fetching Mom, about not speaking again, about counting to 3. All of which was ignored or responded to with a No!

It was so blatantly obvious that because he lets her walk all over him, she does just that. I suppose he was pretty embarrassed too and didn't want to make more of a scene by dealing with her. Or maybe it's just the pattern of things. Later, the mom phoned to see if the girl had left her school shoes, and apologised for the rude behaviour I had witnessed. (She must have heard from the mortified dad.) If the dad had been a little less embarrassed by her behaviour maybe he would have seen his way to dealing with it appropriately and effectively.

A parenting book I have makes a good point (I think) about not reacting to your children's behaviour in pointless and destructive ways. The child's behaviour triggers parenting road-rage or embarrassment or a feeling that it's out of your control or some other destructive reaction and so you respond inappropriately and the situation spirals out of control. The point was that you are not responsible for your child's behaviour, only for how you respond to it.