Day three was much like day two. Mostly good, but an afternoon meltdown. Half a star.
Day four was so hot that I was pretty sure magma was going to shoot out of the ground while we were at the park. We went there at 8:30 in the morning and were there about an hour. It took the rest of the day for me to recover. The kids were pretty wiped out too. They played fine together, mostly pretending that I was dead and they either had to make me come back to life or bury me.
The outcome of the day, a full star, reminded me of that summer I spent a few weeks babysitting some kids who were just awful. To keep my sixth grade sanity and to keep them from fighting constantly, I would take them to the park at my elementary school each morning until 10. Then we’d head home and I would feed them a mini lunch before I took them on what must have felt like a Battan death march until 1pm. Arriving at home, I would fix them an actual lunch and then they would nap for three or sometimes four hours. I’m sure their parents didn’t appreciate how late they were staying up at night, but i was very pragmatically selfish about the whole thing. Did it work for me? Then we were doing it (plus it was my dad’s idea, so i figured it had to be right).
The same truth that rang out during the summer of 1991 holds true today. Wear ’em out and they’ll have a lot less energy to resist each other or their parents. How will you wear your children out today?
