Road Drama

After a whole summer of trying to work out plans with my brother-in-law for him and the kids to come up and visit, it never happened. So at the last minute my hubby decides that we will just pile the kids and his mother into the car and drive down for the weekend.

Now, let me just say that I was none to please about this trip. Nothing against family, it was just short notice to get everything packed and the animals taken care of, and school is starting next week and I haven't done a lick of school shopping, but nothing I would have said would have made a difference. His mother was excited about the grandkids coming up, and now they weren't going to be able to, and of course my hubby felt he needed to "fix" that and take her to see the grandkids.

If you have kids, you know what a road trip is like. I have three, and the ages causes most of the issues. My oldest two, or wave one as we call them are only 18 months apart. 11 and 10 as of right now. This means that one minute they are playing together like best buds and the next they are fighting like cats and dogs, and I do mean that literally, scratching and clawing at each other. The third is a full 3 years under than the 10 and 4 1/2 years younger than the older, which means there is just enough age difference for them to not be able to get along at all most of the time. There are rare occassions that they manage to play together nicely for a brief bit, but that is it. I know this, it is a fact of life, although I do NOT remember fighting with my brothers anywhere near this much when I was a kid.

To try to stem the amount of fighting in the car, we arrange the seating pattern, we take blankets and pillows so they can "divide" the seat, and then books and games, and there is probably enough junk in the car, but we managed to make the drive from Indiana to North Carolina without anything too bad, or so the hubby and I thought. It really went pretty well.

You also have to realize that we drove down on Friday and back on Sunday, so there wasn't alot of time between the long trip there and the long trip home. Even given the short stay, all in all I thought the kids did well. They only had one fight on the way home, one, that was it. I was pretty darned impressed. But there-in lies the story.

We are driving back, and I think we had already made it out of North Carolina and were into Tennessee. Maeve and Tiernan were trying to play a card game in the back row called "bologna" that he learned at camp, and somewhere in the last few hands of the cards, Maeve gets upset, to her Tiernan was changing the rules, he thought he explained them, but apparently something came up that he thought he explained, she thought he didn't, and so the story goes. They were screaming, and I was having the devil of a time trying to talk to them, mostly because my mother-in-law is sitting there yelling back at them and there is no way I can talk over her and them and try to settle this, so she tells my husband to just pull over and we will move seats.

Okay, so it did piss me off a little that he did what she said, it also pissed me off that he refused to get into the talk, that he didn't try to talk to the kids, but I think he figured with her yelling there was no use. Of course once he stopped the car and got her out of the car, he did talk to the kids and defuse the situation, but at the same time, she should have let us parent. I mean, she never even gave u a chance to react to them before she as turned around yelling. 

Much later in the trip, in fact just in Kentucky, almost to Indiana, we stopped for a restroom break, and they had one of those stupid claw game machines outside the restroom. Whose brilliant idea that was, I'd like to string him up by his toes! Molly was worn out, ready to be home and needing to sleep. She also was missing her animals! That child has more stuffed animals than she knows what to do with, but each and every one of them has a name and she remembers it and can tell you all about each one.

Well, she saw a purple glittlery monkey in that machine and wanted a dollar to get it. Now, we tried the talk about how the machines don't work and all that, but she was just too tired for this, she broke down crying, begging up to go back for "Mr. Bananas". Yes, she already had him named. And she cried and cried and cried. What she really needed as to take a nap, but that was not possible in the car, and so she was going to have to cry it out, as much as we all didn't want to have to listen to her cry, that was what was going to have to happen. In about 10 minutes at the most, she would be fine and would be apologizing to us all for crying.

Problem was that she was sitting with my mother-in-law, who for some reason didn't understand, didn't care, or didn't like the way we were parenting through this, so she gives my seven-year old the meanest "if looks could kill stare" and told her to stop crying. Trust me, I have seen that look many a time, but there was no reason to give it to a even year old, and especially when she was just starting to calm down.  Not even sure she heard what was said, but the fact that she said something to her at the piviotal point when she was ready to calm down and it be over was the major problem because when you do that it just make her start over and cry more. You would have thought that she would have figured that out after all these years, but she has no clue. But then again, she is the one that is always giving in to the kids on everything, which makes my job that much harder.

Well, I guess she was in a bad mood, because she turned to Molly and said, loudly that "I am never going on a trip with you again! Between your brother and sister fighting (they had ONE fight in the nine hour drive) and you crying like this, I refuse. I will never go on a trip with you again, the other grandkids will just have to come see me!"
  
I was so mad! Not that Molly heard her, but that he would make that kindof threat to the kid! I mean really?!  I don't think Brad even heard what she said, He is really good at tuning her out and ignoring what she says or does. I don't think he realizes that the kids are watching her, and learning from her behavior, he thinks they are only learning from us, but I have seen my kids act like her on more than one occassion, so I know they are watching, how to deal with that is a rant for another day.

The thing is, her threat to never go on another trip....the kids could have cared less. It would just mean one less person in the car.I mean, if you are going to threaten them with something, threaten them with something that matter, like taking away the tv, or the computer or the phone. It was like the silliest thing to say and the meanest at the same time. And if she thought that saying she would never go see them again, would make the kids feel bad, she was wrong, because they know their father will make trips to visit them again.

So today, I have to figure out what things I need to say to the kids, how I need to act and what behaviors I need to reinforce this week, to counter-act two days in the car with their grandmother.