Take Time to Talk Part 2: Taking My Own Advice

After carefully crafting my thoughts for my blog post yesterday I realized that I was still not comfortable with what I felt were loose ends and missing details. In fact, my friend, Terry, even commented that I should try to dig a little deeper. My husband and I discussed the entire issue on our drive home (my car is being repaired). We decided that before we went home we should visit some of our neighbors to ask more questions and discuss what we were experiencing with our children.

We started with the person who we felt like had been taking a few too many liberties - taking the law in his own hands. The one our children are freaked out by. We learned some interesting information that points very clearly to one of our children. We both very much understood that what is going on right now is the result of multiple incidents that have taken place in the past and continue. However, even though one of our children was clearly identified as the problem, no one has called us or come to our door. And they all definitely know he is one of ours. Instead, they have confronted him and followed our other children at night.

Why would someone not just come to us. The problem could have been fixed long ago. The answer lies with the parents.

That first conversation lead us a few doors down to the house where these incidents began and where one major one unfolded. Another person who could clearly identify our son and knew who we were but had not contacted us.

We feel absolutely horrible that one of our children has been conducting himself this way. We are now discussing how we will handle the situation with that particular kid and he will be dealt with. But people have got to talk to each other! We only knew of the one major incident and had the same story out of five different kids. We had no knowledge at all of any other incidents or more investigating would have been done before now.

Ironically, all of that activity has prompted a meeting to discuss a Neighborhood Watch program. Hello folks, I am trying to wrap my brain around this. These people have been talking with each other and with other neighbors. They have even sent out emails to the entire neighborhood. But, again, NOT ONE person has approached me or my husband to tell us what we had to go to them to ask and find out for ourselves last night.

I am trying to be as respectful as I can in this situation because 1) Its the right thing to do, 2) One of our children has clearly done something wrong to them, 3) I do not know either of these people well so as I mentioned in my first post on this matter - I do not have enough information to make an accurate assessment.

This is what I can say about it. What a huge waste of time, effort, worry and everything else that has gone into this. It's a matter that could have been resolved 2 months ago in 20 minutes.

So here is today's lesson folks - Take Time to Talk to Parents Too. Call them or go to their home. Email, while efficient and non-invasive can be misconstrued and lead to more issues. Just go talk. Now I will say to those of you with younger children (both of these people have younger kids) that you are in a stage of life with your kids where you can just opt not to invite certain kids over for playdates and make everything go away. That doesn't last. The only thing that solves problems is open dialogue. Get used to talking to other kids and their parents now. You would want someone to let you know about your child before a situation got out of hand.

**As a note to clarify the "incidents" that I speak of so the level of behavior is not misconstrued. Our son has been ringing doorbells and running. We know there are others too as some incidents have occurred on specific nights that this particular child was not at our house. 

I am still very interested to hear others' thoughts on this matter.