Kids

Pacific Bliss
Colin Price
Thu 13 May 2010 00:17
Kids
 
We are finding the kids variously quite a challenge.  If they weren't here it would all be quite easy really.  I find that there only seems time to have a few parts to each day.  Breakfast, School, lunch, something in the afternoon for a couple of hours, kids tea, bed by 9pm.  Days just seem to fly by without feeling that we haven't done anything.
 
We are finding Zinnia very difficult at times.  She has had such a major change in her life with no play dates and no freedom from Mum and Dad that I suspect she is trying to find ways to express herself and ending up in a bad place. Its hard on a boat as there is no escape.  You have to deal with it, and there is only so far that the action-threat-reaction can go before you end up not being able to throw them overboard or put them in the dinghy at the end of a long painter.
 
Zin gets into a state of complete self pity that is all of her own making, and its hard to get her out of it. Of course when she is like that she is being foul to all around her - Cosmo, mummy, Daddy, herself.  Just puts a big cloud over the boat.
 
We seem to spend the day lurching from one incident to the next.  Lots and lots of telling them what to do all the time. Some of it necessary, a lot of it not, but it just 'pops out'.  So easy to tell someone what to do all the time, rather than stopping and letting them make their own mistakes, and learn from them.
 
We are trying to do at least 2hrs of school each day, but that is hard to achieve and get anything else done at all in the day.
 
 
Maybe there is an arguement to doing this type of trip when children have left to do their own thing