Virtute.org

Ok Moms (or really anyone, you don’t have to be a mom), I need some advice.  There’s still a little more than a month of summer and the neighbor boys are driving me a little bit crazy.  Here’s the whole story including my concerns.

There are two little boys who live across the street.  T is a little older than Isaac but in the same grade (going into 3rd grade) and N is a little younger than Charlotte and in the same grade as her (going into 1st grade).  They live with their parents and twin older sisters (16 year olds, I think).  They are almost always outside and they never have any supervision.  They are not bad kids, but they do regularly have bad ideas.  Here’s an example:  Just this morning N had a little hammer in his pocket.  I caught him walking towards the gate to neighbor’s backyard.  He pulled out his hammer and told me he was a Ninja and he was going to break the gate.  I’ve also caught them throwing rocks at cars and sitting under the neighbor’s porch with scissors, poised to cut the water line to their fountain.

There are a few other kids in the neighborhood, but my kids are the only ones who are the same age as these boys.  So the boys come to my house all day long wanting to play.  They ring the doorbell, they hang out on my porch, they peer in my windows, and sometimes they just stand outside my house yelling my children’s names.  Often when we leave the house, they are at the doors of the truck as soon as we pull in, even before we’re out of the car.  Since their house faces our house, even when they’re inside they can see whenever my kids go out to play.  So basically, I have only a few options to prevent my kids from playing with these boys and all of those options would be basically punishing my kids, especially since lately Charlotte has become good friends with N and wants to go out and play with him a lot.

I worry about my kids picking up bad habits from these boys and I am concerned that these boys have little or no moral direction.  My biggest fear is that one of my girls will be a victim of the boy’s curiosity about the female body.  Isaac said he heard N suggest that they have a “naked parade” last week.  I immediately called Charlotte in and told her that if anyone asked her to take off her clothes that she should come tell me immediately and that if she takes off any of her clothes in front of N, that I will not let her play with him again.

They are all prepubescent, so hormones shouldn’t play a factor yet, however, I witnessed something a few years ago with some younger boys that adds to my fear.  I had looked out my window and saw three little boys take off their clothes, lay on each other and wiggle around. Then one of them started examining the other boy’s bottom.  I called the parents some of the boys as this was happening.  The instigator in this case was a 4 year old!  Later, when I talked to the parents of the other two boys, they said that there was a lasting impact from the incident and that they had since observed one of the boys expressing a new curiosity that was directed toward another kid.

I have provided engaging activities inside the house for my kids to draw them in and away from the neighbor boys, but that takes a lot of time and effort of which I have a limited supply.  On Saturday I didn’t want to come home to those boys so I bought a pizza ($5 hot n’ ready) and took my kids to the park.  But I can’t plan enough outings to keep my kids away from them.  I also bought a small kiddie pool and some water toys for the backyard so that my kids had some outside options that they could do separate from the neighbors.  I can’t be out supervising them very often because of the amount of other small children I have to take care of.  It stresses me out to have them in my house because they’re loud, they make big messes and then leave before cleaning up, and between Nicole’s episodes of being naked and my frequent need to nurse a baby, I just don’t want them hanging around inside. 

I do feel bad for the boys sometimes when I’ve effectively prevented my kids from playing with them for long stretches of time and the neighbor boys are wandering around my front yard or porch waiting for my kids to play.

In the end, it feels like my only option is to teach my kids what’s right and then trust them to make good choices (and check on them as frequently as possible when they’re out with the neighbors).  In the next year, we hope to buy another house in the area and move away before puberty hits!

So I think I just have an unsolvable problem, but I welcome your advice or sympathies.