we are not parents

Bill and I decided not to have children. If there's anyone reading this other than Bill, you probably knew that about us. We have a joke that we have 100 reasons why. Every so often, we'll say, "and that's reason #47 we don't have kids" except we change the number with the reason...

Before I get into my post I want to make sure you understand that we like kids, we just decided not to have any of our own. We prefer to be known to our friend's children as "Auntie Em" and "Uncle Bill". In fact, we will take your children for 5-7 days once they have reached ten years of age. If you are willing to send them here, we would be glad to have them (please note: we need minimum of two weeks notice and only one child/family at a time). We love having Skylar come and visit and as a result are familiar with lots of kid friendly locations (plus the Membership to Meijer Gardens). Think about that and let us know if you want to take us up on that offer.

Okay, on to my post. We love our friends who have children and our friends who don't. There are fewer who do not have kids and it doesn't really matter either way. Most of our friends with kids don't let their children run their lives. They all want to have an adult night out and I think that's important. Last night we hung out with one of the couples and we discussed various parenting tricks of the trade.

One of the topics that came up was parents who punish their kids by not allowing them to go to youth group. We all agreed that we don't understand that logic. I am sure that none of our friends who have kids would ever try that. And we understand that as adults who don't have children we very often tread on thin ice talking parenting when we have no "real" experience as parents.

Back to grounding teens from youth group activities. I understand that it is fun for them to go to youth group and that grounding them from it makes sense in the short term because that is the punishment. But if your child is doing something wrong, isn't it a better idea to let them go to youth group? The one place where they're going to learn some guidance? You know, the whole right from wrong and love your neighbor, etc. It just doesn't make sense to me. I think that's because when I was a teenager and got grounded, youth group was always excused (as was band). So I'm going from personal experience.