On Sunday it rained and each of my children was allowed a friend to play, so I had 6 children here. Rain = arts and crafts. So I decided to teach the children how to 'blow' eggs and then they could decorate them with glue and sparkles and paints etc.
The 2 girls, who were the youngest, didn't break their eggs at all and the 2 eldest children didn't either. My middle child and his friend (both 8), were another story.
My son used 3 eggs, his friend used 5. His friend was increadibly heavy handed and no matter how many times I said to be gentle, he broke the egg. He broke them within a minute of handling them.
After the last egg I said he couldn't do more but he could draw on a piece of paper. He was upset but I didn't worry very much about it. I felt he had been given a fair crack at it (no pun intended).
This morning I received a call from his mum to say he came home really upset and she felt I was unreasonable to not let him have another egg. I explained he had had 5 and wasn't getting any more gentle so I believed he would just continue to break each egg he had. However, I had not excluded him from the table as he could draw.
She said that it was normal behaviour for an 8 year old boy to be clumsy etc. Okay, that is true but should I really have given him egg after egg after egg?