Tea Room the Fifteenth - The Viking Hall

[amberlight]

Here we are in the 15th instalment of the Tea Room for the One Child Family board. All are welcome, whether parents of a single splendid offspring or any other number.
We are this time in a Viking Long Hall tearoom, complete with optional helmets, roaring log fires (in case of chilly spring evenings), rugs aplenty, and all the usual mod cons of life as well.
Our Viking tea room contains Mellors the gardener/handyperson with a talent for relaxing massage (amongst a variety of other characters including Bishops, camels, bison, horses, guinea pigs, dogs, etc etc for reasons that would take too long to explain but you're welcome to read the other Tea Room threads and prepare to have your mind thoroughly boggled). Plenty of tea/coffee/cake/virtual bolly always on offer.
Join us, relax, chat, enjoy.

Gosh. I've just had the most extrordinary dream.

Ha ha ha ha - enjoy the est of your evening laaaaaaydies!!!

Night night xxx

oooh Tea - sounds interesting! you're not the ticketoffice girl at a music venue or the Moulin Rouge, are you?
Glad you have sorted out HorridMum and her daughter and Milk is getting on ok now.

Gimlet, hey - presumably a variation on a screwdriver? I'll try one - though I've never been much good with cocktails.

Pants to the Ribena thing - it's rotten stuff anyway (I mean it tastes great) - either too much sugar (twice as much as any other fruit cordial/squash) or too much toxic crap aspartame. We used Rock's Organin cordials in the UK - here I just used diluted juice for miniThumb. We don't really do squash/cordial.

I quite like the Elvis potatohead - made me .

Nice footwork!!

I like Elvis Potatohead too, but that might just be my gimlet goggles talking

Right, I'm off to bed with George

See you all tomorrow!

Lucky I have my laptop with me in the priest's hole.

I found this picture of Tea setting off for work

oh, what did I miss? Why are you in the priesthole, Smallbunch? What's up?

Oxeye locked me in here. Look - she even confessed a few posts ago.

no. it was tne nmbs

saunters back to her boudoir with George

oh crikey, how on earth did you manage to get all those posts in while I was typing mine? I must be much slower than I thought! Oxeye was still muttering about the sahara when I started typing!

I just want to say that I was very impressed with Amber's switch from lewd rolls to horny rolls - hope we get some tomorrow!

Just wait till you see what I've done with the breakfast croissants!

i had a difficult time with DS yesterday at Cubs. I really don't know what to do for the best, but I am not coping when things go wrong. The thing is, i can get him to calm down and mostly join in, its passing on that info to someone else, particularly when they are short-handed. I'm even considering volunteering, even though the noise in that low-ceilinged building is almost more than I can bear, and leaves me feeling frazzled. I have a large stack of cream horns with me in the priest's hole, if anyone is feeling horny .

Those of you who do brownie/guide/scout type work, would it be a good idea for me to be a leader? He wouldn't occupy all my time. The downside would be how it makes me feel in my head cos of the noise, although I enjoy working with the children. Also should I be encouraging more independence from me?

Unis - re the bishop and respect - he didn't know anything and funnily enough, it was nasty girls mum who told me off as it was "bad manners and poor etiquette"!

ah well, Mary - we all know now how important nasty girl and her mum's opinions aren't so I wouldn't ever worry about anything she says again! She sounds like the sort of person who licks the boots of Lords and Ladies merely because they have a title - she'd probably faint if the Queen every spoke to her. (not saying the Queen isn't worthy of respect, btw but random Lords and Ladies need to earn it, imo)

Cream horns and exciting croissants - spoilt for choice!

Mary -- I can't tell you whether you should volunteer or not. Most parents I know get involved because of short leadership staff and they want their child to go to Scouts/Guides. They then either love it and stay on the current level while their children move up to the next, move up with their child (seemed more the case in the States than here, I've noticed) or don't like it and stop doing it when their child moves to the next level.

I have always been a leader without children (I started leading my own troop when I graduated university and before that I was an assistant). However, I have worked with moms of girls in the troop. What I have found best is that when it comes to "disciplining" the Mom's DC or giving instruction, it was always best to come from me and not the Mom. I seemed to garner more respect because I was a different adult/authority figure (even if it was Mom's turn to lead an activity/run the evening). Most of the moms I volunteered with agreed to this strategy (one even came to me before we started together and said that is what she'd like to do for her DTs) and were happy with it. The girls were, too, as it gave them freedom to be with their friends and do things without Mom hovering but they also knew that Mom was there in a real pinch.

So if you decide to volunteer, maybe put something like the above in place with the other leaders -- that when it comes to working with your DS, someone else is in charge but you're still there for him if there's struggle/difficulty. That way it's a gradual release for both of you.

Does that make sense?

Mary, arrgh re ds and cubs. No easy answer either. I know I find noisy clubs a real challenge, but it's always good working with young people.

My Bishop is so laid back about protocol at times that he even got my refreshments for me last time! (Bless!)

Scout, the thing is, when DS is upset, he is far more likely to listen to me than the leader. Yesterday he was trying to run away, was hiding under the table, wouldn't make eye contact and generally refusing to do as he was told. One look from me when I arrived, he went and joined in straight away! It helped they'd moved on from the activity that was upsetting him, but when he is upset, they need to understand they have to calm him down BEFORE they try to persuade him to do whatever (using the persuasion tactics I've given them).

Gotcha. Has he been with the Cub pack a long time or are these new leaders for him?

He's been there since September. We've had 1 major upset before - but from that he's learned that if he plays up enough, then they will phone mum. Although to be fair, he was freaking out at the first aid activity they were doing. I have to admit they ARE trying to help him, but its such a drain on me emotionally, particularly with DD's problems at school as well.

Mary - if you think that you'd be able to cope, I would seriously consider volunteering. However, I would make it very clear to ds that you are there to help everyone - and not there just for him. And I would also do as Scout recommends - talk to the other leaders before you start to make sure they understand that you're not going to be there to 'cope' with your son except in 'emergency' situations - you will expect them to be dealing with him like (or not like ifyswim) the others. What you CAN do from this is help them work on how to organise the session so that its easier for your son and other like him to be able to cope.

I missed out on the cocktails again. My laptop is still not mended. At least its with the person who might be able to mend it now though. Only took DH 6 / 8 wks to organise that

Its a bit of a hot chocolate morning here - anyone else want one to dip their cream horn into?

hot chocolate with cream horn - even better!

I offer you homemade butternut squash soup for lunch whenever you're ready - with horny rolls because that's just funny.

I picked up my seriously defunct laptop from the shop today - luckily, having been unable to fix it and then losing it for a while they didn't charge me a cent. Good thing too! I'm now waiting for them to phone a customer who got his data back via a company in Taiwan for about 1/4 of what data retrieval companies in Australia charge, and send me the details of that Taiwanese company.

Mary - can't help you with the whole DS/cubs thing - but if you can stand the noise, I think perhaps being there would be better than not.

Morning all.

Wow, you guys have been busy - it's so hard to keep up!

Tea - Congrats !

Mary - I agree about the volunteering. If you feel you can do it and it would help your ds to participate it could be worthwhile.

That reminds me, these last few years I have noise and stress issues. I've noticed that I can only tolerate two noises at a time, once there is three I get very stressed, can feel adrenaline pumping through me. So if I'm in the kitchen and the radio is on, then dh starts chatting to me, then LittleO tries to speak to me, it's all too much and so I switch the radio off. But when I'm out its harder - we ate in a cafe yesterday lunch, the music was blaring, dh was talking, and LittleO was playing with his animals and talking their voices. I couldn't taste my lunch and as soon as it was eaten I asked could we leave and go somewhere quieter for coffee. It is getting annoying.

I was in the city yesterday to try to buy a dress for a family party this weekend. I am sooooooo bad at this. I left with nothing. I hate shopping but would love a nice dress!

Thumb - you seem to be up every hour of the day, morning and night, do you never sleep?

I do sleep - but of course not at the same time as you all. Being 9 hours ahead of you is awkward - so I catch you all early morning through to early afternoon, then I go to bed and come back again when it's nearly midnight your time (which of course is morning for me).

I agree with your noise stress thingy, btw - I have severe problems with this, heavily exacerbated by MrThumb's repetitive strain problems (he causes me the strain repetitively ) whereby he sings loudly, randomly and repetitively. If I am also trying to cope with the tv and niniThumb singing/talking/ playing his musical toys it drives me to breaking point in seconds. I become Very Shouty in order to reduce the overall noise level. This is Not Good.