Haha! That is awesome. Same thing with my nephew. He is turning four next month and is already far more advanced than my 12 year old skid! Yesterday, I picked up my nephew from school (in a full batman costume of course) and while I was buckling him into the car seat, I asked him how summer pre-school was that day and he gave me his dimpled grin and said, "talk to the hand, sistah-friend!" and gave me the hand! Then he burst out laughing and said, "I kidding, Auntie ---, sometimes I cwack myself up and laugh so hard" and then he shook his head in a perfect imitation of his mom and proceeded to mimic her pseudo-stern voice, pushed his sunglasses on his forehead just like my sis and gave himself a lecture complete with lots of theatrical sighs and forehead crinkles. He started laughing so hard he gave himself the hiccups! It was hilarious and completely adorable. The whole time I was beyond impressed and tickled with his sophisticated imitation of his mom, his verbal skills, and his advanced grasp of humor and silliness. He was clowning the entire time, totally for my benefit.

This makes a huge break from my 12 year old skid who has bucked teeth (thank you BM) and as a result has a bad lisp and is so hard to understand that most people ignore him and he hasn't bothered to try to communicate properly. That, and his low I.Q. make him exhausting to talk to and on top of not being able to speak clearly or make much sense, has an incredibly hard time understanding what anyone else says and acts like a puppy with ADD (he doesn't have ADD and works with a speech therapist and social counselor at school). He doesn't listen and then interrupts before you're done talking to tell you that he doesn't understand you. You have to speak extremely slowly and clearly with him and stick to extremely clear language. My first few jobs were working with young children (pre-school through first grade) and I am very experienced with kids that age, including special needs kids and I can confidently say that I use the same skills I needed with the pre-schoolers to talk to my SS12 and he's not much farther along verbally and socially than most of them. He takes everything literally and does not understand humor or sarcasm. The most simple of sentences need to be explained in painful detail to SS12 and even then it's unlikely that he really understands. I won't even go into SS6. A good example today is that five minutes after SS6 finished lunch, he requested help "going to the potty"** he asked, not once but TWICE, what we were going to have for lunch!!!!!

**(using the bathroom is not a problem unless he wants extra attention and then he reverts to a babbling two year old that loudly announces that he has to "make a poop." and then tries to leave the bathroom door open so that he can yell to H for every little thing that he should be doing for himself (such as wiping????!!!).

My nephew is sharp, funny, adorable, and extremely smart. He is fluent in sign language because he naturally "picked it up" from a deaf pre-schooler in his class. He is the only kid in his school that learned to sign and he just naturally did it on his own. On top of being really good verbally and picking up new things effortlessly, obviously following in his smart mama's footsteps, he is also amazing socially and picks up on everything that sails right over my skids heads. Best of all, he is warm, loving and sweet and I live for his sticky kisses, funny comments, mischievous, dimpled smiles and hilarious phone messages (he just figured out how to speed dial me on mom's iPhone and leaves long giggling messages until he gets caught). He is a ray of sunshine in my life and is very reassuring after being around my skids for any length of time.

I care about my skids, obviously, but being with them makes me feel like I am working in a special ed. class and it's exhausting and not how I want to feel in my own family. Most of the time I do fine and I hide my frustrations from the skids and vent them appropriately, but it is always a palpable relief and joy to be around my nephew and other normal children. My step-nieces were here this weekend and they are so adorable too. It's amazing to see them side by side with the skids because they are first cousins, but my skids are so obviously messed up and genetically stupid that it is painful to watch. Fortunately, they are treated with the same love and attention that the nieces get, but as usual, being around other kids makes them stand out as problem children even more than usual. My four year old niece was especially adorable and cracked me up. Her mom jokingly told her that once her squirt gun was empty, you couldn't refill it and she was devastated. She believed her mom, hook, line and sinker and it was unbelievable cute. She accepted that she had a "broken" water gun philosophically and went back outside to play. I caught up with her and told her that I had a secret. Her whole face lit up and I told her that her mom was just joking and that if she found her older cousins and asked nicely they would show her how to fill it up. She was soooooo happy. It was beyond cute!

The problem with this is that when you allow certain behavior due to a specific reason (such as not seeing dad for a while) you create a confusing situation for the kids. Behavior rules and requirements should be the same if you have your kids 100% of the time or only once a year. You do not let kids misbehave because you haven't seen them in a long time! If you follow that logic, you should be stricter with your kids on the weekends than right after school because you haven't seen them for a while, while they are at school. You can see how ridiculous this is! Kids that have two separate households need MORE stability not less and when you let things slide sometimes and not other times you just confuse the children and create dangerous precedents. They will learn that it's okay to act helpless to get attention just because they haven't seen their dad in a while?! How is that okay? Or helpful to them? Kids should be given plenty of attention, but they should also be taught to respect others and to clean up after themselves. On top of that, encouraging them to use passive tactics to get attention is inappropriate. Interrupting dad and sms sleep repeatedly to get attention is rude and disrespectful. As far as I"m concerned, the only day I let things slide at all is Christmas, and even then I have standards and expect basic behavior requirements to be met.

If the skids need more attention that is something that should be addressed separately. Letting rudeness slide is not okay and teaching your kids that it's okay to misbehave and be disrespectful and thoughtless at certain times but not others will set you firmly off on an extremely slippery slope that will lead to major behavioral problems later. I don't let my skids act like that EVER. I don't care if they've spent two weeks with us or haven't seen us in two weeks, I have standards and they never slip. I am doing my skids a favor by expecting the minimum basic good behavior that I do. I don't confuse them and they always know what H and I expect from them. No confusion, WAY less hassle.

My advice in this situation is to discuss this with your H so you are both on the same page and then sit the skids down and give them an outline of exactly what behavior you expect from them in the mornings before you and your H get up. They need to know that they can come get you in an emergency (and clarify exactly what an emergency is: choking, fire, someone gets hurt, bad guy with a gun etc...) but that until a certain time (pre-set by you and H and visible to the skids on a clock) you are not to be disturbed. Have specific, pre-set consequences for interrupting you and H before the set time if the interruption is not paired with an actual emergency. We have to do this too when we have the skids on camping trips or anytime their regular schedule is different. Agree to rules, set them, explain to the skids and then ENFORCE them. You have to be consistent and stick to them without exceptions or it won't work, but if you are firm, fair and consistent your skids will eventually fall in line (and learn a little about thoughtfulness and respect).

As far as the little one goes (the five year old), you should really know by that age not to make a mess like that and waste food. I would expect that out of a two year old, not a five year old! When I was growing up, the younger kids who might potentially be making a mess were kept somewhat in check by the older kids. By the time I was 7, I never would have stood back and let my little sisters smear bananas everywhere and I definitely wouldn't have gotten away with that. When my mom was gone, the next oldest automatically took over and kept an eye on the littler ones. My mom could trust us and other than the time we made "everything" pudding using every single food item we could find, we never made a mess just because her back was turned. If my mom woke up on a weekend and found that we had made random messes or had failed to get ourselves cereal, she would have been shocked and we would have been in huge trouble.

These kids are acting out by being helpless and what they are acting like is brats! You don't respond to that by giving in and letting them know that their tactics for getting attention are okay or appropriate. It's basic behaviorism. They need to learn appropriate boundaries and the only way that happens is if you set boundaries and stick to them. I would feel the same if I was the SM in this position and agree that this situation is not normal or appropriate!

Well I hope at least he cleaned up the banana mess or made her do it!

Don't worry, to the rest of us reading this thread it's obvious what is going on! I wouldn't waste energy bothering with someone who is obviously just trying to bait and upset you.

If it helps, I totally sympathize and understand!

That is such a good idea!!!! I am totally going to do this because I have a lot of kids in and out of my house and most of them are under the age of four, yet all want to pour their milk themselves! I think I will do this for juice too. Maybe this will be the last time I crouch on my knees scrubbing purple kool aid out of the plastic grooves of my vegetable crisper!

"By 2 they were masters at eating and drinking - as well as any adult."

Do you think I'm going to really believe that for 2 seconds? At TWO YEARS OLD they could eat and drink as well as any adult? That's laughable!!! I'm a BM too and have raised a great young man but there is no way he could eat like an adult when he was TWO. Ha!!