It is common in homes with children who come friends of our children to spend the day or play for a while at home. For mothers and fathers, it is like enlarging the family for a day, but the truth is that these children are not our children and may have different customs and norms than we have at home.
There are many situations that can arise when we take care of other people's children. The question is, Do the rules of your home or ours govern?
It is desirable that harmony between children reigns and that the guest (or guests) adapt to family dynamics. It is in our hands to do everything possible to do so, but sometimes small conflicts may arise.
An open house
Before having children, our house is open to friends, but when we become parents and when our children reach the age at which they begin to interact with their peers, the house also opens to the friends of our children.
There are parents who, precisely because they avoid conflicts, do not let their children go to other children's homes or invite them to their home. Particularly, I love open houses. I have been raised this way and I like my daughters to learn to be hospitable since childhood.
The first guests are schoolmates, neighbors or children of friends. Sometimes parents are present but sometimes not. And this is where conflicts can arise, especially if the way these children have been educated is different from what we have educated our children.
When the parents of those children are friends, they know the way we raise our children, what we allow them and what we don't allow them to do, and it is probably very similar to theirs. But this is not always the case. A child with patterns or habits that are very different from the ones we have at home can come home.
The important thing is that the guest feels comfortable at home, but at the same time that our children feel comfortable. For this I think it is essential that the rules are the same for everyone.
Children with instruction manual
Recently the daughter of a neighbor came home. My daughters started to eat cookies at six in the afternoon, of course they invited the girl and she accepted (she ate a few, really). When the mother came to look for her, I told her that she had eaten cookies and I took a scolding for having let her eat the cookies because then the girl did not eat dinner.
Of course I will not deny food to a child who comes to my house, but I had not been specified otherwise. So after that conflict I have decided to ask a key question when they give me an outside child: Is there anything I have to know about Fulanito? The same goes for allergies as for eating habits or whatever.
What I specify in that answer I take into account and I comply, whether it seems good or not. It is fatal to me that my daughters eat whatever they want whenever they want, but if their mother or father has told me especially that Fulanito cannot eat at heart, I can't get over that rule, although it does not seem to me.
The rules of your house or ours?
Let's give an example: the guest boy starts jumping on the couch, we ask him not to do it and he replies "at home my mother leaves me". The caretaker parents are faced with the dilemma of letting them do what they do at home or apply the rules that govern their territory. Generally, everyone opts for the second, almost no one allows another child to do things that his children do not allow in their own home.
In my house, internal rules apply to everyone. Unless it is something "light", in what maybe we turn a blind eye and let it pass.
In conclusion, when parents allow their child to go to another child's house they accept the rules that govern that house.
Usually parents are known. Almost no one lets their son go to the home of a child whose parents know nothing. Except express specification of parents on any matter, when we take care of children of others the rules of our house govern.
(For those interested in knowing, the house rules for guests are: you can make all the mess you want as long as you pick up later, it is not allowed to jump on the sofa, you can watch TV (a prudent time), and you can eat at any time).
