Piss-Poor Parenting

I just felt the need to rant about how Rece’s mom seems to have no concept of time or of how important it is for her son to have a decent night’s sleep on a school night.

Sherise asked if she could take Rece on Saturday night and have him over for the day on Sunday so they could do something fun (since the last time he was over, all they did was run errands and such). This is all well and good, as I really want Rece to have a good relationship with his mom. So we sat around on Saturday night waiting for his mom to pick him up. At around 9:30 pm she calls and says that she “totally forgot” about it and wondered if it’d be okay if she could just pick him up the following morning. We arranged for her to come pick him up around 8:00 am on Sunday morning.

I have no idea if she actually picked him up on time, as I was still asleep. I was just happy to discover that she had actually picked him up and that he’d be spending some time with his mom.

On a side note: I’ve had this on-going joke since I first got to know Sherise that there is “real time” and then there’s “Sherise time” — which is neither linear or consistent, nor does it have anything to do with how the rest of the world uses time. If she says she’s on her way and will be there in 10 minutes, she’ll show up 30-45 minutes later. If she says she’ll pick up/drop off Rece at a specific time, she’ll show up between 1 and 2 hours late. There’s always a reason, there’s always an excuse to why this happens. After knowing her for over 15 years, this is something I’ve just come to accept, as it obviously won’t ever change.

So on Sunday evening at around 10:30 pm my patience wore thin and I tried calling Sherise to see when she’s planning to bring our son back home. She said that she didn’t realize it was so late (apparently both her cell phone and computer had still not updated for DST) and that she’d have him home within about 30 minutes. At 11:30 pm he had still not arrived home so I sent her a text message that read as follows (punctuation isn’t perfect when texting):

It isnt cool to keep Rece out until past 1130 on a school night. Hes going to have a rough day at school tomorrow.

She called back and at first was apologetic, but I wasn’t going to let it slide. I just talked over her excuses and said that she needed to bring him home immediately. She hung up on me at that point.

Rece finally showed up at 12:12 am, looking exhausted. In fact he gave me a hug and said, “I’m so tired”. I got a brief summary of what happened during the day, which I found to be rather disappointing for him — but that’s another story — and I sent him off to bed.

Rece effectively had around 5-1/2 hours of sleep before having to wake up again. For a 12-year old, that’s just not enough, especially for the start of a school week. He was obviously not doing so well: forgetting a lot of the basics (like brushing his teeth, making his lunch, flushing the toilet, etc) and even took off for school without his backpack (which he’s never done before). Hopefully the poor kid manages to get through the day without too much trouble and that he’s able to get to bed early tonight.

This entry wishes Rece’s mom was a more responsible parent.