Be the Lame One

C

celise

New member
The greatest advice I ever read about getting your child out of an uncomfortable situation is this: Set up a code where it's the parent's fault the child has to leave.

My daughters are 9 and 10. When they are over a friend's house, and later on in life, when they are out with friends, if a situation arises that they are just not comfortable with, they know they can text me a certain emoji of an object they hate (a hot dog for the 10 year old and broccoli for the 9 year old), and I will call and "make" them leave.

This eliminates the opportunity for them to be made fun of for not being cool. If those emojis ever pop up on my screen, I will call them and fake yell at them about a set of chores that should've been done before they left, or an assignment I found with an F on it. "If you think you can prioritize friends over responsibilities, you're sorely mistaken!" Perhaps Grandma suddenly became very ill and I have to come and get them immediately. You get the picture. The point is that it's my doing that my child has to leave, and I'm the lame one instead of them.

When we are safely away from the situation, whatever it may be, that's the opportunity to talk about what happened, and the next steps. Being my children's wingman in these types of situations is invaluable for building trust for our parent/child relationship as they get older and have to navigate the scariness that is being a tween and teenager.

I hope this helps someone out there build a trusting relationship with your child/children. Please share the advice with anyone you know who has kids of their own and comment below about what you'd use as an excuse to get your child out of an uncomfortable situation.
 
@celise My mom did this for me as a teen, and I never needed to use the system, but it boosted my confidence and my trust in her that I knew I could get out of a bad situation if it bothered me.
 
@restoringthetruth My mom did the same for me with the note that I always had a ride home at any time for any reason. Luckily I never needed it (mostly because I didn’t drink until college), but it let me feel safe and confident when going out to meet up with friends or try new social situations.
 
@chrisrdba Ugh, I wish my mom had done something like this.

I was like eight when had a new friend invited me to stay the night. I did, and her Dad asked the step mom to go to the store and turned off all the lights for us to play hide and seek while he crawled around on all fours to "find us" (which was crawling at us while play biting like a monster would? Idk it was just weird) in pitch black. I felt so weird about it that I just hid under the bed and refused to make a sound until it was over. Then the next morning he told us that they couldn't afford for us to shower separately, so we had to take one together and we couldn't go to the mall dirty. I said no, but she convinced me that all her friends shower naked with her and it was fine. Again, felt super weird.

After we went to the mall he stopped back at my house. When we get there the dad asks my mom if I could go to dinner with them and stay the night again without asking me. I started panicking and shaking my head no at my mom and she said, sure! So I had to talk over both adults and say, I don't want to! My mom straight looks at me and says, "you don't want to stay with your friend? Why not?"

What. The. Fuck. Mom.
 
@celise I love this. For my friends we used to text a banana emoji and that meant get me out of here asap. I will definitely find a similar method for LO when she's older
 
@celise My mom did this with me. It was before cellphones so I would phone her from a landline and she would say “say blue if you want to stay or green if you want to come home” and I’d reply accordingly. One time I made the mistake, when my friend asked me why I said “blue” on the phone, by telling her the truth - that blue meant I wanted to stay. Her mom heard this and came into the room and said “well now we know your secret and will know if your mom makes you go home it was because you wanted it to happen.” Make sure your girls don’t tell anyone haha.
 
@jfcnoronha Wow, your friend’s mom was an absolute bitch, wtf.

Here I was expecting this story to go into her coming into the room to say what a good idea that was and to say her kid and her should adopt the same system, but no, she felt the need to be a psycho wtf.
 
@celise My mom did this with me! Whenever I’d go to a friend’s house for a party or sleepover, she would want me to call to let her know things we going okay (before cellphones) and the keyword was “fine” - she’d ask, “How are things going?” And if I wanted her to come get me, I would say, “Oh, it’s fine.” Fine was our keyword. With using ‘fine’, she’d ask, “You want me to come get you?” And I’d be like, “Yes.” Then we’d play pretend like I had to get home to do homework / clean my room / she had to pick me up then. Any other adjective - good, great, awesome - and she knew I was having fun.

One Halloween, I got invited to this Halloween party with some kids I didn’t hang out with too often. Things were going okay until they were talking about wanting to vandalize some houses with toilet paper and eggs. I had no interest in participating, so I wanted to nope out of there ASAP. I called my mom, did our ruse, and she picked me up. It was for the best though - those kids ended up getting caught by the cops later that night.

I will definitely use this system with my LO ☺️
 
@celise My mom did this with me. If I called and said that “I left a light on in the closet” she would make up an excuse for me to leave.

I only had to use it on a couple of occasions but I was so thankful we had the system in place
 
@celise My mom and I had this understanding as well when I was a teenager. It was also to be used when I found myself in a predicament that I needed to be rescued from. One night at a house party my mom knew I was at I called her and asked to be rescued. She forevermore used it against me. When I found myself asking for help or when I’d ask to go out again, she’d remind me of the time she had to rescue me. So I never, ever took her up on rescuing me again.

So for those who are saying they’d use this for their children, please don’t use it against them should they ask for help or should ask for rescuing. It takes a lot of courage to ask for help, permission, rescuing. It shouldn’t bite them in the butt.
 
@celise Love the emoji idea! We’ve done “mom I forgot to feed the dog” or “don’t worry I fed the dog” as our signals for whether he was comfortable in the situation.
 
@celise I love this so much. When I was in middle school and didn’t want to hang out with my friends I would just set a timer on my phone so it would ring then pretend to fight with my mom on the phone lol

This way is much better
 
@celise My mom did this with me and it felt so good to be in control in situations that felt out of control. I remember at one party I wanted to leave, and I actually lived 2(!!!!) houses down and the dad refused to let me leave at first because some of the kids had been underage drinking. I said, if my mom finds out I wanted to come home and you didn't let me she will be way more angry than if I came home smelling like winecoolers. He let me go home but I remember wanting to hug her extra tightly because it was the first time I felt out of control. I loved the trust my mom and I had, and I never broke it or lied to her about anything. In fact, my siblings tease me about telling on myself and that I tell my mom too much.
 
@celise This method absolutely works. If my kids are uncomfortable where they are, they call me and tell me that they forgot to give the dog his medication. I don’t ask any questions. I just drop everything and come get them. I like the idea of using a text emoji too, that’s a great tip.
 
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