What would you do...
 

...if you walked outside to call your kids (aged 6 and 9) in for the evening from playing with their friends outside to see them sitting on the top of your neighbor kids parents car with their feet dangling through the sunroof as the neighbor kids mother drives the car down the lane? For fun. Apparently this is known as "car surfing" in that household, and is also apparently a common practice.

I am still bordering on homocidal. Her first comment to me when I walked up the lane to retrieve them and bring them home from that house was "I hope they're not in trouble....". I looked at her an said "THEY'RE not...." I doubt she picked it up.

Jesus Effing Christ.

wow.

Not sure I would have been as calm as you.

Banned from playing over there for sure as well as playing with her kids unsupervised.

Wait until next time it happens (with someone else's kids), photograph and take to your local police station.

This woman should be cited for reckless driving, child endangerment and whatever else they think they can make stick.

People are idiots.

I had to read the OP twice. The "mother" was the driver during a car surfing. That is a bad idea. Idiocy.

My mom had a VW Rabbit cab when I was kid and we got pulled over in NJ for sitting up on top of the rear seat back with the top down. No ticket, but the cop chewed her out pretty good. Good thing he didn't see us a few days earlier shooting bottle rockets from the car while she drove us home.

I probably would have yelled at he kids and the woman. Kids for being stupid enough to get talked into it and he women for the obvious. Who cares if it soured relations. I don't want my kids anywhere near a woman or her offsprings given that she lacks the low level of common sense. If she had taken your kids out to an activaty away from home and didn't have the common sense to protect and prevent the exposure to senseless act....you may never know about it. Thus don't let you kids go near that woman and her kids. She might as well had taught your kids how to put a gun in their mouths for fun.

I was pretty lit up, but since the kids were around I wasnt' gonna rip in to her and cause a scene. I told her that what she did with her kids was her business, but when she involves my kids, it becomes my business. Warned her in no uncertain yet civilized terms that she is not to do that ever again with my kids.

Jesus.

Problem is, her youngest and my oldest are casual friends and hang out from time to time as was what was happening in this situation. The kids are under the stipulation that they can play together as long as they do it at our house under our supervision.

Mom wants to be the "cool mom" of the neighorhood and doesnt understand the sequencing of parent vs. friend to the kids. This is the same family that took the kid to a Kid Rock/Skynard concert 2 years ago. At age 7. Whatever.

I dont blame the kids - mine or hers. We had a long chat we got back home and made sure they understood how stupid that was, and that the mother should have known better.

At that age (remember they'r e6 & 9), they rely on the guidance of a responsible adult, clearly lacking in this case.

They wont be going up there again, the (adult) relationship between them and us is over. That pretty much ended when I asked her why she just didn't cut to the chase and offer to go scrounge up some hookers and blow.

My concern would be that this sort of poor decision making goes on inside the house, too. I can just see lunch at her house: "Give it a try... it's just a little sip of wine."

If you continue to let the children play with her children, are you prepared to provide constant supervision? The lack of parental responsibility by this lady will be a part of her children's personality. Do you want them rubbing off on your children? Better to cut ties than to have the kids grow old together and have her kids poorly influence your kids. There are plenty of kids out there, no need to make excuses or compromise your children's social development.

We have a couple of boys in our subdivision that our boys use to play with. It wasn't long before we realize they were bad influences (at about the age you kids are now). We talked to or kids and they stopped playing with those boys. Now I see we made the right decisions. I see those boys riding their bikes in the subdivision with no care for their own or other's safety while challenging cars for street right of way and cursing and screaming as they go down the street. One kid got put in an alternative school in jr high!

You're asking rhetorical questions Souk, we're already there. If we're not around or unable to supervise, they dont play together - very simple. They dont go up there and play, period - whether we're there or not. Not after this latest demonstration of Darwin-like tendencies. Knowing that the neighbor kid doesnt want to come to our house to play very much (we're "too boring..." - duh....we dont Car Surf or take 8 year olds to Metallica concerts...), that just wont happen. His choice. He plays by my rules or not at all - very simple. It has to be handled the right way, if I were to draw an absolute I gurarantee that I'd have a kid who wanted more than ever to go hang out with him - no better way to drive them together than to try and force them apart. If it's made so inconvenient that they dont want to make the effort, then the desired result is acheived on their terms so to speak. It's how my parents should have handled me....

Truth be told, their kid and my kid have probably sought each other out a grand total of 3 times this summer, we've been guiding my kid away from their kid for a while now.

We made a conscious decision a couple of years ago to keep the other family at arms length cause of similar parental philosophical differences - all of the activities that the kids engaged in were either supervised by us or we were along to participate. That's how we know that we dont want them hanging around.

They're not bad people, just stupid (yet, strangely, she's the CFO of a local college...). And when their stupidity has the potential to impact me and mine, the wall goes up.

FWIW I would have had a STRONG talking to my children about right and wrong behaviour.

I would have lost it at her, hopefully NOT in front of the kids. She will likely sour the relationship between your children and cause trouble for the children as time plays out. I can so easily remember a family like that down the street from us when I was growing up. Unsupervised kids with constant visits from law enforcement. My folks (and most) did not like the way the family acted. Children acted out against us as much as they could to get back at us.

Continue to be vigilent with your children! Not all parents are, not all parents are responsible enough to be so. I also like the idea of getting photos of her doing this. Child endangerment at the VERY least.

Shoot the mother.

In the face.

"the lane"

On the farm we had an 1/8 mile lane. No one ever fell out while riding on anything with more than two wheels. So am curious as to what kind of lane she was using and how fast was she going.
Anyone ever been on a hayride? With kids?
Jim

Seems kinda tame compared to the crap I did when I was a kid.

30-40yrs ago this wouldn't have been a big deal...

today, well from some of the responses here sounds like someones mom will be gettng a visit from child services

30 yrs ago, you put a 6 yr old on the roof of a car and drove down the street making them feel cool for car surfing?

30 yrs ago i might have been the 9yr old.;)

of course i also built plywood and cinder block bike jumps in our gravel drive way at that age too.

I did a lot of dumb things as a kid too, but never after being encouraged by an adult who was suppose to be responsible for my well being.

How old is mom? 27-29? How fast were they going?
She is setting a bad example for good decisions but it probably wasn't that dangerous.

Man, I can imagine what would happen now if someone were riding in the back of a pick up sitting on the sides of the bed.

I guess they better get seat belts for horse saddles nowadays. I know I fell of a horse a hell of a lot more times than I did a moving vehicle. And, I rode on the outside of moving vehicles way more than I rode horses.

I got people to pull me on a skateboard with their car and a waterski tow rope. That's when I wasn't hanging on to their door handle back when cars had door handles.

We lost a lot more kids to Viet Nam than we did messing around. What are kids made of today, glass?

What they're made of today isnt the fuchin point Milt, nor is toughening them up, she can do whatever the hell she wants to with her own kids, her daughter turns up pregnant or her son ends up with a concussion cause he doesnt wear a helmet on his electric scooter/skateboard/bike, whatever - it's their burden from there. Seriously, I dont give a schit. Their lives, their choices, they can make them. My kids dont need a concussion or broken bones brought on by the avoidable actions of someone whos supposed to know better to toughen up, they've had more than fair share of hard knocks from rock climbing to cart racing to diving boards and social awkwardness - activities that are legit and supervised.

When she involves my kids in her bad decisions that's a different story altogether, had they been hurt because of something stupid that she did and headed to the hospital, it would then become a little something called "criminal negligence". Like it or not.

The lane is a dead end street asphalt street about 750 yards log, when I saw her she was traveling at about 10-15 mph and was about half way down, that was the 5'th trip they'd made up and down the lane according to my son. Driving a 2000 buick regal - not a lot of material to hold on to up there nor were there any safety belts in the headliner last time I checked.

When she pulled up paralell to me and saw me watching through the trees (the lane is split down thh middle with a hedgerow of Osage Oranges), she looked over at me and said to the kids "uh oh, you're dad saw us, you guys are busted now..." then followed it up with the comment she made when I walked up on her.

Never in my wildest fuchin dreams would I have imagined that I'd have to sit my kids down and explain to them at the tender age of 6 and 9 that car surfing is dangerous, and whatever someone's mom says, you're not to do it. 16 or 17, sure. 6 & 9, are you kidding me?

My whole issue is that a person, in this case, a 46 year old mother, doesn't put another persons children in harms way doing something that a 17 year old with poor judgement would do to try and be your kids "friend" as opposed to being his mother.

It's called "risk avoidance," Milt.
Kids should be taught at an early age to avoid risk.