Groundhog Day WAW#15

[SirPrizeMe]

I know what you mean about the Steeler games. Expensive, but quite a spectacle. I took my kids a couple times and it was a real treat for them. They LOOOVED it. Still talk about it.

The best way to do it is with a bunch of good friends, same people every week. Find a good tailgate, a bunch who cooks up good stuff. Always a nice time. Still, expensive.

About the kids thing - I wasn't really "smashing you" - just offering what I learned. Take it the way you like. For my part, I have learned a lot through my own thing. At first I wanted to tell my kids - look, I'm real sorry about this crap you're going through, I think your mom is nuts! My counselor advised me that while saying that might make me feel better, it would cause long term lasting effects in the kids. They need to love their mom, even if their mom is not perfect. They need to be able to look at her as a 100% good person. If they grow up hating mom, or disrespecting mom, then when they are 23 yrs old, they will get married and do the same thing to their spouse. I didn't know that. So I leave them out of my dramas with their mother. Something I learned ...

Turns out MY wife's mom did that to my wife's father - indicted him and criticized him. My wife was 6 when her own mom had an affair, checked out of the marriage. The father wanted to reconcile but the mother walked away (kept the kids, though). For years afterward, the mother basically crapped on the father, blamed him for everything, criticized him in front of my wife and her sister. He was a good man, started a new family, is now very successful, has grandkids, started a business. But my wife's mother was hurt and tore him down mercilessly to the kids.

And now my wife is repeating history. When I talked to the counselor about this, they say, it is not a surprise. He said this is what happens when parents conduct a land war with the kids in between.

Sad.