I don’t want my child
to learn bad habits

Dear Tita,

My problem is about the children of my brother-in-law, Roy, who are the playmates of my two kids. Roy’s wife, Mila, is from Capiz, and she doesn’t know how to raise her children, who are boisterous and wild. They keep saying bad words (which they probably hear from their mother), and they don’t know how to behave in my house.

The two boys play rough even inside the house and they often break my things. I feel so bad as I have been collecting these precious things for years. When I told Mila, she just said, “That’s how kids are – they play hard”. She said, “Sorry lang”, but didn’t even offer to pay for my broken decorations.

Lately, I was alarmed to hear my own kids using foul language and running wild in the house! When I confronted them, they said they learned it from their cousins. I complained to my husband but he said not to make a big deal of it as kids will be kids.

I am not a snob but I don’t like my kids to act like their cousins. Even their table manners have been affected as they now follow the awful chewing noises their cousins make. My husband says I just have to be understanding because Mila does not know how to train her kids properly. I don’t want my kids to grow up wild and foulmouthed like them. I want them to grow up with breeding. But since they live next door to us, they always play with my kids. Mila likes it this way as they eat at our house and it leaves her free to watch TV soap operas all day long.

How can I handle this situation?

FRUSTRATED

Dear Frustrated,

I think you should lay the ground rules in your own house – no boisterous playing indoors, no bad words and proper table manners at all times. If they want to play and eat in your house, they must follow the rules. Otherwise, you won’t allow them to go to your house. If Mila complains about your rules, tell her that is the way you want your kids to grow up – well-disciplined and with good manners.

If you do this with tact and diplomacy, she shouldn’t resent it.

TITA