Thoughts on a Tuesday...

I remember when I was a small, redheaded, freckly girl of 5 years there was another girl in our neighborhood I was not allowed to play with. Let's call her Jamie V.

Jamie V. was a wild child. Unsupervised, "do what she wants" kind of attitude. She stayed out past when the streetlights came on, which was a big deal to us. She never got called in for dinner by her mom. Her dad never helped her ride her bike in the street.

She had an older brother who ran with the "wrong crowd". She was a forbidden playmate.

One afternoon I was walking home from my friend's house two doors down. Jamie V. approached me in my driveway and asked if I wanted to hear some cool stuff. Naively, I said yes. She then whispered four of the foulest words ever into my ear. She laughed at the shocked look on my face, and ran off.

I was fascinated that this girl, my age, knew these words and said them out loud, to me.

I went in my backyard and hid behind the trash cans and repeated them quietly, over and over. I never told anyone that Jamie V. had taught me these words and I never even said them growing up. I guess it was a harmless experience, but it left a pretty strong imprint on my memory that I still remember details about it 22 years later.

Today my older girl repeated some foul language she learned from the little girls next door. The 7 and 4 year old little girls next door. Who roam our neighborhood completly unsupervised. Even after the street lights come on.

I know my two are fascinated with these girls. They don't have training wheels on their bikes, they play outside alone, they have a Nintendo DS and a digital camera of their own and they play with Barbies. And they know bad words and use them casually.

My heart is torn between loving these neighbor kids and letting my girls play with them, being Jesus to these two who don't get much attention from their own parents. And protecting, sheltering and guiding my own two innocent girls. It's getting harder because Chloe is really attacted to these two neighbor girls, she is curious about them, their apparent freedom and the things they get to say and do that she doesn't.

I try to keep her on a short leash. She can play with them when we're all outside together, and I try to keep tabs on their conversations. I missed the one where she learned the foul language.

I wonder about little Jamie V. Would she have been a sweeter, better-mannered child if a neighbor mom had accepted her, taken her in and let her little girl play with her? Would her own mother have minded? Or was her own mother just busy, uncaring and happy to have her daughter out of her hair? Should I shelter my own, gaurding their hearts and minds? Or let them run with these girls, supervised of course, and just play defense when they come home repeating bad words and bad behaviors? These girls have said some pretty hurtful things to my Chloe before, who didn't understand that they were being mean to her, but I did. Immediately my gaurd went up. Where do you draw the line of "in the world, but not of the world" when it comes to your 4 and 2 year olds??

Any thoughts??