Posted on 08/02/2004 5:49:37 AM PDT by BluegrassScholar
Edited on 08/02/2004 10:43:46 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Carrie is 2 years old, with curly brown hair and Windex-blue eyes. In a still-life portrait, she would be adorable. In three dimensions, she's a cross between a Gerber baby and the Tasmanian devil. Bang. Bang, bang, bang, and bang and bang.
That's the noise of the plastic water cup she is whacking against the ceramic-topped table of a neighborhood coffeehouse whose concrete floors function like an echo chamber. If she had a hammer she would have destroyed the table by now, and I'm pretty sure her parents would've let her. People look up from their lattes, squint at the diminutive figure making the big, ear-splitting noise, and try to continue with their newspapers or conversations. The banging goes on for a good 10 minutes. Normally, I would say something -- I'm not shy about these things -- but I'm curious to know just how long her parents, with whom I'm having coffee, will let this go. The answer: Indefinitely. They don't even seem to notice. Maybe they're just used to it?
On some primal level, Carrie must be offended that she's not the center of attention. There is anger in her banging, along with what I read as malice. As she grows even more restive, her father lowers her to the floor. Still clutching the cup, Carrie crawls through the room, pounding on the concrete floor as she goes along, giving everyone an up-close earful of her drum solo.
A few weeks later, I'm at a party, mostly adults with a few kids sprinkled in, among them the volcanically unruly 5-year-old son of a friend. As I squat down to greet him, he responds by biting me in the arm, leaving teeth marks through a shirt and a sweater. I am just about to spank his little behind when I realize I'm in dangerous territory. People go to jail for that these days.
Um, guess what I have noticed that the more time I spend on the computer the more ADD I become. It isn't just kids. I have noticed the difficulty in concentration mostly in reading. Not good at all lol.
Ahhh, "that tone" and "that look"! Sometimes it even works on my husband!!!
Are you a bratty child, dear?
"My vote for insane parenting is giving your one-year-old three or four choices for everything. Ex: "Do you want apple slices, string cheese, or a pear for your snack?""
Baloney. In general, one-year olds don't have the ability to make decsions about much of anything but by the time they are two they can make start making decisions about small things.
It also depends on the child. For some children, it helps them mature to let them know that they can make a decision, even on small things, and then you make it stick. You let them choose, you give them whatever their choice was, and then when they complain or try to change their mind, you let them know that this was their choice and they will have to live with it.
This is a great life lesson, as opposed to them growing up believing that their life is scripted, that their teachers make decisions for them, that their boss or the gov't will make decisions for them, etc, etc.
I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone say "They need to bring corporal punishement back to the schools, but don't let them touch my kid".
Or the couple who complain about an offending child at a public place, only to completely ignore their offending child when he/she is in a public place. They seem to hear what's happening at the other table, but what goes on at their table seems unnoticed.
Why can't parents/grandparents simply remove a disruptive child from the setting if they are posing a problem. Not every child deserves corporal punishment for bad behavior. Sometimes just removing them is all that is needed. But mom and dad simply seem to believe we all should share in little Jr's. terror.
Sad.
My son lived in mortal fear of time-out. It meant being separated from Mommy and Daddy and he genuinely didn't want that. That said, I've only had to spank him twice in nine years - partly because he didn't want anything that was worse to him than a time-out. He has become the kindest kid you could imagine, unfailingly polite and a fabulous big brother to his little sister.
For pets, there are laws on the books to regulate their behavior. For children, there are laws on the books to regulate their parents' behaviour
Here is an interesting topic for a thread: someone name ONE contribution to parenting that the entire profession of "child psychologists" has produced.
ONE.
You always spot the lousy parents. They are the ones sitting at Starbucks reading the parenting magazine while their two-year-old throws muffins.
I have a relative who, unfortunately, is the mother of a child who recieves NO discipline. One day, at a family gathering, my brother's 2 yr old niece had to be lain down for a nap, and this child, probably 8 at the time, kept insisting that she be able to go in the room where my niece slept (she was slightly ill too, IIRC). Being the only one in the area to stop her, I told her no repeatedly, to which she responded indignantly, "You're not the boss of me!"
To which I replied, "Yes, but I am gonna be the unholy butt-whupper of you if you go in there and wake up Mariah. Got it?"
Mariah had a wonderful nap, and woke up a short while later feeling much better...JFK
I totally agree with everyone here about how kids need to be taught at an early age to sit still for a reasonable amount of time. They can. They can also learn how to behave at a restaurant and on a car ride. We had 4 kids in 4 years and it seemed the more we took them on long rides, ate in restaurants, took them to the grocery, etc., the more they could learn acceptable behavior outside of home. I have a hard time getting over letting kids run around the restaurant, which I see happening more and more often.
I remember one year for our anniversary about 15-20 yrs ago or so, when they were between ages of about 1-5, we couldn't find a babysitter, so we dressed them all up fancy and took them to a very nice restaurant. It was my husband's idea and I thought he was nuts. I figured it would be like most times when we go out - where at least one time, one of has had to take one outside and "have a talk". But they were so impressed that they behaved perfectly. I could NOT believe it. Even our youngest who has always been the most rambunctious.
Our house always seemed to be the one where all the neighborhood kids, then later, all the teens came to hang out. I had to learn to discipline them also. It seemed like the kids who were the least discplined came over the most and craved the discipline. Not only my own kids, but all the neighbor kids, and friends from high school, knew my "mom" look and "mom" voice. Yet, they still kept coming. :) But I think they also realize it was out of my love for them, or I pray that they do. I was also the one that would always make home-made cookies for them no matter what the hour. And they learned to behave at our house.
I used to volunteer a lot at the kids schools including running a volunteer program of math competition after school. It is interesting how I could see a difference in behavior, all downhill, between the class of my oldest and his youngest brother, just 4 yrs younger. But the change was more in the parents. They just didn't care what their kids did wrong as much. After a while, I began to feel sorry for the kids. More and more the parents want to pamper and raise their kids. And their behavior as they grow older reflects it. One of our college daughters was helping as a counselor for a bassoon camp and they were having trouble with the rage of one high school kid being so bad that he couldn't quit shaking. And this from a music/bassoon nerd! So very sad.
Time-out will work just as well as a spanking, IF it is sufficiently miserable. Most of the time it is too short and comfortable.
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My vote for insane parenting is giving your one-year-old three or four choices for everything.
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Nope, as a father of nine, I can tell you it's good parenting. The only problem is the parent giving too many choices. Even a one-year old likes to make choices. Hold out an apple slice and a piece of cheese and let her pick the one she wants.
Giving your children choices builds confidence, reasoning abilities, etc. The idea that stress comes from having to make too many decisions in a day comes from interviewing adults who were never trained how to make decisions as children.
If you've been making decisions since you were one year old, there's no stress at all involved.
The real stress in the workplace comes from having to make decisions for other adults who never learned how to make their own.
"My vote for insane parenting is giving your one-year-old three or four choices for everything. Ex: "Do you want apple slices, string cheese, or a pear for your snack?"
It's not just little kids that are rude and unruly. It's the whole of society. If you have a large segment of society that thinks it's okay to have cars with loud mufflers that wake up the whole neighborhood and steroes that are so powerful they can sway the car sitting next to them with the subwoofer beat, then you have a society that doesn't believe in being civil anymore.
Six years ago we had a couple of heroin addicts living next door to us, with their one-year old son (who was the size of a six-month old baby). One night, the father was screaming at the son in their kitchen, of which I had a good view. I watched him slap his boy so hard across the face (for not eating his mac-n-cheese) that I could hear the impact in my house, over the noise of a room air conditioner. The father must have realized that the kitchen wasn't a private enough place to properly discipline his son so he snatched him out of the high chair and took him off to a room with no windows. I could hear the boy screaming and crying for another five minutes. I was so upset that I couldn't stop shaking. I called CPS, left a very detailed message, and thought I would hear from them in the morning. The couple split two days later, leaving most of their belongings behind. CPS did not investigate until the following week. To this day I wonder how that boy is doing.
How many times have your heard "we need more corporal punishment, but don't let them touch my kid"?
I'm the biggest brat of all...the one making and enforcing the rules.
When they enter the work force, they take the same attitudes with them. They often come with the attitude that the employer owes them a job or that they are too good to do the grunt work. Sigh
We appear to be of the same mind!
Well, I'm glad to say that my two kids, age 3 and 1, have outstanding manners, but only due to parental modelling.
We are restaurant people through and through. My family LOVES dining out, and we do it at least twice a week. Two of my son's first phrases were "please" and "thank you," and he knows when to use them, and my daughter, who is 1, is starting to say a very clear "thank you." My son's manners constantly amaze our servers, as he says things like, "I'd like a grilled cheese and fries, please" and says "thank you" when his food arrives.
We were in the local WalMart and we were checking out. My son asked "can I please pay?" and I said sure and handed him my plastic. He said "thank you!' to the cashier, and was just generally polite. The cashier says, "Jeez, I wish my kids were that polite!"
I thought, "Well, do you model that behavior?" I didn't say it, but I wanted to.
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