Brats.

[same_sky]

Crap, crap, crap. Seven pm on a Sunday. Already, the weekend feels like it's over. The only thing left is the laundry, and how can I get excited about that? It doesn't help matters, actually, that we took a nap this afternoon. My neck would like to file charges of abuse, as we fell asleep snuggled on the bed strangely. And my eyes are burning sleepily, not to mention the hour of wasted weekend time. Still. A happy nap on a Sunday afternoon is about as good as life gets. :)

Oh! And let's all be proud of my darling totte, who mowed for two hours and then did the weedeating. I was going to cook some fabulous dinner for him since he was so excellent this afternoon, but as it turns out, we don't have any food and I couldn't think of a single thing that sounded good enough to go get ingredients for. We had lunch rather late, though, so I guess that might be part of it.

My cousin's little boy, who's four, insists on hitting people. One might argue that it's not my place to worry about how to stop him from doing this, but as he slapped my arm hard enough today to leave prints that lasted for several hours, I might disagree. Besides that, his mother has given her blessing and desire for any of us to hit him back (appropriately, of course) if he hits us, so it's not like she doesn't realize there's a problem. I don't really want to hit him back, though, just come up with some other sort of deterrent. I'd settle for making him stop hitting me. ;) Any thoughts?

As for the issue of physical disciple itself, I've firmly decided that I'm not going to make up my mind on how I feel about it until I have a kid of my own, but right now we're both more in the middle of the road than when we first met. Probably leaning more towards being against it, but probably not absolutely, either. I swear, Magnus compared spanking to sex with goats during our first conversation about the subject--similarly barbaric, if you didn't follow the connection. He's since spent more time with children and I've since realized that just because it might be legal here doesn't mean that it's necessarily right.

Speaking of having kids.. there are a lot of things that I'm sure I'll feel differently about when I have a child of my own. I've never said that. But almost every time I have an opinion about parenting, someone (irl) bitches at me that I don't know what I'm talking about until I have my own to worry about. It really disturbs me, actually, because obviously I can't say that my kids will be perfect angels. Wouldn't even want them to be. What bugs me, though, is how defensive everyone gets and how they assume I know nothing because I haven't popped a baby out. I didn't realize that all brain power comes from becoming a parent; why didn't someone tell me that? Would have saved me a lot of time and energy learning things the hard way. Anyway. Certain people that I know with children tend to let them do whatever they want, and worse yet, they let the kids do things that they know they shouldn't be doing just because they can't or won't stand up to them. They tell them "no", the kid does it anyway, and they roll their eyes and let it go. If I say so much as a word about the inconsistencies of this approach, someone gets on her high horse about how I don't understand because I don't have any and so I don't know how hard it is. No, I don't know, but I never said it would be easy, just that they're raising brats with the current approach. (I did not, btw, use those words.. rofl.) Just because it's hard doesn't mean that I'm wrong. I probably should make this entry friends-only due to this spontaneous little rant, but I'm not going to. So there. :P

I'll end this with a bit of humor, if it translate into text. I've been waiting for totte to tell this story, but he doesn't seem to want to. Anyway, Devon (the hitter) smacked Magnus a while back. Various admonishments went unheeded, so Magnus bent down and told him, with a straight face, that if he didn't stop hitting, he would whip him. Magnus lets the kids climb all over him, so any threat from him usually loses something. This time, though, Devon must have believed it. A few minutes later, Magnus saw him shuffling around the livingroom, muttering to himself.

"He's gonna whip me. That's gonna suck."

Comments

[denyeverything.livejournal.com]

*shakes head and laughs* Children really test their boundaries a LOT and Dylann is no different. She is just *now* getting out of a hitting/pinching/slapping phase that's lasted far too long. Instead of hitting/pinching/slapping her back or spanking her (I don't think children will learn not to hit if a parent is trying to justify hitting their own flesh and blood), I take away priviledges that I know she loves. Slowly but surely, she has caught on. Thought at times she still tries my patience BIG TIME, lol. *hugs*

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

I really hope Devon gets out of this phase soon. He's a cute kid, and was the most loving baby I've ever seen, but my goodness, he's annoying and rather painful at the moment. Hehe.

*hugs* :)

[carrieb.livejournal.com]

I don't know if this would work with him, but when Alva or Sophia try to hit me, I grab their little arms before they manage to make the strike and tell them "no, we do NOT hit" very firmly. I'm always tempted to twist their arms or something, but never do. Just firmly don't allow them to hit me. Alva seems to be getting the message. She won't hit me thought she still hits everyone else.

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess I could live with it if they just stop hitting me. *grin* It'd be nice if he stopped hitting his sister, too, because she has a tendency towards whining. ;) I'll have to try that.. the only problem being that he enjoys spontaneous hitting, when I have no clue I'm about to get walloped until it's over.

[totte.livejournal.com]

I'm having a lot of fun with the kids lately. I'm always the one who plays with them and run around being silly, and the only thing that did any good before was just saying that "If you're going to act like that, I'm not going to play with you". This really disturbed them for a while, but I've been less and less interested in playing with them lately, as they're getting too big to be thrown around, and most of their "games" seem to include running very fast into stationary objects. Like walls, furniture or sitting people. That and yelling a lot. So now I get down face to face with them and hold up their fist and compare it to mine and get them to figure out who would be in more pain if this hitting people thing should go both ways. It’s just so much fun seeing the fear shine in their little eyes! J

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

You've become quite scary and sadistic since you met me, haven't you? ;)

[courtesy.livejournal.com]

No, that humour definitely came through in text *LOL* "That's gonna suck" I love it :)

It's a hard one. I'm against it in principle and hope I never use it but I can also imagine a time if a kid was being really really bad and needed some discipline that I might see validity in a small pat on the botty - maybe that'll change when I have kids, I'm not sure.

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

*nods* Us too. I just hate to rule something out and then go back on what I said. I have a feeling I'm going to be cursed with hellions that'lll make me a decided proponent of spanking.. ;)

[stewlis.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about the spanking/no spanking thing yet, and since I don't have kids yet I guess I'll decide when the time comes. We were never spanked, but mom had this glare and a certain tone and said "I'm very disappointed in you" and that alone made us feel like scum to upset our dear mommy that way. So that was enough of a deterrent for us not to misbehave too much. However, she was also quite lenient, in that as long as we weren't doing something destructive, be it to ourselves or someone/thing else, she pretty much let us do whatever we pleased. A lot of how kids turn out just depends on the individual, I think. There were 5 of us, raised by the same two parents, and there's a world of difference between all of us.

As for the hitting thing, I've decided it's a phase that they all seem to go through at some point. Mom's best tactic was whenever they hit you, pretend that it really really hurt, fake crying, sobbing, act really upset. That seems to hit some kind of nerve that made most of them stop, at least with her. Simply saying, "Now, sweetie, don't hit people, it's not nice" just doesn't work at all in my experience.

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

I think Devon thinks it's funny when we're all upset like that. Not if someone is *really* upset, but he seems to be able to see through the drama most of the time and see we're not serious. Oh, well. Hopefully the hitting will stop soon. It gets a little old.