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Showing posts with label helicopter moms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label helicopter moms. Show all posts

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Punishments

With all of the blogger outage mess, I messed up and posted my O piece first, so if you want to keep in this backwards order, scoot down one entry and that should be for today. You can pretend that I posted punishments yesterday, if that makes you happy. For those who don't care, here goes . . .

My husband and I were never ones to spank our children. Not to say we didn't punish them when they misbehaved, we just found better ways to discipline. Discipline doesn't need to leave kids angry or bitter, but rather to teach children right from wrong.

One of our most successful punishments worked well with our oldest two kids when they were very young. "Do what we say or we won't let you brush your teeth." The kids would scramble to obey because nothing was worse than a stinky mouth. Not only did we get them to mind us, but we changed their view of tooth brushing from something parents force their children to do to a privilege.

I remember another situation when our son was just a toddler.  I was struggling to load our large golden retriever into the back of our van. Daniel spun circles while I was distracted until a truck honked and nearly missed hitting him. Many parents would spank a child for going into the street, but in reality, whose fault is it? He was too young to understand his actions, and I needed to be more focused on him than the dog. If I needed to be angry with anyone, it should have been me. I let my instincts take over when I snatched that baby into my arms. Tears shot out of my eyes as I told him how scared I was at the thought of almost losing him because I love him so much. We locked in a hug for a long while, and that boy never ventured into the street again. Objective reached.

Finally, it would be nice to say that my children never fought with each other, but they did. Once they reached "our" limit of fighting, we sat them on the love seat until they learned how to love each other. We didn't need to punish them because they punished themselves more than we ever could have. To quote Bill Cosby, "Parents don't want fair, they want quiet."

Parents need to quit hitting their children and find quintessential punishments instead. I know I wouldn't do a better job at work, or any where else, if someone hit me whenever I messed up. What is the true message in spanking?

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Empty Nest #AtoZ

Today, April 6, means it's been 23 years since I gave birth to our first child--and to think, I was only six at the time. My husband and I have vivid memories of bringing that sleeping baby boy home from the hospital, setting his car seat on a table, looking at each other and saying, "What the heck are we supposed to do with it?"
Happy Birthday, Danielson! 

We figured out what to do after dipping the poor kid in cold bathwater and sticking the snot snatcher up the baby's nose then squeezing. It's okay, the son is no longer cross-eyed and eventually we figured out how to suck his buggers out. In fact, we did such a good job at this that when Daniel woke after surgery from a soccer injury, he even asked me to pick his nose.

Judy Woo
Soon we added two female bundles of job (yes it's a typo, but I thought it was fitting) to the mix to create a full house of, "Mmmoooooommm! She looked at meeeeeeee!" Ah the pleasures of raising children! And of course big brother became a master at egging the little two into a fight then stepping back to watch.

Erica - Baby Bear
Yes, we've had many wonderful years of joy and vomit, but those days are quickly coming to an end for the youngest of the crew is now a Senior in High School. She has chosen to attend the furthest school possible, Zhejiang University in China. Just kidding, but she is going to UCF in Orlando, which is quite a jog from little Memphis.

Seriously, we will miss our baby as we do the older two, and once again my husband and I will look at each other and say, "What are we supposed to do now?"