Tag Archives: discipline

(Stress) For Sale by Owner

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In 10 days all of my worldly possessions will be boxed, loaded into trucks, and carted away from my home. This is the only home Sally has ever had, and the only home Luke remembers. While I’m excited about the new house, and I know that it will eventually become home, now it’s somebody else’s house, on somebody else’s street, with somebody else’s neighbors.

But what of those neighbors?

I am not great at first impressions. Ask just about any of my friends and they’ll tell you that they didn’t like me, were afraid of me, thought I was a bitch when they first met me. I think of it as my hard candy shell. It protects my inner chocolate and I won’t melt in your hands. But since having kids, I can’t afford to make that first impression. I need friends. STAT.

I’ve faced the issue of Mommy Dating before with limited success. But this time it’s more important. At 6-years-old Luke needs friends to hang out with on the regular. I need to model how to make friends even if it makes me uncomfortable. In this vein, I will go to my neighbor’s houses to introduce myself and my kids. I will introduce myself to parents in the library, playground, and anywhere else we find them.

But what about when Luke acts, well, Luke-ish?

My allegiance is to him first and foremost, which means that my reactions in front of new friends and neighbors need to be the same as my reactions at home. Which means that I need to suffer embarrassment and judgement as I deal with behaviors that may seem shocking and egregious. I simply can’t come down on him for everything he does. The occasional (frequent) “I hate you!” “You’re stupid!” comments, the occasional (frequent) tantrums, hits, and kicks, get a different reaction from me than they would from a parent of a more typically-demeanored child.

(Just in writing this I can feel the judgement coming from some of the readers. I fully know what they’re thinking and what they may say in the comments. And I understand why they think and say it. If you have a typically defiant child, then your stern admonishment in the face of flagrant disrespect are necessary and effective. So of course I should sternly admonish Luke for saying and doing these horrible things. If I don’t, it’s my fault he continues to behave that way. Those are easy assumptions to make, and certainly the ones I would have made as well. But, what they don’t know is that they have typically defiant children and I don’t. What works for most children, does not work for Luke. My non-reaction (when I can manage it) is actually the right thing to do.)

So, how can I get to know new people in the face of my anxiety about meeting them coupled with my anxiety of waiting for Luke to do something that will cause them to look at me expectantly, then judge me?

Do I open with, “Hi, I’m Allison. This is Luke and this is Sally. While Luke is the kindest and most thoughtful person I know, he also acts rashly and says things he doesn’t mean. So, I may ignore him or physically drag him out of here under a barrage of punches. Please judge my parenting based on my interactions with Sally,”?

Of course not.

Luke picks up on my anxiety the way a chameleon picks up the colors of its environment. I need to convincingly pretend that I have all the confidence in the world that he will behave appropriately. (Which he totally can and does sometimes.) If he detects a chink in my confidence, and he will if there is one, then he will meet my low expectations and then some.

Luke also picks up on my stress. I’ve been so stressed during this moving process and his behavior has reflected it in spades. We’ve established some toxic habits these last few months that I’m not proud of. I need to somehow release all my stress and anxiety the moment I cross the threshold of my new house. Can I do that while surrounded by boxes and up to my ears in the work of moving in? I have no doubts about my inability to do this. I need to somehow make the chore of unpacking fun. I need to set the tone for the family – a happy, cooperative, copacetic, calm tone of familial well-being.

Essentially, I need to take me out of the equation.

stess for sale

Every Word You Say is Lies, Lies, Lies

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I have a problem: my son is a lying liar. He has no qualms or reservations about flat-out lying to me. Worse, he seems to immediately buy into his own lies. He believes that it was an accident that he snatched a toy out of Sally’s hands and then pushed her over. Since it was an accident, it seems totally unfair and outrageous that I would be upset. He did not take $20 out of my wallet, which was in my purse. He simply thought the purse was someone else’s, forgotten here by mistake, so he wanted to check to see if he could figure out who it belonged to. Naturally, he took out the wallet and that’s when a $20 fell into his pocket where he decided to keep it safe. (← actually happened.)

The good news is that he can’t help but tell on himself. When he took the $20, he just could not keep it to himself. I don’t think it was guilt or shame that drove him to flaunt the bill in front of me, since he immediately told me his ridiculous story and then cried at the gross injustice of my chastising him for stealing, when he was just trying to do a good deed and make sure a mislaid purse was returned to it’s rightful owner.

This lying, sneaking, and stealing has me worried. What makes him think this is OK? Then I remember myself as a child, doing the exact same shit. When I was little, my parents always knew when I was lying, which I thought was unfair and incredible. Turns out it was just because I was really bad at it. It wasn’t until I got older, and much better at lying, that I was able to pull off bigger stunts like replacing most of their clear alcohol with water. (One advantage I’ll have over my own parents in dealing with deceitful offspring is that I have been there done that. I’m not going to fall for your crap, kids, so don’t bother.) But this was all when I was young. How did I learn to stop lying?

Truth: I haven’t. I lie to my kids all the damn time. I’m not grabbing $20s out of my mother’s purse (anymore) but my lies are just as self-serving.

So, here I give you my greatest lies as a parent:

5 Lies I tell my kids

So, what’s the verdict? Am I teaching my child to lie? Am I a terrible parent because of all this deceit? Or, more importantly, am I forgetting to lie about something?

 

 

How Rough is Too Rough?

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How rough do you allow your kids to play? I intervene when someone gets hurt – always Sally – but when she engages in the roughhousing I let it go. I didn’t grow up roughhousing with my siblings. I have no prior experience with this behavior at all so my perspective could be way off. My kids’ play could be well within the range of normal, despite the fact that it seems over the top, drives me crazy, and appears violent and horrible. Well, at least highly unpleasant.

I can’t help but think that Luke is acting like a wild animal and poor Sally doesn’t know any better but to play that way with him. But that seems like a slanted, prejudiced, and unkind point of view against Luke. Is it just normal boy behavior and I’m being oversensitive about it? Or even normal child behavior and not a boy/girl issue? Or is Sally feeling pressure to play so physically? She is certainly no angel! She instigates Luke in completely annoying ways that only a little sister, or mosquito, can.

Maybe my grown-up worries and concepts about boys and girls are coloring my feelings about it unfairly. Maybe I’m actually being sexist. I wonder if I’d feel the same if they were both boys? I can’t help but feel like Sally wouldn’t want to play that way if left to her own devices. I know I never would have. I would have hated it. I couldn’t stand “wild” boys when I was a kid. (Truth is I still can’t, even though I’m mom to one. Which is likely part of the problem here.) I’m a girl and Sally’s a girl. So surely she feels the same?

Maybe it has nothing to do with her being a girl. Maybe she really does like playing that way, and not only because her bigger, stronger, influential brother has taught her that it’s “fun.” But, if she is just going along because that’s what he wants to do, will it translate into feeling pressure to let other people do things, physically, that she may not want to do in the future?

I always, ALWAYS make Luke stop when Sally says stop or no, even if she’s giggling when she says it.

Is this play harmful for her? Is it teaching her things about how and when she can assert herself with regards to her own body? Is it teaching her that she needs to relent if a boy wants to be really physical with her? Or is all of that totally unrelated and she is just wrestling with her brother, which is completely innocent and normal?

What is it teaching Luke, if anything, about what he can and should do with girls? Is it enough that I always make him stop when she says so? I talk about respect and trust. I ask Sally if she’s having fun. I tell her that she can refuse to play that way. (Then I say the same thing to Luke, just so it doesn’t appear that I’m assuming he’s the bully and she’s the victim, even though I am.)

Maybe I’m over-thinking the whole thing and they’re just being siblings and kids and not acting out scary gender role scenarios at all.

So, I ask you: how rough to you allow your kids to play?*

*(If your kids don’t play rough because they just never want to, please keep in mind that different kids have different personalities, interests, and energy. It must be tempting to judge me and my kids, but maybe this is one of those times to think, “This parenting issue does not pertain to me,” consider yourself lucky, and leave it at that.)