The World Beyond BetterMost > Anything Goes
What are your "pet hates'
serious crayons:
But see, the kind of kid I'm talking about does not sit for endless time on the Paul Harris windowsill, or submit to tethers, or do any of those kinds of restrictive things without a GIANT GIANT FIGHT. And I do mean giant. Did I mention that it would be giant? And that it would be just one among may GIANT GIANT FIGHTS you and the kid would have gotten into that very same day?
Really, this is very hard to express in a way that people will understand. Sometimes I read people's posts about their kids and feel like we live in two different countries.
Every kid can be controlled in some way, yes, I have no doubt about it. The Army is proof of that. But some kids only require ordinary parents to control them, and some kids require Gen. George Patton. I'm not Patton. If my kids had Patton for a mom, no doubt they wouldn't run around the grocery store. But it's hard to say, by the time they're 18, whether the kids and Gen. Patton would still be on speaking terms ...
David In Indy:
--- Quote from: latjoreme on October 02, 2006, 02:16:23 am ---But see, the kind of kid I'm talking about does not sit for endless time on the Paul Harris windowsill, or submit to tethers, or do any of those kinds of restrictive things without a GIANT GIANT FIGHT. And I do mean giant. Did I mention that it would be giant? And that it would be just one among may GIANT GIANT FIGHTS you and the kid would have gotten into that very same day?
Really, this is very hard to express in a way that people will understand. Sometimes I read people's posts about their kids and feel like we live in two different countries.
Every kid can be controlled in some way, yes, I have no doubt about it. The Army is proof of that. But some kids only require ordinary parents to control them, and some kids require Gen. George Patton. I'm not Patton. If my kids had Patton for a mom, no doubt they wouldn't run around the grocery store. But it's hard to say, by the time they're 18, whether the kids and Gen. Patton would still be on speaking terms ...
--- End quote ---
Actually I do agree with you. I grew up in the 1960's, and times have changed I guess.
But I still say the Paul Harris window sill paid off...
Can anyone say Koopavond? Oh yeah, that's only on Thursday and Friday... and in Amsterdam.
My bad. ;)
I do agree with you. Things are different now. But my mother had no problems swatting my ass in public if I acted up. And I'll bet you every person witnessing my punishment felt sorry for my mother... not for me.
But that was a LOOOOOONG time ago.
But I do have some stories..... we all do of course. Hopefully things like this are a thing of the past. I hope so anyway.
serious crayons:
I'm not familiar with Paul Harris. Was the windowsill on the outside of the building, and several stories up? Then I can see where it might have had that effect ... ;D
All I can say is, "knowing" you to the extent that I do, David, and knowing my older son, you are two very different people. You seem very easy going. So if times are different, different kids are different, too.
Imagine a kid who scores in the 99th percentile on every imaginable academic test, who in fourth grade was reading at a 12th-grade level, who is confident and outgoing and popular and good looking and athletic and imaginative and ambitious and socially fearless -- in other words, a kid who at first glance is completely geared for success -- and YET is in a way somewhat handicapped, and that handicap has to do with his behavior and temperament. Then you will have imagined my son.
I know it's very difficult to understand. He doesn't fit any of the usual molds. Believe me, if he weren't my son I wouldn't get it either.
It is hard for me to see that a 60s upbringing would have made a drastic difference for my son. It is easy to say that my son's behavior would be different if I had disciplined him differently.
It's another thing to actually try to do it. What's particularly strange is, in some ways his behavior really hasn't changed much since he was literally a couple of weeks old.
David In Indy:
Paul Harris was a women's clothing store. My mother use to shop at it all the time. The Paul Harris store my mother use to take us to was in Devington Shopping Center here in Indy. Devington was a strip mall (all one floor) but she would make us sit on the front window sill (inside the store) for what seemed like hours. I remember sitting there and looking at all the women's clothes and wishing I could wear some of them... and I was probably five or six years old at the time!
I guess in some strange way, I am trying to justify my mother's forms of punishment and also compare it with the way parents discipline their children today (at least here in the U.S.) I think my mother was somewhat confused anyway. She was French-Lakota (not a good mixture in my opinion). The Lakota accepted homosexuality (actually elevating gay people to level of sacred honor) while of course the French (Catholic) discouraged and condemned homosexuality. Add to the mix that this was the 1960's (just as Vatican II was passed into church law) and we now have a mixture for disaster.
Mom has been dead for more than three years now, and personally I think she went to her grave trying to mix and match her Lakota beliefs with her Catholicism.
I am not judging or condemning ANYONE on either side, in any way, shape or form. I just remember what I remember, and that was a long time ago. And like I said, things have changed. Every parent knows and understands his or her child better than anyone, and therefore the parent is the best person to choose how to discipline the child (sans harsh punishment of course).
serious crayons:
Well, I will say that there is no way in hell my kids would sit in a windowsill for hours, or even minutes, at a time. I could punish them, bribe them, threaten them ... they just wouldn't. I suppose if they knew they would literally get beaten if they moved from the windowsill, the might. But I think there are a lot of kids who would stay at the windowsill without having been beaten into submission -- they're just different kinds of kids.
David, you had different parents and different issues. I don't mean to minimize yours at all.
But I think less of the differences between kids has to do with the parents' choice of discipline or the era in which they grew up -- there are just different kinds of kids!
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