Discipline 101
Parents have a type of internal wiring that aids them in considering a child's feelings. However, over the last few decades the information age has short-circuited the route to common sense.
Two days ago a kindergartner came up to me and suggested I read the local paper like her mommy did to her 'cause I was not greeting her best friend, my kindergartner, properly. She mumbled something about paz a tiv I tee. Which I later learned meant I should have found a better way of saying to my child, "Wear your shoes off the bus because it's cold out." I've racked my brain for a better way of saying that...but as of yet haven't found one.
I would never consider advice from a child beneath me. Children tend to say things we grown-ups cover up in paz e tiv I tee. You know, positive reinforcement, the sugar covered be-all-end-all advice for raising children.
Let's have a bit of fun with this school of thought, shall we?
Be positive. Don't matter that your little angel just hauled off and punched you in the stomach because you took away the toy truck he was about to fling at his sibling. Find a kind way of saying, that is when you recover your air and can speak positively, something that won't hurt little Joey's feelings. You certainly don't want the child emotionally crippled for life because you couldn't take a good punch.
After all it's your fault he punched you in the stomach in the first place....right??? I mean, you are the parent. It's for sure you haven't done something right. Let's see on page whatever of the newest version of Parents If You Don't Do This Your Child Will Wind Up on a Nationally Syndicated Talk Show--it says a positive approach will ensure your child's future as the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
Well that's a relief. But let's face reality...who can be positive all the time? It won't matter to you anyway if your child's on one of those talk shows, because you'll already have "stroked out" from fighting with your good old-fashioned common sense.
I have been a loyal proponent of positive reinforcement and still believe in the theory to a certain degree. However, just about the time my children became old enough to get into a "roll on the floor, kicking and screaming, hair pulling, biting, struggle of wills," I became aware that no amount of whining positively was going to untangle them. And yes, "Just let them fight it out" has been delivered to my cerebral cortex thousands of times. But this advice does not work when one child is strong as an ox and twice the other's size.
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