House of Eratosthenes

Up to a certain age it is normal and expected for your offspring to fail to distinguish between minor irritants, perceived slights, dull discomforts, petty jealousies, cranky moods, and emergencies. Where your child is at now, everything is an emergency, and the only way to address any such emergency is to annoy you.

This is all obvious to anyone who’s been a parent, in fact it’s the story of your life right now. But let’s have a refresher course about that last word shall we? You. Parents & maybe the big siblings. Family. For the rest of us, it isn’t as cute as you seem to think it is.

But that that’s not as important as what follows, nor is there as much breathtaking ignorance about it as there is about what follows.

Doing whatever it is you have to do to get the “BLLLAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!” to stop is not your top priority. Shaking the favorite doll and making a funny face, giving the child whatever it is that it wants, murmuring “Shshshshsh,” offering it your soothing voice, saying its name, singing a song — this is not Job One. No, Job One is to express your disapproval.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Because I’m a middle aged fat man with a sedentary lifestyle, I spent the first half of today on my mountain bike. But I don’t do forty or fifty or sixty miles in one stretch. I take prolonged rest stops in populated retail places, catching up on various projects on my laptop, and maybe that’s a mistake since I don’t have the right temperament for the strangers who surround me. But it’s becoming an all too common sight to see parents shushing their noisy demanding young children through various means without taking any effort whatsoever to work on Job One. Some of them are actually sensitive to the pressing demand of Job Two which is to spare the nearby strangers a migraine by bringing the cacaphony to an end. Without killing the child. And don’t get me wrong, that is appreciated. But how in the world do you think kids grow out of this?

Everywhere I look where there is a child that is young, it always seems to be happening like this. The parents do the whatever, but it’s never made clear to the child that there is a societal/cultural expectation that this protocol should eventually change. Not a single indication of it; not so much as a trace, not a syllable, not a peep. The child is, in effect, held to the same profile of acceptable behavior that applies to a newborn when the child is no longer a newborn. By the time the signature noise becomes a weary but piercing squawk, the signs are there that the child is picking up the idea that this is normal behavior. That, and that it is always, always, always the child’s turn to make the noise. Nobody within earshot has anything else demanding their attention, at least nothing worthy of it. Simple formula preserved from baby-hood: I want something, minus having it, equals an emergency. Emergency equals yelling, and what good is yelling if it doesn’t reverberate off the farthest wall?

People who are older than me, make it abundantly clear that this is not the way it worked when they were kids. When I was a kid, there was something of a schism going on; some parents thought it was the job of the rest of the world do things for their kids, and other parents thought it was the job of their kids to do something for the world. Now it seems this conflict has reached a conclusion. It seems all the kids are being raised the same way and I’m not sure I like it, nor am I pondering where it all leads with too much satisfaction.

Try “no.” It’s a single syllable, for a reason. Your child is ready for this broadening of the horizons much, much earlier than you think. Yeah yeah, I know, “self esteem” and what not. Did it ever occur to you that self worth might be different from a feeling of self worth? Or, that an occasional rejection maybe, just maybe, might not inflict lifetime damage upon either one of those?

Maybe, by hovering around the retail environments, I’m only seeing a piece of society. A random sampling that isn’t that random. Maybe it’s like the cop who goes out to too many domestic disputes and becomes convinced the world’s going to pot, because he’s seen an average that isn’t an average. Maybe the “Always Junior’s Turn to Talk & Squawk” fad is merely an aberration.

Even though I’m seeing it everywhere I look. Maybe the generation that is coming up, is considerably different from what I am seeing.

Hope so.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News and Washington Rebel.

From the movie “The Idiot”
“I don’t care about the money, I care about all the stuuuuuuuff.”

Hey, what started this whole “Health care benefits” as a perquisite of “employment” brew-ha-ha anyway?

What started this whole “temporary” income tax thing anyway?

Who reconstructed this whole “right” to be paid, for contraproduction, thing anyway?
- CaptDMO | 03/13/2011 @ 08:08
You have just witnessed The Birth of a Leftist.

Leftists start out by never being told “no” as children. Thus they never learn to distinguish between a minor annoyance and Teh Worst Outrage Evar!!!eleventy1!.

Then leftists go to grade school, where they don’t get beaten up enough. The one time they do get a wedgie, they complain to the principal, and the bully is sent to years of sensitivity counseling. Thus they learn that the heavy hand of bureaucratic authority trumps interpersonal relations, and they never learn how to deal with other people.

Then leftists go to college, where they learn lots of fancy 50 cent words to mentally transform their hardened prejudices into some Grand Unified Theory of Everything. Thus they learn that, wonder of wonders, all the great scientific, artistic, and philosophical achievements of mankind confirm that the world is exactly how they think it is… which is exactly the same as they thought it was lo those many years ago, when they first had the opportunity to be told “no.”
- Severian | 03/14/2011 @ 07:45
It’s called house training and not enough parents are doing it these days.
- Daphne | 03/15/2011 @ 16:32
PWAC.

Parenthood Without Any Confrontation.

It will eventually destroy us…
- mkfreeberg | 03/15/2011 @ 16:34
I’m one of those parents right now, and I tell you, it’s tougher than it looks on paper. Any conscientious and mature parent wants to be good to the people around him, so it’s a pretty natural reflex to try and quiet the kid down ASAP. Still, you have to be aware that everything you do with the child is a teaching moment, so your point about not taking the parenting easy road is strong and valid. And it’s the one that those of us who are parents of small children should stick with.

It’s like Daphne says: You really need to pound it into them at home, and that will make it easier in public.
- Andy | 03/16/2011 @ 07:56
I witnessed this at Walgreens today. This lady was over at the pharmacy/medicine aisle. She had this 5 year old girl walking along behind her.

“BLLLAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!”

“BLLLAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!”

“BLLLAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!”

“BLLLAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!”

Now folks… I know the difference between the sound of a child who is truly in pain or really not feeling well, and a child who is incessantly pressing the “annoying” button until mom/dad break down and give him/her what it is he/she is “BLLLAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!!”-ing about.

It becomes even more apparent when the child stops and suddenly finds the capacity to speak in a normal voice, and then when that didn’t have the desired effect goes right back to

“BLLLAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!”

“BLLLAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!”

“BLLLAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!”

“BLLLAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!”

Incidentally, kudos to you, Morgan, for realizing that the “BLLLAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!”-child is a minor annoyance and not something over which to call the cops or go ballistic 😉

Obi-Mom has taught you well. 😀
- philmon | 03/16/2011 @ 14:51
Saw it again since then. Three year old, or so, was exploring in the shrubbery where Mom didn’t want to go and she wanted him out. So she starts counting. “One…” And the child responds with a frustrated wail, as if to say “Well that sucks, you can yammer at me as long as you don’t mean it, I don’t want you to mean it.” And I thought, well good. Finally one of these “counting” parents has a good system going, something must have happened behind closed doors that our pussy liberals shouldn’t find out about. But obviously there’s been some communication with the child, in a way that means something to him. That’s good.

Just as I’m about to round the corner and pass out of sight, she gets to three.

Short pause…and then…

“One…”

For one…brief…shining…moment…there was light…at the end…of the tunnel.

We are so screwed.
- mkfreeberg | 03/16/2011 @ 14:58
The pisser, Phil, is that an awful lot of people think that any little peep out of someone’s child in public is unacceptable. In the forums of my neighborhood blog recently, a newcomer to the area submitted the question “Where are the kid-friendly restaurants in town?” The number of people piping up to condemn the appearance of children in public was seriously disheartening. Of course, most of them probably are single, refer to their dogs as their “children,” and don’t think leash laws apply to them. A predictable and boring lot.
- Andy | 03/16/2011 @ 14:59
I may be flooding this post with comments – three year old and a six week old at home.

I do the counting thing, but there is NEVER any ambiguity. I actually give her ’til the count of 5 – figure I’ll do her the favor of letting her think about it for 2 more beats – and if she isn’t at my side by then, she’s getting picked up by the nearest appendage, or the dinner she is refusing to eat is getting thrown away.
“Buuut IIIIII WAAAAAAANT IIIIIIT!”
“Then maybe next time you’ll eat it.” The results don’t lie.

I do get tripped up sometimes, like when I need her to come back to me, and sometime around the count of 3 or 4, she does something ridiculously cute. Hard to keep the stern face on.
- Andy | 03/16/2011 @ 15:06
Well, Andy, I am not one of those people. I know all about the ridiculously cute bit, and I’m not completely immune to it. I happen to have the cutest grandson … IN THE WORLD …

I have no problem with a reasonably well-behaved child in public … which mine is 🙂

Dr. John Rosemond has it right. I once sent three books of his to a good friend of mine when I met her daughter and found her discipline to be …. wanting.

It helped her, and we’re still good friends. Actually better friends than ever, and I’ve known her since I was about 14.
- philmon | 03/16/2011 @ 15:30
I see his website has changed a lot, and one might get the wrong idea about him.

But if you click on his Bio/family link, and especially if you scroll down to

John’s positions on items of “controversy”…

You’ll get an idea what I mean
- philmon | 03/16/2011 @ 15:39
I see his website has changed a lot, and one might get the wrong idea about him.

For a minute there, I thought you were talking about me.
- Andy | 03/16/2011 @ 15:44
No no. Mr. Rosemond.
- philmon | 03/16/2011 @ 15:50

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