I love my kids, I just hate parenting
Disciplining your kids is hard.
It requires nuance. You can’t yell all the time, because it loses its effectiveness after a while. You can’t spank ever because you were spanked by your parents when it was acceptable and are now you are totally insane and probably in jail. You need to develop tricks. Time-outs, good cop/bad cop, the Parent Voice, etc.
Most of the time, getting your kids to behave boils down to two strategies: threats and bribes.
I have a 7-year-old and an almost 2-year-old. Which means my oldest is mostly past tantrums (one would hope!), and my youngest is just about to make them his primary means of communication. Can’t wait!
Tantrums are tough. You can’t really blame the kid, especially not the young ones who are still learning how to express themselves while also grappling with those pesky emotions. But that doesn’t mean you can’t try to figure out how to better handle them, to calm your kid down and keep yourself from losing your shit and/or mind.
Unfortunately, many of the proposed tactics aren’t always possible in the heat of the moment.
Read more about Expert Tips For Tantrums Are Great (In Theory) …
A friend of mine recently published a book about fatherhood. It’s called “Man v. Child” and it’s both the funniest dad book I’ve ever read and the only dad book I’ve ever read!
Relax, this isn’t a book review. I don’t do book reviews, because I don’t read parenting books and because I don’t feel qualified to review books and because I don’t need every yahoo out sending me their book. But very early in this one, the author, Doug something or other, raises an interesting question.
He asks the reader to consider what their dads were like as parents, and then asks the following question, based on their dad’s track record: “What can you fix?”
What if the answer is nothing?
Kids are dumb. Everyone knows that!
It’s not their fault, at least not at first. Everyone is born a blank slate. Kids don’t know anything. It’s our job as parents to clue them in to all of it. Even the obvious stuff.
This isn’t news. Not a single one of us has ever met a baby who could hold a conversation worth a damn.
Bored kids are the worst.
Kids hate being bored so much it makes them blind. Blind to the hundreds of toys staring them in the face, blind to the dozens of books within arms reach, blind to the open space and fresh air in the backyard.
They hate it so much it makes them deaf, too. Deaf to their parents reminders of all those toys and books. Deaf to their parents’ threats that if they don’t stop complaining about being bored, all those toys and books will be given to someone who will actually use them!
About the only thing it doesn’t make them is mute, because bored kids literally never stop telling you about it.