I PARENT WITH ALL CAPS

The New York Times, in its Fashion & Style section, no less, is calling shouting the new spanking.

One particular anecdote sums up many of my days: a mother describes a long day spent doing things with her kids, and when, at the end of this long day, they start giving mom a hard time about going to bed, she finally snaps and yells, “This is ridiculous! I’ve been doing things all day for you!”

This kind of scenario shortens my fuse the quickest: on a day when you feel like you've achieved a deeper-than-usual bond with your child, and you go out of your way to do extra-nice things for him, just because you feel like indulging him a bit, letting him have a piece of candy even though he's usually not allowed to, and then you let him stay up to watch an extra episode of The Backyardigans because you know how much he likes that show, and THEN, when you finally try to bring this part of the day to a close, he throws a shitfit about going to bed, and you feel like he's just given you the finger.

The founder of a parenting school notes that because spanking has gone the way of castor oil, parents are frustrated:

They resort to reminding, nagging, timeout, counting 1-2-3 and quickly realize that those strategies don’t work to change behavior. In the absence of tools that really work, they feel frustrated and angry and raise their voice. They feel guilty afterward, and the whole cycle begins again.

The other day I took Jackson to the local Barnes & Noble. He was pretty well behaved, but a few times he ran off to the music section and pulled various Lego sets (weird enough that Barnes & Nobel sells Lego sets) off the shelves. Each time he strayed from the rules of acceptable behavior, I did the old counting method, and he returned to the realm of obedience before I reached the magic number of punishment.

When we were on line paying for the final collection of Bob Books (which, incidentally, we heartily endorse), a woman probably around my mother's age commended me for my calm demeanor in the face of insubordination. I tried to tell her I used low-energy behavioral enforcement because I was exhausted, but she said that I still did a good job, and I was a bit proud of myself as a parent.

Of course, I was yelling at him for something stupid he was doing an hour later. Read more...