DEFCON 5, Baby

Please note that my cell phone works only intermittently right now, so reaching me that way is iffy. I’m exchanging it in a couple days.

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Trying to score new daycare for the kids. Primrose is terrific, but now we’ve gotta do something different. We just can’t afford that place anymore.

A couple of good candidates emerged yesterday during my frustrating search.

It’s surprising who doesn’t return your phone calls in a situation like that. As much money as we’re still going to drop on this, you’d think any potential lead would make a business owner at least call me back.

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THEBOY got in trouble yesterday, the poor kid. I say that because he’s so conscientious that he gets pretty rattled when he screws up and has to spend a few minutes in “the thinking chair.” It’s like a time-out. He’s four, so he gets to spend four minutes there.

I sent him there because he walked up to his sister and suddenly swatted her sippie cup out of her hand. She didn’t care, but I was startled at how random and mean it seemed. I was pretty pissed, and maybe that’s part of why asking him why he did it produced no answers. I know he was just messing around, just doing what he does in his never-ending quest to get a response out of her.

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So he spent his four minutes there. When I told him he was done, though, he knelt behind the chair and cried. Sad, but I stand by my punishment. I wish I hadn’t been quite so incredulous and angry beforehand, but he did deserve to be punished.

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Spanking… heh heh… You know, lots of folks are against it. I don’t claim to have the answers, but by and large, I’ve found that these people do not actually have kids.

THEBOY has had a handful of spankings, and they were mostly noise-making, dramatic affairs intended to make a point rather than inflict pain. Usually it’s a rolled up newspaper, which makes a nice pop but probably doesn’t hurt at all. And I’m guessing it’s been well over a year since Kevin’s been spanked. Laura, not yet two, has not been spanked.

In our household, the threat of a spanking is the motivator on those rare occasions when unusually bad behvior is on display. It’s kind of like nuclear capability; you hate to think you could actually use it, but sometimes you have to conduct your business while making it clear that it’s a very real possibility.

Experts say that you’re gaining nothing by, say, punishing a violent child with violence. I can’t disagree with that.

But that’s not really what’s going on here. I’m talking about something that’s more flash than anything, something that will always (hopefully) trump whatever escalation some misbehaving kid will dish out. A two-year-old is fully capable of going absolutely, 100% ballistic and inconsolable and unstoppable over absolutely nothing. Church, restaurant, back yard… any time, any place. Sometimes you know if you’ve crossed the line regarding one of their quirks, sometimes the problem is as likely to be sunspots or the budget deficit for all you know.

No love or logic will reach them, and a time-out is comically ineffective. You can’t punish a kid with a time-out if they won’t STAY in the designated place. Then it’s just a wrestling match, and that doesn’t do much.

Popping the kid’s rump sends the message: Because of what you did, I will do the worst thing you can imagine by spanking you. I am the Daddy, the controller, the one who ultimately has the say-so here, and I will pick you up, put you across my knee and humiliate you as a consequence of your bad behavior.

The shame of having been spanked is, I’d venture to say, more of a motivator than the spanking itself.

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I’m lucky THEBOY'S a very good, very conscientious kid. THEGIRL is so far a question mark. Sweet, cuddly… and when she’s pissed off she’ll grab the closest object, throw it, and glare at you as if to ask, How do you like THAT?? It's remarkable to witness.

And I know kids for whom the threat of spanking probably wouldn’t work. And they’d certainly call bullshit or maybe even laugh to get bent over a knee and receive glancing, painless pops. When I was a kid I watched Cecil, who was about six, get spanked. He was going bananas, so his father was whooping his butt.

Cecil just laughed. That would require a different approach, I imagine.

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So write me if you want, shoot down my approach. Ridicule me, I don’t care.

Then let me watch the next time you’re, say, at a softball game with your two-year-old, seated behind home plate, and the kid goes nuts because it’s time to leave. Flailing, screaming at 120 decibels (too loud, in fact, to even hear your early efforts at staying calm), endangering himself since he’s on the bleachers), interrupting the game. Please do share whatever technique you have that’ll make some point with this kid, something that will stop the escalating scene that would continue into the vehicle, back to the house, into bath time and well into bedtime, as you know from experience.

I thought at first that ignoring it was the key. Take them away from the scene, put ‘em in their room or outside the business or whatever and let them blow off steam. Yeeeeeah… THEBOY could do (and has done) that for HOURS. I’m not sure he’d ever realize he’s being ignored; it’s pure rage. It becomes a waiting game, a contest of wills at that point. Should your entire evening/afternoon/whatever be wrecked because you’re determined to ride out this fit instead of launching the nukes?

I finally decided that, you know, the point does need to be made that such fit-pitching is unacceptable behavior.

How exactly DO you deliver the message that this behavior won’t be tolerated now or any time?

DEFCON 5, baby.