Monkey See, Monkey Do - I Vote Nurture



Tabula rasa could be simply put as the nurture side of the nature versus nurture argument.

Recently, I wrote a paper arguing that the nurture side of the argument determines how we choose to behave throughout our lives. In each person I interviewed for the purpose of this paper, their responses showed they behave in ways their parents did rather than in ways their parents told them to behave. It is my belief, that if your mother was flighty and went any way the wind blows, you have a higher chance of behaving in that same way throughout your life.

Recently, I had a discussion with my parents regarding how I was raised compared to how I live my life now, with the word "discussion" being used lightly. Without going into too much personal detail, I have found that my desire for increase, success, and my high ambition came from how both my parents chose to behave around me and toward me during my childhood. While this sounds like it was a positive way to raise me, it seems to have backfired as my parents tell me I "should" do this or "should" behave this way when I do something that goes against what they want for me, but yet is the way I observed them behave as a child.

What I'm finding time and time again is that it does not amount to crap when you tell your children something if you're showing them something different. You are your child's role model. Telling them one thing while behaving in the complete opposite way, no matter what the topic, doesn't work and never will. "Do as I say, not as I do" is crap.

And on that note, I'll simply close with one change always leaves the wya open for the establishment of others by Machiavelli. Seems to fit, and after the events of tonight, I think some need to read this and understand it.







Blogophilia 46.4 Topic: "Any Way The Wind Blows"
Bonus Points:
(Hard, 2pts): use a Machiavelli quote
(Easy, 1pt): incorporate 'tabula rasa'

Are you going to choose to be peaceful or angry?



There's nothing like hind sight to tell you what you did wrong and to point out every sign in the universe that attempted at leading you in the right direction.

The story ends with me sitting on my front porch, cigarette in one hand and my phone in the other, talking to my mother about what just happened shortly before, and realizing, as I spoke, every minor second where I went wrong and missed some sort of sign. It ends with me realizing I could have completely avoided a dramatic situation of chasing my 5-year old around a busy store and then ending up at home, belt in one hand and his hands restrained in the other. (Which, by the way, is not against any law for all you do gooders with no children. It is completely legal to whip my child, even with a belt, as long as I do it on his bottom and leave no marks. And since it would be considered child pornography, I won't post pictures of his mark-free buttox online.)

So it began with a quick trip by Wal-Greens on the way home. I happened to remember that Caden (my 5 year old) needed pull ups.

Let me back up a second... Caden has been talking, for weeks (since the last time we went into Wal-Greens), about these dang Cars 2 Walkie Talkies he saw right up in the front of the store. I kept telling him I don't have the money right now to buy them nor has he had a long enough streak of good behavior to have earned something that expensive yet. (Mind you, I had no clue how much those things were, but I knew it was a bigger reward item.)

Anyway, back to tonight.

We pull into the Wal-Greens parking lot when Caden begins, yet again, about how he really REALLY wants those walkie talkies. This has been something he has asked me every day for about two weeks, and it REALLY becomes fresh on his mind when we pull into the parking lot of the store where he remembered seeing them.

We walk into the store, and I tell him, for the third time since we pulled in the parking lot, that we are not there to get toys. He goes straight up to the shelf where he remembered seeing the toy before, and they weren't there. (yay!)

Unfortunately, it didn't end there. He then proceeds to ask the lady behind the register where the walkie talkies were. I tell him, again, that we aren't getting them. The lady behind the register says 'we don't have walkie talkies here.' (yay!)

I finally tell Caden, to hopefully get him to see it my way at least for today's visit, that we will look to see if we can find the walkie talkies so we could see how much they were. I added, yet again, that we were there for pull ups and probably couldn't afford the walkie talkies today.

The lady at the register tells him that if they have that toy, it would be in the toy aisle. So we grab our pull ups and head three or four aisles over to the toys. No walkie talkies.... until...

We rounded the corner over by the pharmacy, and low and behold, there were the damn walkie talkies. Luckily, they were $30, so I thought I was going to get out of it. I told him they were too much money and we couldn't afford them. So, he tries to convince me to buy him one of the other toys on the same shelf - all Cars 2 toys too.

I tell him no. No explanation, no nothing. Just no.

I tell him no again.

Then I walk off because he is not having no for an answer.

I get down to the end of the aisle and stop to begin counting. He stands there staring at me until I get to 3, without following me like I told him to. At that point, I gave him his consequence of no play time when we get home (straight to bath and bed - down to no toys in the bathtub). I walked toward him to make him come with me, and he runs off.

I yelled 'bye' and started walking toward the register. He never followed. I even caught myself yelling across the store that I would beat the hell out of him right there in front of everyone if I had to run after him.

Nothing worked.

None of the employees did anything to help when I told them my child was loose in the store and running away from me when I went after him. No one helped when I told them I couldn't find him.

So, I paid for the pull ups and sat them down at the register in the bag. I waited by the door for a minute or two, pissed as all get-out.

This Wal-Greens has mirrors on the back wall, luckily. So I slowly began walking in the front of the store, looking down aisles and at the mirrors to see if I could see him anywhere. I finally caught a glimpse of him in the mirror, crouched down playing with a toy in the toy aisle. So, I went down the adjoining aisle and snuck up behind him. I popped him once and dragged him out the store. I figured we caused too much of a scene as it was, so he got the rest of his spanking when we got home 2 minutes later.

Now, here's the hind sight part.

I like to think of it in a humorous way....

I had the Devil on one shoulder showing me pretty things - brightly lit up signs telling me what direction to go in. Then there was God with his lightly colored, light-less, see-through signs just barely waving around in front of my face.

See, here's how it REALLY went (but I didn't see it like this at the time).

God waves his little sign briefly, whispering no dummy, as I pull into the parking lot, knowing good and well that Food Lion, Rite Aide, and Dollar General sell pull ups and are all neighboring Wal-Greens. But, the devil screamed in my ear, 'Wal-Greens has dippin dots!' (I'm a sucker for those.)

Then, God waves his little sign a little more, whispering a little louder 'no dummy,' as I allow Caden to talk me into him asking the lady at the register about walkie talkies and she said they didn't have any there. Then the devil steps in after a few seconds and has her tell him they would be in the toy aisle.

So, God waves another sign, a little bigger, yelling a little louder 'no dummy, no dummy' when we start walking toward the devil's brightly lit sign showing where the walkie talkies were.... you see... they were at the very back of the store (they were at the front at our last visit), in a corner by the pharmacy, where we had to go out of our way from the pull ups we originally went there to buy.

At that point, God backed off and said 'fine, idiot, ignore my warnings, learn the hard way, I gave you sign after sign to just ignore Caden, but noooooooo, you didn't listen. You fell for the bright and pretty and now you have to deal with it. Have fun with that fear and anger I tried to help you avoid.'

So, in short, I ignored every opportunity placed in front of me to avoid an ugly situation, and I ended up being the one causing the bigger scene and allowing my fear and anger to take over. I gave up my peace, and Caden won.

So, my rational brain and I will be having a long, in-depth discussion and parenting session in the near future.

Hickeys Vs. Weed - You Choose

Dameon...

He's a charming 15 year old boy who is very misunderstood by everyone. He's got game - very smooth with the ladies. And he rarely ceases to surprise anyone.

Dameon come home with a gigantic black and red mark smeared across the side of his neck. And low and behold, there's a matching mark half the size on the other side of his neck.

You're his parent.

You think neck blemishes are trashy.

How do you react?

Now, ponder your reaction for a few moments... if it's anger you feel toward your son, take a few moments to feel it really good.

Have you really felt it yet?

Okay, now go back to your happy place.

Here's good ole charmer, Dameon, again.

What's this? Dameon has brought a friend home today.

His friend is sporting a bright, shiny pair of new handcuffs and a freshly pressed police uniform. And he was nice enough to allow Dameon to try on those handcuffs for a few minutes. Sweet of him.

His friend informs you, the parent, that Dameon was caught down the street smoking a joint, and you now have to make sure Dameon, your son, is in the courthouse, bright and early, 9 a.m., Monday morning.

What are you feeling now?

Do you still remember the hickey? Knowing that you have to miss a day of work to take your son to court in just a few days? Does the hickey seem nearly as detrimental now as it did when you first blew up about it?

Now, let's change things up a little.

Here's Alex.

He's a precious little five year old. Your five year old.

Alex screamed at you to shut up when you asked him to clean up his room. You remember that day? You got mad. Your temper took over. He was very disrespectful! He deserved that lick with the switch, right? No five year old of yours is going to talk to someone like that, let alone his own parent!

Here's Alex again. Your precious little five year old.

Today, he's gone up to a child at school and busted his head open against the monkey bars. He can't come back to school for a while. You had a nice, long conversation with the principal today because of it. Sucks for you.

Does the anger you felt when he told you to shut up outweigh the anger you feel now? Does the lick you gave him for telling you to shut up come close to comparing to the beating you're ready to give him now?

In comparing both instances with both children, the first doesn't seem so bad, huh?

Learn to pick your battles. Don't waste energy on the smaller ones. There's always the possibility of bigger ones that will require more.

ALL MEN MAY BE CREATED EQUAL, BUT ALL PARENTING IS NOT

A child’s behavior is a complicated phenomenon. Unfortunately, when children are born, not one parent in existence is provided with an owner’s manual informing how to operate them. Each child is different from the other, requiring different methods of punishment, treatment, and levels of care. The one thing that remains constant is many parents do not understand that even though each of their children came from the same location and the same human being, each of these children must be dealt with differently. It’s not special treatment—it’s tailoring to a specific child’s needs, and it must be done in order to successfully parent and raise these children into fully functioning adults.



Unfortunately, none of us are experts at child-rearing. The whole “motherly instinct” everyone talks about is crap. It’s all a learning experience, and unfortunately, many parents have to study harder than others along the way.



For example’s sake, we’ll look at my situation. Each day that goes by, I feel like I’m having to learn how to parent all over again.

 

I am required to put on several different masks on several different occasions with my two boys, and I’ve more recently found yet another mask to wear with my youngest in particular.

One doesn’t do well with reading or spelling, but has to be babied through it when you study with him. If not, he shuts down and nothing gets accomplished. But, it’s easy to tell when he shuts down. His eyebrows scrunch together, and it’s over. Best solution is to have him go to his room and sit for a while, then try it all over again. He’s high maintenance in the learning department, requiring much special attention and extra time, but he’s very responsible and well behaved otherwise. Disciplining him is not really an issue, but I had to learn over a period of about four to five years that he requires nothing other than talking or a possible threat of his daddy getting involved in whatever issues I’m trying to correct.



The other is high maintenance in the behavior department. Punishment doesn’t work on him. The threat of punishment deters him for approximately five minutes, but the act itself, doesn’t deter him at all. Instead, it makes his behavior worse. The biggest issues, and the more recent light bulb that went off, is that he is extremely intelligent and bores easily. What I’ve realized is that he knows what he’s not supposed to do, but in fussing and explaining about what he’s not supposed to do, I’ve failed to explain to him appropriate behaviors.



The most important lesson I’ve learned when parenting any child is that they are born clueless. If you’re constantly telling a child what NOT to do, how do you expect them to know what TO do? And my youngest has been told what NOT to do a hundred times, leaving him bored of hearing it which leads to him not listening to a word I say. He knows what NOT to do, but he doesn’t understand what behaviors are appropriate to replace the things he’s not supposed to do. He just knows he’s not supposed to do something yet does it anyway, because that’s all he knows. He is the type that when he’s learning something new, he listens, which in turn means that when I explain to him the appropriate behaviors, he listens.



The most important thing I’ve learned, which remains constant with all children, is that when they’re having their version of a temper tantrum—whether that means shutting down and commencing with screaming if you keep at them or just plain going postal—you cannot reason with them. You cannot try to punish them or explain appropriate behavior with them. When they’re having their version of a temper tantrum, the best thing you can do is find a way to remove them from your sight until both parent and child calm down, and then proceed to explain things to them or provide punishment if necessary.

Good luck and happy parenting! :)