Greta and I love those horrifying reality-tv nanny shows -- the ones where a British nanny shows up at an American house full of screaming, fighting children and desperate parents, and solves all of their problems in three days. Apparently the British are the world's experts on raising well-behaved children.
I know this from personal experience: when my English niece, Lily, was around six years old, I accompanied her and my sister to a kids' birthday party in London. Instead of children running around, throwing gobs of ice cream and cake at each other, at this party, the well-dressed attendees sat quietly around a table with their hands in their laps, patiently waiting their turn to have candy and cookies passed to them.
From the U.S. nanny shows, it's apparent that all American children, in contrast, are possessed by Satan: they constantly scream, viciously beat their siblings, and yell, "I hate you!" at their parents. The parents fall into one of two camps: Ineffective Yellers and Helpless Pushovers. That's the bad news about us -- the good news is that all American parents really need is for a uniformed, middle-aged British woman to show up and whip them into shape.
Watching these shows has made Greta and me wonder what kind of disciplinarians we will be. We suspect that we will overcompensate for what we know about our personal deficiencies: so Greta thinks that she might be too soft on him, and I might be too harsh.
I've been practicing (on Greta) to be a bad parent by developing House Rules to recite to Seamus: specifically, rules delivered in the most annoying format ever developed ... Things We Don't Do In This House. So far, I've admonished Greta in the following ways:
- "We don't leave dishtowels lying around in this house."
- "We don't throw tissues on the floor in this house."
- "We don't leave magazines on the food preparation area in this house."
- "We don't leave the commercials unmuted in this house."
- "We don't call Daddy a "retard" in this house."
Next, I'll work on my "As long as you're living under my roof ..." technique.
5 comments:
.... and don't forget: "I'm madder than a wet hen ... You're making me climb the walls, kid! If you don't stop that, I'm going to hit the ceiling and come down on you with both feet!"
Here's the thing, Jimbo...
You can try, for example, "We don't leave the commericals unmuted in this house" (a Drysdale rule, too), a few times, sternly even, but eventually you will find yourself saying, "Mute the f*'ing commercials before I come out there and unplug the TV for the rest of the night!"
Just sayin'.
How about the Lumberg Approach:
"Hey, Seamus, whaaaaaat's happening?...Yeaaaaaaaah....I'm going to have to ask you to go ahead and stop dropping your tooth brush in the toilet...."
Mike Judge
PAPABEAR!
I was ROLLING OFF MY CHAIR LAUGHING with this one!
What can I say?
Just make sure Seamus does not inherit the Greta "swinging-from-the-bed punch into your parental thigh" upon your nagging him to get up for school on time!
forget that discipline stuff for a long while.
I got one word for the first year.
DIAPERS. Lots of diapers.
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