Your kid is a spoiled brat. He gets everything he wants. Because of your lack of discipline and your overly lenient parenting, your child is quickly morphing from innocent boy to a full-blown sociopath, leaving a wasteland of broken hearts and gravy boats in his path. You are a tactless, careless sycophant and now your offspring is, too.
That is, verbatim, the speech I hear in my head every time I let my son get away with being destructive without the proper amount of consequence. It's always stated in an English accent too, which I never quite understood. Put simply, one of my main concerns as a father is that I'm either not disciplining my kids enough or I'm overreacting and doling out too much punishment. Ultimately, I will be held accountable for 50% of my kids' impact on society, for better or worse. So, I am continually questioning whether or not I'm doing the best job I can. I believe the easiest way to articulate the frustrations of disciplinary decisions is to describe a typical scenario and let you guys decide on your own how you'd handle it.
I arrive home from work at 6:35 PM on a Thursday night. Antonio is intently focused on building a castle of blocks and Nate is staring at the remote control like it were a Filet Mignon. I enthusiastically greet both of them and reach out to rub their heads playfully. Nate giggles. Antonio so much as blinks. In fact, he rarely provides a salutation when socially expected to give it. I try to force the issue, but only end up annoying him, being greeted instead with a dismissive wave and a grunt. The more I persist, the madder he grows. He goes as far as to push me away angrily. I decide to walk away. As I'm walking away, Nate does the unimaginable- he knocks over Antonio's block castle that he'd been working on for at least seven minutes. Before I can turn around, Antonio pushes Nate backward onto the hardwood floor, causing a painful thud, a volcano of tears and a pathetic siren-wail. As furious as I am with Antonio, though, I'll admit that I understand his frustration. I mean, that was one impressive castle.
So I find myself shouting, "Aw, Nate, why'd you....Antonio, why'd you....gahhhhhhh!!!!" I grab Antonio and put him in his room with the door closed. And I'm not sure why this is a punishment as all of his favorite toys are in there. But he flips out regardless, pounding on his door and knocking over and shattering a picture frame in the process. But how do I punish him for that? If I do, the tantrum will escalate and inevitably, all our dinners will get cold. And we all know steak doesn't heat up well. So I decide to let it slide, braving the storm and clutching Nate close to me for protection (mine, not his). Twenty minutes later, after finally calmed down, Antonio sits down to dinner and immediately spills his milk. He looks at me annoyed and insists, "I'm thirsty." I don't say a word and sop up the milk. Then, later before bed, when he least expected it (and when I even least expected it), I screamed at him to brush his teeth. He'd worn me down. And I was all out of logic.
As a parent, we need to pick our battles. But occasionally the battles pick us. I mean, was I not supposed to punish Antonio for pushing Nate even though his anger was justified (again, this castle was pretty damn special)? I was, after all, right there. Should I continue to administer the pain while my kids are wreaking havoc on my personal property? These are all questions that crowd my brain before the inevitable glass of wine and Xanax combination. Then my brain seems to empty like the fourth quarter of a blowout football game.
Am I alone here? I'm interested in hearing from other parents who too often face the dilemma of "how harshly should I punish my kids, and where do I draw the line?"
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I will soon start to incorporate live video with this blog to spruce it up a bit for the holidays. Feel free to share this with friends if you enjoy it. When my book comes out next year, I'd love for thousands of you to be reading my chaotic tales!
-Joe DeProspero
jdeprospero@gmail.com
