The most priceless gift of all (Other Gifts for Children)

Member Name: dave27

Product:	Other Gifts for Children
Date:	15/07/01 (81 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: They will see it as good in the end

Disadvantages: Heart rending

Gifts for children? You've got to be kidding, these bottomless wells of material envy get quite enough as it is and it shouldn't need me to tell you any more about it....

Okay, rampant hysteria time over and let's have a vaguely serious view on the matter from the dave27 Big Book of How to go about Life...

This is Chapter 22 - The Greatest Gift of all - Discipline....

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You must have seen them - those hard pressed and world weary mothers in the shopping mall, dragging around four or five of the bleeding awful kids from Hell, all off doing exactly what they want and not responding in any way whatsoever to Mrs Downatheels' plea 'Please, don't touch that, Frogmella...'

She's got just two choices in such a situation - she can either pretend it's not happening and ignore all the bad behaviour and run the risk of something serious happening or worse still someone looking down on her haughtily, silently intoning 'Can't you control your kids....'; or worse still, adopting the role of Genghis Khan or Atilla the Hun or referee David Elleray and giving them the thrashing of their lives.

Ooh dear, neither of those options are really pleasant ones and the best advice I can give is leave them padlocked at home while you go shopping....

But you can't do that for ever and sooner or later you're going to face the need to exercise control over your little treasures. Well, I don't know if any of this is going to be of the slightest iota of use, but for what it's worth I'll give you a few helpful hints from my perspective.

As you may have sussed by now, this op doesn't deal with dolls or games or holidays but something far more difficult to pin down - discipline and control and the ability to realise when something is wrong

As you may have realised the dave27 clan has two dave27-ettes. Lewis is 11 and
a right little terror, while Bethany is six going on 26 (God, I sound so bloody middle aged, it'll be zip up slippers and cardigans next).

Mrs D constantly accuses me of having double standards and treating these two demons differently, but I've told her, it's all down to Dominant Male Syndrome, the drive for both me and Lewis to be the head of the family, the firmly ensconced superior being who reigns supreme, so I'm always likelier to be harder on him than on old Big Cow Eyes Bethany with her easily generated tears and fake sorrow.

Don't get me wrong, I love them dearly but they can be the nearest thing on earth to the spawn of the devil at times (I suppose that's true with Mrs D sitting regularly at Lucifer's right hand as she plots her schemes of world domination).

Anyway, I find Lewis the more difficult of the two to control and there are times when he drives me to the ultimate despair and I could cheerfully see myself beating him to a pulp. However, always in some strange way Reason prevails and I manage to grit my teeth.

I've found that the withdrawal of privileges or even more preferably attention does the trick - somehow the first born son always feels he's missing out on your attention and will do anything to gain it - it is extremely difficult to just ignore him at times, especially when he's done something really bad and your immediate urge is to rip him to shreds, but somehow you have to perfect THE GLARE and THE SCOWL and the MYSTERIOUS WAY OF IGNORING THEM WHILE MAKING IT CLEAR THAT VENGEANCE WILL BE THINE.

Luckily I've managed to develop these almost mythical abilities these days and the way I did it was one day to threaten to bin Lewis' N64 games. I'd threatened before of course and never followed through and he knew it, so he pushed further. You have to be prepared as a last resort to carry out any threat you make and this one time I took The Legend
Of Zelda and hurled it twenty yards up the road into the gutter and refused to tell him where it was - he was distraught and truly distressed and ever since he's known what may happen when I turn on THE LOOK.

In terms of Bethany, it's much harder because she's the perfect Daddy's Girl and can turn on the sobs at a moment's notice, but I go really hard at that point, grab her by both arms and say 'No, stop it...' and the shock of such unusual behaviour seems to break her out of it.

There are no formulas here, but you have to find a way that works for you and yours - but don't threaten without being prepared to follow through - they will sense the weakness and then they have you......

Just in case you give me all those normal criticisms of this op not being on subject, think... gifts are something that you give to somneone you love which they will treasure and which hopefully will benefit them all their lives - in my not so humble opinion, self discipline and self control are two of the most wonderful gifts of all and should be cherished like no others...

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