Parent Thread

Izo, no acting like a child in the parent thread.

Saw a lot of people talking about behavioral stuff and spanking on the last page (50 posts per page). The thread has mostly derailed from that discussion, but I didn't see anyone weigh in with this perspective, and I felt compelled to speak my peace.

I try to approach my parenting first and foremost by remembering that my son is a person. He might be tiny and mostly irrational, but he still has the same emotional needs and desire for stimulation that I do. For example, I'd be pretty pissed if one of you came up and took something out of my hands that I was playing with. I'mmorepatient with him because he's irrational, not less. Ninety-five times out of a hundred, if he's acting out it's because I've neglected to acknowledge/tend to something he wants. At this point he's very young so those wants are pretty easy and simple, but the concept won't change, even when he's a grown man.

Of course if my baby is doing something that's dangerous I will redirect as quickly as necessary, but I always explain why. Even though he's too young to understand me yet, I want to make a habit of not doing things arbitrarily. "Because I said so," is something I never want to say because it's probably the douchiest phrase anyone can say to another person, whether it's a parent-child relationship or not.

As far as spanking, the way I see it, spanking is hitting, and I've told my son not to hit since he was old enough to hit me. How can I expect him to not hit me if I hit him? Spanking, no matter how you explain it away to improve the perception, is still hitting. If you are at the point to where you need to hit your kid, you need to evaluate the events leading up to you feeling that overwhelmed and take steps to not let them happen again. "Because my parents spanked me and I turned out better than XXXX group" isn't a good reason to hit your kids either. Correlation is not causation.

I understand you guys have thirty kids, 6 months apart, and I'm just a naive, single child parent who will never understand how hard it is to have a snot-nosed brat tell me he doesn't want to eat his cereal because "fuck you that's why," but I think if you were honest with yourself and objectively looked at events leading up to that outburst (not just the same day, but even the recent past) you would likely find that you are failing to meet some facet of your child's needs.

I'll finish by pointing out that sometimes kids just have bad days because they're people, and people have bad days. I would like to think that I would afford my children at least as much patience as my wife and friends afford me when I'm having a shitty day instead of telling them to get over it and stop whining or whatever other nastiness you hear people say to their children.

tl;dr: Treat your kids like they're people, afford them AT LEAST the same patience you would an emotionally/developmentally stunted adult, and pay attention to what they're asking of you (and fulfill that need). My dad told me that if I want respect I need to act respectable.