Pondering the occasional well-timed smacking.

We are mostly nonsmackers in our house, reserving the smack for the life threatening actions (running on to the road) and occasions where the parents are too tired to negotiate. It's rare, but if I say, "Mummy is getting too cross and if you don't listen I'm going to give you a smack." It gives the kids a clue that they're pushing the limits. We rarely have to follow through. We never do the explosive out of the blue smack, that's scary and unproductive. We give warnings, and we do what we say we are going to do. The kids know this and respect it 99% of the time which is pretty good I reckon.

Today my 2yo and I are at loggerheads. Again. This time over getting dressed after her swimming lesson. I reason with her (you'll be cold, the car will be wet, Mummy has to get home and clean, you have to get home and have lunch, how can we do those things if you don't get dressed?) over and over. All I get is stalwart refusal over and over, rising in pitch and volume every time. I'm not going to forcibly undress her, she'll fight and get hurt. So, it's time for threats (or in politically correct speak, consequences). I don't ever make a threat I don't intend to carry out as I believe it makes for ineffectual parents. Kids cotton on to you reaaaal quick - Dad's not really going to throw me into the tumble dryer/leave me at the zoo on my own/make me sleep in the shower....

There's a limited amount you can do in a public change room so I raise my voice slightly over the single-minded 2yo naysaying and tell her this: "If you don't get dressed, I will pick you up as you are, take you to the car and plonk you in it. It will be cold, you will be uncomfortable, Mummy will be cross and there will be no nice things when you get home."

2yo weighs this up in her head and decides to give it a go.

Because I'm wearing black and I don't want chlorine all over my clothes, and I'm carrying two bags, when I pick her up it's pretty uncomfortable so she starts to scream. I carry her screaming to the car, manage to get the door open and dump her unceremoniously into the car seat, strap her in tell her that of course she's uncomfortable and it's HER fault for not getting dressed.

She screams all the way home in the car.

She screams when I get her out of the car, plonk her on our already abused couch and slam the living room door.

She's still screaming after I've opened the mail and got the kettle on. I kid you not. The girl has stamina.

When she starts throwing herself against the living room door saying she has to go to the toilet I open it up (still too angry to say words) set up the toilet for her and go back to my cup of tea.

She screams because it's hard getting her wet bathers off. I leave her to it.

She screams because she's cold and wet. I leave her to it.

Finally, she stops screaming and whimpers that she'd like to get dressed now.

So now I give the lecture. The one where I say, "See? Wouldn't everything have been much nicer if you'd just listened to Mummy at the pool?" She does the usual nodding miserably until she feels like she's been forgiven (and she's dressed and warm) then instantly cheers up. We call her little miss MPD for a reason.

After all this I'm completely shattered. I'm on to my second cup of tea and I'm blogging instead of working. Something for which I'll pay dearly later on. And I can't help wondering whether a short sharp smack on the leg at the pool would have saved both of us half an hour of screaming and misery. Either way she had to learn a lesson, and after events like today's I can't help wondering whether the non-smacking way isn't the painful and psychologically scarring way.

With a well-timed smack she might have learned that she'd taken it too far and that she'd better hop out of her bathers quick smart next time or she'll get another one and they're not nice. With the non-smacking method she learns that on occasion she can scream her heart out and Mummy won't care (I was pretending but she doesn't know that), she learns about the powerlessness of being locked in a room at someone else's whim, and being left wet and cold to freeze in order to learn a lesson about the consequences of not getting dressed. When I put it this way, the latter sounds more like torture than the well-timed smack.

My Therapist is on FaceBook - my plight. Those after Ethics can scroll to the end.

Hi all, I had to remove this page.

However, since it was extremely popular and apparently useful to patients and practising therapists alike I have decided to make an emailed copy available. Just send me an email at emervents@gmail.com with "Therapist" in the subject header and I will email you a copy, usually within 24 hours.

I will not keep your email address.

Cheers

Emervents

Pink Schmink - I don't get why some feminist mothers don't like pink. The real front line is somewhere else.

So it turns out that you can want to dress head to toe in pink, dress all your teddies in pink, and still find trucks interesting. Who knew?



I don't know why she's obsessed with pink, all I know is that it must be a gender thing as the people who market toys to children colour their products for a reason. My guess is that the pink girl toys outsold the blue girl toys resulting in the pink isle you see in the toy shop today. I think it's funny that the fact that the isle is almost entirely blindingly bright pink negates any advantage there may have been in making your product pink in the first place. These days a pink toy is lost in the searing haze of pinkness...

One of the more common arguments against dressing girls in pink is that there are assumptions inherent in pink. Assumptions about gender, purpose and societal roles. Apparently by dressing girls in a certain colour we're dooming them to an unfulfilling life in the kitchen (and that a life in the kitchen is deemed to be unfulfilling is a whole other bugbear of mine that I won't go into here).

The social constructs that are dooming girls to roles they find unfulfilling are far bigger than pink clothing. They are companies that discriminate against women on the basis of gender or family commitments, unaffordable childcare, and crusty old blokes like an ancient chemistry lecturer of mine who made it quite clear to me that in his opinion anyone with a vagina didn't belong in a laboratory and ought to be doing social work. He has retired now thank goodness. More and more of those crusties are retiring (a good thing) but unless we're careful they'll be replaced with blokes who are quite happy to continue a company tradition of rewarding people who are willing to work themselves to the bone at the expense of time with their families. In this kind of culture the children need a parent at home if they are to get any one-on-one parenting at all. And of course, in this kind of culture the at home parent is bound to be the birth mother as she needs all that time off to have the baby anyway... Changing the colour of your precious girl's clothing is not going to make one whit of difference to this kind of work culture.

So, as we don't want to return to those dark ages, I'll tell you where I think the real front line is. The people on the front line are the mothers returning to work who are organising job-sharing, or working out how their job can be performed part-time, or working out how they can do some of their work from home. Also on the front line are the fathers who are doing the same, braving up to bosses, swimming against a current of a century's worth of dogma and stating that they need parenting leave or part-time/flexible hours too, as they'd like to do some, duh, parenting. The real changes aren't caused by banning a clothing colour, they're caused by brave parents who are willing to break molds to create a work culture that is equitable in that it allows both men and women into the workforce without leaving our children in the lurch. So dress your girlies in whatever colour you like, you're not going to make a difference to your daughter's prospects until it is taken for granted that both sexes will participate in the workforce and do their share around the house. And for that to happen.... well... let's say it's going to be a little harder for parents than choosing a colour for clothing.

Messies Anonymous Strikes my kitchen

Tonight at 10.30 pm I surveyed my cluttered kitchen with familiar despair. Competing in my head was my stern whipping voice berating me for my laziness and my more forgiving, reasonable voice: "You got home at 6 pm managed to feed the kids something fresh and colourful, nit-combed everyone including yourself, twice, then got them clean and into bed. You now have an hour and a half of household paperwork ahead of you. Give yourself a break!"

My forgiving voice was winning and I was about to leave it and turn out the light when my brand new Messies Anonymous voice piped up: "Set the kitchen timer for ten minutes. Just give it ten minutes. THEN you can leave it."

So I gave it ten minutes, and now the dishwasher is on, the benches are clear, the rubbish is ready to go out and I have some chamomile tea to accompany my paperwork. Rock on.

Ode to strategy computer games for kiddies.

My 11yo has picked up a book of myths and legends that I used to love as a child *thrilled*.

When he told me that it was really great, and I mentioned that we'd tried to get him interested a while ago but maybe he was too little he replied:

"Mum, that was before I had Age of Mythology."

How am I supposed to complain about all his screen time now?

The Trials and Tribulations of Researching Vaccines if you're just a Mummy

I've put some up some posts on Emervents triggered by a conversation I had about vaccines on facebook. Yey for social networking!

Thinking about Vaccines? Thinking of Googling? Found AVN or VISA? Think again.

and

Critique of AVN's 10 Reason's Parents Question Vaccination

As with all blog posts about issues I feel strongly about, they are WAY long.

Thank you Messies Anonymous

My thank you letter to Messies Anonymous. Some things just change your life for the better:

A life long hoarder and messie I've been subscribing to your emails for a year now. Having just one thing to work on for the day, whether that be "stow as you go" or "work on your inspiration point" made it easy for me to follow a "get well program" without being overwhelmed. For a long time I was only able to do that one thing in the email, sometimes not managing to do it at all. Then one day I realised I'd cleaned my inspiration point as well as done a ten minute tidy - two things in one day! A few months later I realised I was regularly waking up to a clean kitchen. And yesterday, yesterday was a revelation. My aunt dropped in for coffee, looked around my living room and said, "This is such a lovely room!" No-one has ever said that about my house before. My husband also called to ask if we could have someone for dinner that evening and I could say yes with absolutely no feelings of panic. The livingroom and bathroom were clean and tidy, the kitchen was ready to go. Guest for dinner? No problem.

What amazes me about your program is the way the change sneaks up on you. Once I was committed to doing at least one thing a day (and having the emails dictate what that thing was meant I didn't have to think, just DO) the magic happened on its own. I still read your emails, and I still do that one thing even though my house looks as though I no longer need it. I keep the Messies Manual by the bed and read that when I feel like I'm getting behind again or when I need more motivation to dejunk. I do it because I know that I still need it, that my bad habits are still lurking in the background waiting to be given free rein again.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for your inspiration and help.

http://www.messies.com