The grandchild from hell!

[Six Gun Jim]

I don't remember the cone so much but I do remember "yessir" very very well. You said sir and ma'am to EVERYBODY you met unless they said to call them by name. My dad was big on that. He would pinch the back of my arm if you just said "oh hi" or some schlub greeting. Also, YOU TOOK A BATH. There was no maybe to bath time. You could have fifty rubber ducky's and splash water all over the floor but you were not stinking up the joint.  Ahh such lovely memories. I still wait for a pinch if I forget sir or ma'am. -James

[Chickengirl]

I don't like kids but I don't see the point of telling a three-year-old he is mean for shoving his baby sibling. It's not like he is going to realize he is mean and then change. I decided to have animals instead of kids, and when one of them doesn't pay attention to "No" or starts in with one of the other animals, they get squirted with a spray bottle of water. Sometimes I think parents need one of these.

I've done this lol!

Not when my DD was young (and didn't understand), but once she hit about 4-5, and it was/is done with a giggle... from us both 

We both get a real kick out of it - she also does the same to me, when i'm teasing her 

[residualheat]

I don't remember the cone so much but I do remember "yessir" very very well. You said sir and ma'am to EVERYBODY you met unless they said to call them by name. My dad was big on that. He would pinch the back of my arm if you just said "oh hi" or some schlub greeting. Also, YOU TOOK A BATH. There was no maybe to bath time. You could have fifty rubber ducky's and splash water all over the floor but you were not stinking up the joint.  Ahh such lovely memories. I still wait for a pinch if I forget sir or ma'am. -James

We didn't have the 'Sir' and Ma'am' thing in England, but we were brought up to be polite and it was expected that children would stay quiet and out of the way when the grown ups were talking or busy. My dad had a thing he said if we misbehaved: 'This is my house so I make the rules and if you don't like it, then you can leave'. It worked just fine.

[MEA]

residualheat

the thee things I remember from the parts of my childhood that I spent in england were the public library, which we could walk to along, the fact we were allowed to ramble, in pairs or larger groups from after breakfast until tea time, and go out after that as long as there was still light, and the threat, "If you are bored, you must be tired. Go to bed." We were never bored.

[residualheat]

we were allowed to ramble, in pairs or larger groups from after breakfast until tea time, and go out after that as long as there was still light,

Same here. We ran away a couple of times but because we were back for tea time, no one noticed.

Whereabouts did you grow up, MEA?

[MEA]

Derbyshire and New Jersey (in the US) plus 2 years in Canada.

My grandparents had the perfect house for slow colapse, and I knew it when the left it in the early 80s and wanted to find someway to buy it and move back to England, but it would have had to be a family arrangement with slow payment, and it didn't happen.

[Ellie]

"You are a mean little boy and I will be glad when you go home"

I swatted at him, but missed (regretfully).

I refused to give him anything to eat until lunch time.

I refused to go

his grandfaher gave him a couple of swats on the butt


You degraded him verbally, your husband hit him, you tried to hit him but missed and you let him go hungry.

Do him a favour and keep away from him. He doesn't need that sort of treatment. He's only 3 years old for Christ's sake. A baby.

No wonder this country doesn't stand a chance.

This country doesn't stand a chance because people read about someone trying to impart the slightest bit of discipline and control over a spoiled brat of child and think that it constitutes something close to child abuse.

I am APPALLED at the behavior of kids today, but even more so at the refusal of parents to do anything to correct them. You would not believe how out of control your average toddler these days. I've had parents bring kids along to their appointment with the attorney I work for and they will just let them run wild - wandering all around the offices, pulling books off shelves, coming up and taking things off my desk, even taking the toilet paper off the role in the bathroom and stringing it all over the place. If I look even the slightest bit annoyed, the parents as often as not will get snotty with me and excuse their kid's atrocious behavior as "just playing." At BEST they will ineffectively keep repeating in a weak voice to their kids something along the lines of "sweetie, don't do that."

God forbid they actually grab the little bastards, put them in a chair, and tell them in a tone the kid will pay attention to to sit still and be quiet or ELSE.

I've actually hit my limit with this kind of crap - next time it happens (and I do have my boss's blessing on this, BTW), I'm telling the damn "parents" to get their kids under control OR ELSE.

[Dasha]

But Ellie, those 'average toddlers' are in a lawyer's office! That'll make an adult nervous. If you take those average toddlers and put them in the park, they'll be fine.

There are now 14 kids under the age of 13 on our street. I have watched them grow up from infancy. They run the gamut from privileged to welfare cases, and have had a wide variety of parenting styles. They can be fun, funny, lovable, compassionate and just plain wonderful. They can also be annoying and cruel to each other. But they are just kids.

I'd say the average child is doing okay these days - no better or worse than any other time.

[wiccawench]

God forbid they actually grab the little bastards,


nice

[Ellie]

But Ellie, those 'average toddlers' are in a lawyer's office! That'll make an adult nervous. If you take those average toddlers and put them in the park, they'll be fine.

There are now 14 kids under the age of 13 on our street. I have watched them grow up from infancy. They run the gamut from privileged to welfare cases, and have had a wide variety of parenting styles. They can be fun, funny, lovable, compassionate and just plain wonderful. They can also be annoying and cruel to each other. But they are just kids.

I'd say the average child is doing okay these days - no better or worse than any other time.

But they're not IN a park. That's the entire point. They are in a professional office. When I was a kid and had to go somewhere like that with my parents, I was expected to behave appropriately. I had very nice parents but they, rightly, would not tolerate me wreaking havoc and making a giant mess.

And it's not a matter of the parents being "nervous." In fact, by and large the parents who ARE nervous (the ones that talk very quietly, the ones that ask me if the attorney is nice, the ones who are practically begging me for reassurance that he'll be able to help them) that actually do more to keep their kids under control.

It's the other ones - the ones that swagger in looking like they're doing us a favor by actually showing up for their appointments only ten minutes late, sprawl in their chairs with their legs spread open, pull out their cell phones and start yacking loudly, or come up to me, drop their papers on my desk and TELL me to make copies (as an aside, they find out very quickly that this is a mistake) - those are the ones that act as if they think their little "darlings" are so precious and special that we should all just kiss the ground in gratitude for having been able to spend a few minutes in their disruptive, noisy, messy presence.

I've never really understood the term "just kids" anyway - they are young people that will one day grow up to be adults and if they don't learn how to behave WHILE they are kids, they are going to grow up to be, well, let's face it. At best, they are going to grow up to be just like their rude, immature and selfish parents. And that is the LAST damn thing we need.

[Dasha]

Well, seeing as you've said this:

http://www.doomers.us/forum2/index.php/topic,50732.msg737680.html#msg737680

Well, being as I hate children, I actually find this thought kind of comforting.

Okay, not really. I mean, I really hate them, but I don't actually get pleasure out of the thought of them suffering. At least generally speaking.

But in any case, to be honest, I'd be more viscerally compelled to help a starving dog. It's just the way I'm wired.

I think that you and I are very different, and probably won't be able to agree on this topic.

[Grower]

Ellie -- I don't hate kids, but I do agree with everything you said about kids in your office.

If they aren't listening by age two, you've lost them by age 12.

[golddust]

Usually any kid that acts out of control, I question what might be going on in their lives, how they may be brought up or treated by people. Some kids act "out" and some kids act "in." Most of them do a little of both, sometimes in cycles, sometimes congruently, but I automatically wonder what's going on behind the scenes if I see a holy terror or if I see a kid that seems withdrawn and sullen. There's bad parents, there's bad days, there's even bad health problems, but there's probably no bad kids. At least not 3 year olds. I bit my mom as often as I could get away with doing, and screamed at my grandmother and broke things on purpose when I was 3. I had very good reason. My mom ignored me and treated me like the biggest inconvenience ever and refused to even breastfeed on the grounds that she needed sleep and refused to change a diaper on the grounds that she had too sensitive of a stomach. (But you know, not too much of a sensitive stomach to go get drunk and stoned). And my grandma was abusive, plain and simple. My grandma used to tell people when they asked her why I was so bad, "Oh, she just came into this world angry and she's determined to stay that way." Then she'd remind people with a bad kid like this, she's a saint for not killing me. She didn't kill me (she waited until I was 7 to try that) but I still had bruises hidden under my clothes. You name a normal household object, I can describe how it feels to get beaten with it.

I have very little patience with kids, and I raised a 7 and 8 year old for 2 years who weren't even blood. Never once did I hit them or verbally abuse them or insinuate they were bad people. The worst I ever did was yank them out of the zoo immediately and take them home because they purposefully ran off from me in the 2 seconds I wasn't looking and I was not going to tolerate that. I spent 30 very panicked minutes looking for them and when I found them I grabbed both by the hand and said "CAR. NOW!!!! AND I DON'T WANT TO HEAR A SINGLE WORD OR YOU'RE GROUNDED FOR A MONTH." Some whines, but no words. Final ruling was grounded for 2 weeks, no video games, no tv, no trampoline, no bikes, no friends over and a long talk on why that was absolutely dangerous and irresponsible behavior. It was school, homework and leisure reading. Or leisure staring at their shoe laces for all I cared. I was BOILING MAD and looking back, I don't know how I didn't perpetuate the abuse cycle being that I was quite young, and only ever knew abuse in response to bad behavior, mistakes, errors in judgment, etc. But I didn't call them stupid bitches like I was called, and I didn't beat the shit out of them or even threaten it. (if you're wondering about the conclusion to that story, they never pulled that on me again and I got a sincere apology after about 2 hours of them sulking. Didn't change their punishment though!) The only explanation was that I made a choice not to. I made a choice to treat them differently than I had been treated.

I definitely believe in discipline, and any kid of mine will be raised to respect me as their mother, and respect other people and have manners, but I'm not going to shatter their sense of self or sense of safety in the world to control them and keep them in line and subdue their behavior. Doing so would say far more about my poor ability to parent and poor ability to maintain my own emotions if I have to resort to breaking their spirit in order to keep them under my control. That's only going to make them appear well-behaved for so long and then they're going to wind up being a problem to themselves in their own adult lives, and a problem to probably everyone that has to ever interact with them. It's a high price for some illusion of good behavior.

Every thing an adult does or says to a child is a choice. The victim blame "they made me do it" is a bunch of bullshit. Some people just need to really work on their coping skills for parenting. I have no doubts that the experience with them is why I take the decision to have kids SERIOUSLY and have never believed in entering that decision lightly. It's 100% or 0%. I was never willing to accept any situation of oops, I'm going to be a parent, oh well, lets see how this goes! Some people may be designed that way, I most certainly am not. Luckily I get more patient and understanding as I get older.

[PaxAm]

"You are a mean little boy and I will be glad when you go home"

I swatted at him, but missed (regretfully).

I refused to give him anything to eat until lunch time.

I refused to go

his grandfaher gave him a couple of swats on the butt


You degraded him verbally, your husband hit him, you tried to hit him but missed and you let him go hungry.

Do him a favour and keep away from him. He doesn't need that sort of treatment. He's only 3 years old for Christ's sake. A baby.

No wonder this country doesn't stand a chance.

This country doesn't stand a chance because people read about someone trying to impart the slightest bit of discipline and control over a spoiled brat of child and think that it constitutes something close to child abuse.

I am APPALLED at the behavior of kids today, but even more so at the refusal of parents to do anything to correct them. You would not believe how out of control your average toddler these days. I've had parents bring kids along to their appointment with the attorney I work for and they will just let them run wild - wandering all around the offices, pulling books off shelves, coming up and taking things off my desk, even taking the toilet paper off the role in the bathroom and stringing it all over the place. If I look even the slightest bit annoyed, the parents as often as not will get snotty with me and excuse their kid's atrocious behavior as "just playing." At BEST they will ineffectively keep repeating in a weak voice to their kids something along the lines of "sweetie, don't do that."

God forbid they actually grab the little bastards, put them in a chair, and tell them in a tone the kid will pay attention to to sit still and be quiet or ELSE.

I've actually hit my limit with this kind of crap - next time it happens (and I do have my boss's blessing on this, BTW), I'm telling the damn "parents" to get their kids under control OR ELSE.

I'm telling the damn "parents" to get their kids under control OR ELSE.

Or else what?  You gonna grab that kid and disipline that "little bastard" yourself.  I think for most parents, that would be license for them to beat and slap the piss out of you.  I'd love to see that.   

Besides, this thread was about some nasty bitch gramma who coudn't be bothered to actually be a grandmother.  Looks like grandma has outlived her usefulness as a family member.  Her son should have kicked that bitch to the curb a long time ago.  I can't think of a bigger crime then a grandparent not loving, doting and spoiling rotten their grandkids even if they are little snots. 

[rbrgs]

Self discipline as an adult comes from leaning discipline as a child.  OTOH, no one* should ever be insulted or belittled, whatever else may be happening.

*Well, maybe the banksters as they're being hauled to the guillotine.....