Raising kids is part joy and part guerrilla warfare - Ed Asner
A quick disclaimer. I have no idea what it's like raising children. We don't have any. There's quite enough drama in our house without adding any new people to the mix. The following is my observation only.
I was absolutely amazed, the other day, to hear a mother I know tell her child that if he didn't behave himself she would "cut the arse off him with wallops."
No part of him even suspected that he was getting a wallop. In fact his behaviour was completely unaffected by the threat.
So she told him to stand in the bold corner. And he used the time to teach himself to do handstands. Apparently, it is vital that he learn to balance on his hands only, and not use his head.
I always thought you could almost guess what age a person is by the way their mother threatened them as a child.
For instance, if you were regularly told you were going to be "reddened" then you're probably a child of the 70's or the 80's.
In case any readers were born in a gentler time, that meant that your mother was suggesting that she would hit you on the bottom until it turned bright red.
This was in the days when it was considered perfectly normal in Ireland to hit a child with a wooden spoon, a source of terror to Irish children for decades.
I'm told that the 90's was the decade when children's social lives ran completely out of control.
So grounding was a regular threat in those days. And the naughty step made its unwelcome appearance.
Apparently 90's babies were threatened with the wooden spoon only in the most serious of situations, in an almost nostalgic attempt by their mothers to gain some control.
The babies of the new millennium, it seems, are threatened with withdrawal of favourite toys. The favourite toy, almost invariably, is a computer game, tablet, or iPad. Almost all children are told these days that if they don't behave they'll lose their screen privileges.
And naughty steps and bold corners and thinking chairs are still in regular use.
In a matter of a few decades we've gone from children running away at the mention of the wooden spoon, to laughing at the idea of being hit.
Which is obviously fantastic.
I cannot stress this enough. I have absolutely no time for people hitting children. Easy for me to say, I suppose, not being a parent myself. But that's my opinion.
I'm delighted that it's so abnormal to hit children that the very thought of it is laughed off by them.
Once I realised this child knew he wouldn’t be walloped, I burst out laughing at the old fashioned craziness of it.
Also, I find "wallops" a very funny word. Now that I've grown up and won't be getting any wallops that is.
It's years since I heard a parent so blatantly threaten to hit their child. If I ever thought about it, I would have assumed that these threats went out with the actual hitting.
Which made me wonder how today’s parents get their children to behave themselves.
Most people openly admit to threatening to take iPads away and so on.
A quick check with some of the mothers I know revealed that even though they never hit their kids, they’re not above threatening it when things get very bad.
It gives the children something to roll their eyes about.
But what about the parents who get to the point where they've taken away the favourite toy, which doesn’t help, and they're starting to lose their mind, but don't want to threaten to hit their kids, what do they do?
I asked one mother, this week, whether she threatens to hit her children. And I got a confusing response.
"No, I threaten to put them in the maggot bin."
There was a brief silence.
"What maggot bin?"
One lovely summer's day, her children were playing nicely in the garden.
They have one of those environmental compost bins. Not the wheelie bin that's taken away with the other rubbish, the round ones that you actually make compost in.
The sun was shining, and when there's heat, of course, there's flies.
And when there's flies and heat and warm damp vegetation composting in a bin, there may eventually be maggots.
Disgusting creatures.
Anyway, on this glorious summer's afternoon, the maggots in the compost bin thought feck it, they'd come out and sun themselves for a while. They duly began creeping out from under the bin.
The children were horrified. They started screaming like lunatics, causing their loving parents to come galloping to their rescue.
The maggots were quickly dealt with, and life went on.
Except the children would never even approach the compost bin again. They're terrified of it.
And then one day these same children started being really, really bold.
Turning off the television didn't work, and taking away their toys didn't work.
Their mother was starting to lose her will to live, when she remembered their fear. and announced that if the children weren't good, she'd put them in the maggot bin.
She was really, really desperate.
But it worked so well that she now uses it as necessary, when they're being completely out of order.
One of her children recently showed signs of losing the fear of the bin. And so my friend brought this brave soul out to the garden, stood in front of the compost bin, her hand on the child's shoulder, and talked about it all.
"There it is. They're still in there. The maggots. And they're STARVING."
The threat still works.
Another mother also made an interesting confession.
She has three children, and one in particular is as wild as a goat. A child with a heart of gold, funny and affectionate, just not able to stay steady and behave himself.
You know the type of carry on. He throws tantrums, and has also been seen to land a sibling a vicious belt when he thinks he can get away with it.
This child has never felt the sting of a slap, happily.
But his poor parents are running out of ways to get him to behave himself.
He does not appear to give a flying feck whether every toy he owns is taken away or not. He can always amuse himself wrecking the place.
They were getting to the end of their rope.
So a few days ago, in the middle of this boy's throwing a really stunning tantrum, his mother decided she may as well get a bit dramatic herself.
She threw herself from the room in noisy (though fake) tears.
She ran upstairs and threw herself on her bed and continued the sobbing.
The boldie is, as I said, a golden hearted child, and if she could get him to witness this, she knew he'd start to realise that he was upsetting her with his behaviour.
Eventually, the perpetrator of the boldness crept, on his belly, into the room. She had her hands over her eyes to hide the fact there was no tears, so she pretended not to see him.
He bundled himself under the bed, and just lay there.
Eventually, she'd been fake crying on the bed and he'd been listening from under the bed for so long that it was getting ridiculous. So she decided to move things on.
A few fake sniffs, and real sighs. And she said loudly,
"It's just so terrible."
She paused, to give him a chance to crawl from under the bed and promise never to be bold again. But he didn't react. She thought he might be falling asleep so she jumped off the bed, while she still had his attention.
With the sort of drama normally reserved for daytime soap operas, she sighed.
"I just can't take it. I'll have to give him away. It's so sad. I love him so much, and I know he loves me, he just can't seem to be good."
And she left the room.
The child came downstairs, played in a civilised fashion, was nice to his siblings, then hugged his mother, told her he loved her, and for the first time ever, went to bed without a word of complaint.
And they had a lovely chat. The boy knows he's going nowhere, but that his boldness upsets his Mammy so much that she over reacts.
I'm sure he's not going to turn into an angel, but at least he's learning that she isn't just shouting at him for fun when he's bold, it genuinely upsets her.
All I'm saying is this. Every parent I know feels guilty every time they even think about threatening to hit a child. Everyone thinks nobody else does this, that they're the only one who can't control their children.
I really think they’re mistaken.
And they can always take heart from the fact that we live in a happy world where children know they're loved and cherished, and not a burden to those in charge, and that they don't appear to take any of these threats seriously at all.
