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16 March 2009

The littlest dinner guest Recently I had a friend of mine, her husband, and their 3.5 year old son to my place to dinner. I thought the story of how the little guy behaved was somewhat entertaining.→[More:]

I met my friend and her family on a Saturday afternoon at the AGO, where we saw an exhibit before coming back to my place. In the car on the way over Jonathan was complaining about how long the ride took. His mother explained to him that Daddy had to drive slow because of all the cars and the traffic, but he just kept complaining. So, to change the subject, I told him I had a present for him at my place — his Christmas present from me, though it was a little late (because my friend and I hadn’t seen each other since the previous August). Then he started complaining because I hadn't gotten the gift to him at Christmas. Why didn't I drive to his house and bring him his present? Don't I know where he lives? Well, why didn't I get a car so I could bring him his present? Also he kept complaining that I wouldn't tell him what was in the present.

He kicked me in the face while getting out of his car seat (okay, that was an accident). Then, when we got into the house, he came into the kitchen where I was seeing to dinner, and said, "Where's my present?" I said I would get it for him in just a minute or two. He kept going, "Where's my present where's my present where's my present where's my present?"

His present was an orange truck that has a horn and running motor noises and also a hand-knit sweater with an orange truck depicted on the front. He rammed the truck into my piano bench repeatedly though my friend told him to stop, and finally only really stopped when she said she would take his truck away if he didn't. He claimed the driver “couldn’t see where he was going”.

I kept calling Jonathan "Jona" (pronounced "YO-na") because my friend always calls him that. But Jonathan objected and said it wasn't his name and acted like he'd never heard it before. Meanwhile he kept calling me Angela (my name is not Angela) or "the lady" or, in loudly whispered asides to his mother, as "HER".

His parents told me they do call him Jona at home and he doesn't even know any Angelas so they don't know where he came up with that one.

Jonathan did have some cute moments. His mother told me when she took him upstairs to the bathroom, he said, "This is a pretty bathroom." And when my friend and I were discussing my having painting the inside of the fireplace black, Jonathan said anxiously, "The lady can't paint the fireplace because the paint will melt." I thought it was very intelligent of him to have thought of that. And of course I explained I had used special paint which was heat-resistant and meant to be used in fireplaces, which assuaged his concerns.

He noticed at supper that he had a different kind of drinking glass than everyone else — he had a tumbler, while we had wine glasses. He complained of this, and his mother told him I probably thought it would be easier for him to drink from the kind he had (which was the truth). He still wasn't happy about having a different kind of drinking glass, so I said, "You have a *special* glass, Jona." (Him: That’s not my name. Me: [deep breath] Pardon me, Jonathan.) He fell for it. He had a special glass! He was the only one with a special glass! None of us had special glasses! Just him!

Dinner was apricot ginger chicken with zucchini and green pepper, cooked up in the crockpot. I served homemade sour cream rolls with it, and there was homemade mocha banana cake with vanilla ice cream for dessert. Jonathan ate most of the chicken, and all his roll, and was very enthusiastic about his cake and ice cream, but after dinner he walked around the table to my chair and said to me that he “didn’t like the soup because it tasted funny". He repeated this a good four times.

When it was time to go home he didn't want to leave because he was enjoying himself, and he ran away down the hallway and into the kitchen when his mother tried to put his coat on in the foyer. She called out to him that they needed to get home in time for bedtime, but he didn’t come back. I said that was okay, Mummy and Daddy could just leave without him and I would keep him and he could be my little boy instead of theirs. His mother added, "She has a bedroom for you, Jonathan. Or you could sleep with her and cuddle with her at night instead of with Mummy and Daddy."

Jonathan looked quite alarmed at this prospect and ran back to his mother, saying to her in an attempted sotto voce, "I don't want to stay with HER."

I couldn’t help enjoying the fact that my switch-and-bait tactics worked better on him than his mother’s attempts to reason with him.;-)

post by: Orange Swan at: 08:49 | 30 comments

I'm so glad I don't have children.

posted by Joe Beese 16 March | 09:00

Someone needs to fall down a well.

posted by Lipstick Thespian 16 March | 09:04

I know a kid that intentionally does the opposite of what his parents tell him to do. The other day he knocked my kid on the head with a toy gun and then threatened to tell his mom that my kid pushed him when he didn't. It's quite annoying.

BUT..

On Friday night my five-year-old karate chopped a kid for no reason and made him cry. I was very embarrassed and wanted to kill my kid. It's a blessing I lost my voice that day, because I was run down and sick, or I would have yelled at him like a stupid person all the way home.

posted by LoriFLA 16 March | 09:13

When Jonathan was 13 months old his mother brought him to the condo I then owned for a visit. Ten seconds after getting in the door, he got hold of one of my knitting needles. I pried it out of his tiny vise-grip hands, and he screamed his head off with outrage. Then he picked up my scissors, which I took away from him as well. More screaming. If he could have talked at that time, I'm sure he would have referred to me as "Mean Lady Who Keeps Taking Away the Things He Wanted to Play With".

He trashed two of my houseplants, one of them a jade plant I'd spent three years growing, goobered on an armchair, and marred my dining room table by pounding on it with a spoon. He hammered on the hallway doors we had shut to keep him in the main area of the apartment and screamed because he couldn't get into the rooms. My friend and I couldn't just visit because he would have trashed the place. Finally I just got down on the floor and played with him, and that kept him out of trouble and happy.

He was hardly more than a baby, of course, but even so as I shut the door behind them as they left, I thought, "Do I really want one of those?"

posted by Orange Swan 16 March | 09:18

Sounds like your friend and her husband aren't very effective at parenting. If I had a friend with a kid like that who did little or nothing to prevent the rudeness to you and destruction of your home that you describe, she wouldn't be a friend for long.

posted by amro 16 March | 09:34

No, actually my friend is quite a good parent. She was very vigilant during the recent dinner and wouldn't let Jonathan play with my collection of hourglasses though he was dying to. She enforced a number of rules, such as that Jona had to stay at the dinner table until he was done eating and he had to ask to be excused from the table at the end of the meal. I don't blame her for not cracking down on him for every single thing he did wrong. You kind of have to pick your battles with a kid that age.

The time he was 13 months he was really hard to cope with — constantly into everything in the blink of an eye before either of us could prevent him. She apologized for all the damage he did.

posted by Orange Swan 16 March | 09:43

Yeah, sometimes kids are just difficult kids, especially if they are particularly bright or quick. 'Dude was a horrible tantrum-thrower from the age of 18 months to 5 or 6. It would be easy to blame his parents for giving in to his tantrums (which they did), but at the same time I'm not in their shoes, and he's turned out pretty well despite what my parents would call "spoiling him".

posted by muddgirl 16 March | 09:51

I figure, if a kid demands a gift from me, I say, "You'll get nothing if you say that again." Then, if they say that again, they get nothing. Boo-hoo: that's the sound of learning. Better luck next Christmas.

That said, kids do all sorts of things, and so do parents. Everyone's different in assessment and approach, and criticizing parenting is a tough outside-in call. Everybody's trying, and you just never know everything. Nice job on that patience piece, Orange Swan. Also, getting down and playing usually solves misbehavior -- it's when adults think the visit is at all about themselves that kids wriggle into the cracks and start clamoring -- most kids are great when you drop everything else and pay attention.

posted by Hugh Janus 16 March | 10:03

Kids all have their own personalities and behaviours, just like adults do. And again like adults, as in the case of one's employees or co-workers, some are a joy to be around, some take careful handling, and some are very difficult. I never had trouble with my nieces, but my nephew was pretty difficult to manage — so contrary, and he just loved to be annoying. Only a couple of people in my family were good at dealing with him, and I wasn't one of them.

posted by Orange Swan 16 March | 10:06

Sometimes you just need to wait it out. It's a hard balance.

My first reaction is that the kid has no boundaries set, no logical consequences for his behavior, like "We're going to Swan's End tonight for dinner, but since you did not behave well last time, the baby sitter is on the way over." He would pitch a fit but also have a learning moment.

But my kid was EASY as a toddler and hard as a teen, and I have seen with other families that headstrong toddlers often grow out of it.

posted by danf 16 March | 10:57

What a character. He sounds like a typical 3.5 year old to me. Your bait and switch tactics worked well for my nieces and nephew (they lived with me for a couple years). It gave them a choice and they always chose the one I wanted. Their parents (Bro #4 and useless POS ex-SIL) were always amazed at how well behaved they were with childless me.

posted by deborah 16 March | 13:37

Yes, I thought he was probably pretty average in terms of behaviour for a kid his age. I told my parents the story (they raised eight children together and my mother was also an elementary school teacher for many, many years) and they thought it very funny.

posted by Orange Swan 16 March | 13:52

You're very patient. But I can tell you that I wouldn't tolerate any of the incredibly rude behavior that you described. I would be beyond mortified if my toddler behaved like that. I disagree that you have to pick your battles. I think you need to have an understanding of what is acceptable and what isn't, and those boundaries have to be enforced each and every time. Kids that age are quite capable of knowing what they are and aren't allowed to do if it's consistently spelled out and regularly enforced in a gentle but firm manner.

The truck running into the piano bench? One warning to stop. Second offense, truck is taken away for 5 minutes. If it happens again, truck is gone for the rest of the day. That's just one example.

You can be a strict disciplinarian in the most loving way. We don't raise our voices to our little son and we always follow through. He knows quite well when he's hovering on the edge of misbehaving. I think he feels secure in knowing the rules. As a result he's a pretty welcome guest most places. And for those times when he can't pull it together, we leave.

The dinner sounds delicious by the way.

posted by Kangaroo 16 March | 14:35

That behavior is not "pretty average."

posted by amro 16 March | 14:38

Yeah, it's not average. I would not let my child destroy property. The first time he started whining about a present I'd nip that nonsense right in the bud. I'm pretty much with Kangaroo on how I discipline my kids. One of my (and my husband's) major pet peeves is disrespectful treatment of a person's property and my kids know it. Some people think that their kids are so darn cute and special that they allow their kids act rudely. In my opinion, and as Kangaroo said upthread, it's more loving to expect and enforce appropriate behavior.

posted by LoriFLA 16 March | 15:15

I like baby animals so much better than baby people.

(I do have this little narrative going with my cats, though, that they think of me as "that lady" and are constantly suspicious/tolerant of me. I find it amusing. Definitely not one of those people who thinks their pets are their widdle babies. Ick.)

posted by loiseau 16 March | 15:22

I couldn’t help enjoying the fact that my switch-and-bait tactics worked better on him than his mother’s attempts to reason with him.;-)

Heh. Because children that age CAN'T BE REASONED WITH, and parents who try are running a fool's errand. It's a developmental thing -- no toddler understands "reasoning," even if they have enough vocabulary to give the impression of being able to understand it. They only understand boundaries and very simple options.

Parents who don't enforce age-appropriate boundaries aren't actually doing their kids any favors, and they sure as hell aren't doing their friends any favors, no matter how many times they apologize for their kids' destructive behavior.

/doting aunt, future strict parent rant

posted by scody 16 March | 15:30

As long as society rewards poor manners and a sense of entitlement with revised GPAs and high salaries, maybe raising kids poorly is the best thing you can do. It's like teaching a kid that money is the only thing that matters, or naming him Pussy and sending him to football camp. So what if they're maladjusted; they might be quite a "success" and pay for your retirement.

*shakes fist at thin air*

posted by Hugh Janus 16 March | 16:38

Or maybe you could just name your boy Sue.

posted by TrishaLynn 16 March | 17:14

Ugh. I wouldn't be inviting them over again.

See, I raised three. Three different personalities, three different individuals. I had the one goal that they would NOT be a pain in the rear to any adults around them, and I accomplished that. People actually liked my kids and I could take them places.

But the problem is that one of the tools in my toolbox was spanking, and I think that is probably much less socially acceptable these days.

I do think there are some children out there that are just plain hard to manage no matter what you do to them, and it is possible your friend has one. She has my sympathies if that is the case.

posted by bunnyfire 16 March | 18:34

There is one reason why kids misbehave in public (public == not at home) and that is because parents are unwilling to take immediate action to stop undesirable behavior on the spot.

Like bunnyfire, my kids were angels in public (lots of compliments from strangers) but I found that spanking was ineffective for them so I used other methods. Having zero tolerance for misbehavior is where it all starts, though.

One of my main tools was taking the errant child out somewhere private (car, for example) until said urchin calmed down and began to understand what she did wrong and why it was wrong. They hated that. They caught on real fast and after a short time I had very few problems of that sort.

posted by trinity8-director 16 March | 18:59

Three different personalities, three different individuals. I had the one goal that they would NOT be a pain in the rear to any adults around them, and I accomplished that.

That is a perfect way of putting it! I think some parents just instinctively proceed from the basic point of view that other people must be taken into consideration -- that it's a parent's job to actively train kids in the way of manners, acceptible public behavior, etc. You'd think that this would be universal, common sense....but as we all know, common sense isn't always so common.

posted by scody 16 March | 19:09

Oh, and also -- I think it's so important to underscore what bunnyfire says about how good manners and appropriate behavior do NOT prevent children from being individuals.

I think there's this false notion out there that ANY correction or boundary is harmful to a child expressing himself, and that somehow children will be turned into robotic zombies if they're not allowed to run free and break things and talk back at will.

A friend of mine went to a parenting seminar recently, and she said she was shocked how many of the parents were arguing about basic notions of teaching manners and expecting compliance with basic age-appropriate behavior. One woman even walked out in a huff, saying "I refuse to turn my son into a Stepford Child" when the seminar leader told her that an eight-year-old should not be allowed to throw ice at the waitstaff when eating in a restaurant.

posted by scody 16 March | 19:21

I am quite proud that our son's first real words were 'thank you' and he knew when to say it.
Unfortunately, he also quickly learned when to say 'fuck you'.

posted by Ardiril 16 March | 19:31

hee.

posted by scody 16 March | 19:42

One woman even walked out in a huff, saying "I refuse to turn my son into a Stepford Child" when the seminar leader told her that an eight-year-old should not be allowed to throw ice at the waitstaff when eating in a restaurant.

Hope she likes talking to her son over a phone while he sits on the other side of bullet-proof glass because I suspect she'll be doing a lot of that.

posted by trinity8-director 16 March | 20:32

heh. And he'll still be throwing ice!

posted by scody 16 March | 23:30

I think rather than simply "no" or "don't do that", kids need to be told that actions have consequences: "when you scream, it hurts my ears", "when you kick the armrest on the plane, it hits the person in front", et al.

posted by brujita 17 March | 01:21

I met my friend and her family on a Saturday afternoon at the AGO...

I live just down the road from the AGO. Did you love the renovation? I love it. So much curvy wood! :)

posted by heatherann 17 March | 16:31

I do really like the renovations. It's quite stunning. But then I've always loved the AGO.

posted by Orange Swan 17 March | 20:20

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