Trapped On A Plane With A Feral Toddler Adult
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
Before kids, I’d board a plane looking for my seat, beg, beg, begging the airplane god that no kid was near me. Once I had kids, my judgmental superiority came back to me in a rush. Now, people looked at me and my delightful cherubs as devil’s spawn and prayed to their gods for mercy. The wheel of life and all that.
So Amy Alkon, falls into the former category and wishes to banish bad babies having bad days. In that case, I’d like to banish bad old people, bad NSA people, bad flight attendants, and really, pretty much 90% of my fellow passengers on airplanes. Why? Because they suck.
Most air travelers are tired, angry, irritable or sick. Most airplanes are now bovine-packed breeding grounds of festering frustration. It’s likely I’ll catch a cold or a bad attitude, or more likely both, on an airplane.
It’s pretty to complain about the errant toddler but that would take the focus off the menopausal chick screaming at her husband a couple flights ago or the mean old lady swearing in Spanish at anyone who touched her bag in the overhead bin. You know, the nice, civilized adult people who ride planes. Don’t forget the guy who drops his nervous fart that just won’t go away and from which there is no escape.
Air travel used to be a nicer, more refined experience. People dressed up, and sat a couple people to a row. Flights weren’t overbooked. Planes were new. They fed you. The stewardesses actually seemed to like people and aim to please.
Now, you get more respect and less hassle on a city bus and that is no exaggeration. At least you can get on a bus without having to throw out your bottle of water and being frisked and x-rayed down to your undies. Plane travel is demeaning and annoying.
But I’m not going to blame only the environment, the procedures, the staff and the experience. I’ll blame the passengers, too.
There are two sorts of passengers: The ones who travel all the time and the ones who travel for special jaunts. The regular travelers suffer the special jaunt travelers. The regular travelers have a routine. They know how things work. Then there are those who bumble around, pack wrong, take forever through security, seem lost in space and generally monkey up the works for everyone.
I’d like to set aside special planes for the casual travelers.
So, here’s my list of people I don’t want anywhere near the travel experience: NSA staff, flight attendants, casual travelers, crotchety old ladies, farting men, screaming middle aged couples and really anyone else unwilling to stoically endure a two hour trip.
Fact is, as much as I’ve traveled, I’ve seen far more annoying adults than annoying toddlers. Toddlers get a bad rap, but it’s mostly undeserved. Far more often, kids and babies are a welcome respite from the hell promulgated from some acting-out adult.
And I eagerly await the day when Amy has a kid of her own. She’ll then be praying to the please-don’t-cry, please-don’t-cry, please-don’t-cry god and making a trip she may not want to, but will have to make. She’ll have the pleasure of the apprehensive stares and the judgmental glances. She’ll get to change a diaper in a 2×2 foot closet and try to entertain her child when the flight is three hours delayed on a runway with no food and water and no hope of escape. Yeah, that’s heaven, right there.
Air travel is no fun. No reason to single out toddlers. The whole experience is usually pretty awful.
H/T Instapundit
Is Yelling The New Spanking? Yes.
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009Morally superior Gen X moms and dads seem entirely reasonable until they see the limits of “limits” like time-outs, banal blabbing and gentle cajoling. Kids regard their parents with utter contempt. Well, some do. Depends on the kid’s personality. And parents, once exasperated, go there. No, they might not spank their child. They’ll yell. Or arm yank. Or threaten. Or push. Or thump (thwack in the head with fingers). Or pinch. Something, anything, to reorder the disordered relationship–the one where the kid is running the show, and the parent feels drug around by the nose by a two and half foot troll.
The New York Time’s takes on the “overachieving” parents’ angst via Instapundit:
Parental yelling today may be partly a releasing of stress for multitasking, overachieving adults, parenting experts say.
“Yelling is done when parents feel irritable and anxious,” said Harold S. Koplewicz, the founder of the New York University Child Study Center. “It can be as simple as ‘I’m overwhelmed, I’m running late for work, I had a fight with my wife, I have a project due — and my son left his homework upstairs.’ ”
Numerous studies exist on the effect of corporal punishment on children. A new one came out just last month. Led by a researcher at Duke University’s Center for Child and Family Policy, the study concluded that spanking children when they are very young (1-year-old) can slow their intellectual development and lead to aggressive behavior as they grow older. But there is far less data on the more common habit of shouting and screaming in families.
Something jumps out at me: as the child of parents who viewed spanking as their Christian duty (spare the rod and all that), I can assure the researchers it is not like yelling is new. Yelling happened in the bad old days, too.
Re: parenting styles: Kids are resilient. An occasional “losing it” moment isn’t going to scar a child for life.
However, when a parent creates an environment where he or she is consistently out of control, where he chooses to respond to a child in anger, rather than reason, the child realizes the child is in control. Someone owns the buttons. Either, the parent is controlling the nuke button or the kid is. I would suggest that the kid will grow increasingly insecure when he can’t count on mom or dad to be in charge. He doesn’t want to be in charge. He wants to relax into well-known boundaries.
So, parents need to keep an eternal guard on their emotions. Some kids are very smart and manipulative and get a kick out of mom and dad being as easy as a wind-up toy. Teenage boys seem to especially enjoy spinning old mom like a top. The parent teaches disrespect for both himself and the child.
I hate to burst the bubble of New Agey parenting types who scream at their kids for not eating the lentils, you’re no better than the out-of-control spankers of yore. The key is who is in charge? Screaming just declares your impotence just as reckless spanking indicated a desire for immediate control without thought. In both cases, it’s the easy way.
Parenting is brutally difficult. It is a constant personal challenge. The big picture: What is right for the kid? is lost in a personal haze of fatigue, hormones, blood sugar, emotional misery or whatever. Every parent realizes his personal limitations almost immediately–a crying, inconsolable infant is often the first test of many.
So yellers need to knock it off and grow up. Someone has to be the parent. It should be the parent.
Should Parents Bring Kids To Tea Parties?
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009I’m not going to tell you what my my decision is, but I want to know your opinion.
Aggressive Schooling
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009There have been all sorts of articles written about Helicopter Parents and now, there’s a new trend called “slow parenting“. Slow parenting is just as the name implies–yank your kids out of activities and slow down. There is competing evidence, like came from Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers that kids do better with more activities and need at least ten years of consistent, hard work to achieve mastery. And then, there was his extolling of the schools that go year around and for eight hours a day, including Saturday.
Slow parenting might be a new trend, though I’m dubious. Aggressive, strung-out parenting seems to be the norm. Kids have their extra-curricular activities and then they come home…where they are the victims of aggressive schooling.
All the parents complain about aggressive schooling and then, they comply. Their kids come home with projects beyond their ability and the parents are forced to “help” or else the child will be consigned to B+ status.
There is a method to the schooling madness. By making every piece of homework a little too difficult and a must-check and sign by parents, teachers off-load responsibility. If the kid is uneducated, it’s not the teacher’s fault, the parents just don’t care enough and aren’t involved.
Beyond the state’s control of the individual’s behavior, is there any evidence that front-loading education accomplishes anything besides making kids tired and frustrated with school?
And while kids seem to know more minutiae do they have the context to put this information in?
My concern is practical–kids are tired, worn-out and have less time to just play. My concern is also scientific. It seems that there should be evidence that these methods actually work. Children are scheduled heavily and working evenings and weekends when the time could be spent doing other things. Does this work pay off? What are the outcomes to this approach?
If SAT scores mean anything, education has declined, not improved. From the Wall Street Journal:
High-school students’ performance on SAT college-entrance exams stalled, and the gap widened between low-scoring minority groups and the overall population, raising questions about the quality of teaching in U.S. schools.
There should be evidence that broad academic front-loading is helpful and effective. If not, kids need to be cut a break. They have their whole lives to learn taxonomy, but there are only a few years to play.
Are Parents Responsible For Their Kid’s Behavior?
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009It’s looking more likely that Ashley Biden was set up, but fully enjoyed snorting some cocaine. The Deceiver (via Instapundit) says this story reminds them of the Rielle Hunter media blackout and imagines that were the story about Bristol Palin, we wouldn’t hear the end of it (something John Hawkins noted when the story broke earlier this week).
The Deceiver talks about Joe Biden’s drug war stance:
And over the years, there’s been no bigger drug warrior than Vice President Joe Biden. As a senator, he championed laws against shipping drug paraphernalia though the mail, going to raves, and using marijuana for medical reasons. He helped create the Office of National Drug Control Policy. He even coined the term “drug czar.” So if you or someone you know has been affected by America’s draconian approach to drug enforcement, or if you just get a kick out of your tax money being thrown at one failed drug-prevention effort after another, you can thank your old buddy Joe.
So, Joe’s policies couldn’t prevent his daughter’s demise.
Forget policies for a minute and just judge him as a parent. Is it his fault his daughter enjoys a line from time to time? What about Sarah Palin’s fecund daughter Bristol?
We are also on the eve of the anniversary of one of the worst American acts of terrorism–the Columbine massacre. April 20, 2009 it will be 10 years post-Columbine. Are the parents to blame for their kids?
A next-door neighbor to the Harris’ said:
Pollock said she is alarmed at much of the angry talk aimed at the parents of Eric Harris and Dylan Kelbold. “I don’t blame the parents,” she said. “If they (children) don’t want you to find or see something, you’re not going to find or see it.”
Having raised five teenagers, Pollock said, “you cannot always choose what your kid is going to be.”
The parents of victims of the killers certainly felt that there was some responsibility:
Eventually the parents of the Columbine killers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, appeared willing to speak, but the threat of lawsuits drove them to silence. The families reached an impasse: the killers’ parents would talk only if the victims disavowed legal action, but the victims would waive lawsuits only if the parents spoke.
The Harrises and Klebolds settled their last lawsuits in 2003. Their homeowners’ insurance had already agreed to pay $1.6 million, but five holdout families demanded information. The killers’ parents were deposed in a closed federal courtroom, to which the plaintiffs gained access by agreeing to a gag order. Fourteen days before Mr. Cho opened fire at Virginia Tech, a district court judge ruled that the transcripts of these meetings would remain sealed for 20 more years.
It was an ugly compromise. The victims got answers, at the price of hiding them from experts and the public. The Harrises and Klebolds endured eight years of vilification and legal action.
So, are Biden, Palin and the killer’s families culpable in their kid’s actions? At what point is a child responsible for his own actions?
Fox News
Friday, March 6th, 2009Barbara Boxer Seeks To Limit U.S. Parent’s Rights
An assault on all fronts. I swear.
The Angry Rant
Wednesday, February 18th, 2009Stupid Parents
Who buys dirt bike boots for a two year old?
Belgium
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009Parents Jailed For Refusing To Vaccinate
Five months for refusing to give kids polio vaccine.
About Food Nazi Moms
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009Ericka Anderson quotes Laura Bennett who says:
I just want to let the food Nazi moms in on what happens when your kids come to a house where junk food inhabits the pantry. They have no decision-making skills or sense of moderation when faced with the forbidden fruit roll-up. Like deprived animals, they are determined to consume the lifetime allotment of sugar they have been denied; all before pickup. I have seen one such child eat Swiss Miss Cocoa with a spoon directly out of the family-size container, only to move on to conquer a box of frosted strawberry Pop-Tarts.
…Sheltering children from every evil in the world does them a disservice; decision-making is a skill, learned with practice from the time they are small. At some point my boys will go out into the world and have to decide for themselves what is right and wrong. One would hope that by then they have ascertained that Krispy Kreme doughnuts are not really for breakfast…
Indeed.
Some of my kids friends have Food Nazi Moms and their reactions to Doritos is pathological. They shove into my pantry and consume chips and pretzels and Gold fish crackers like locusts.
How do you teach a child about good decision making if they never make decisions? Food is a dangerous thing to fetishize because people always have to eat. Obsessions around food rarely turn out well.
I remember a kid who ate nothing but McDonalds growing up. His mom wasn’t particularly domestic and my mom clucked about the malnutrition. Admittedly, the kids in that family looked sickly. He’s now a friend on Facebook and looks fit as a fiddle. He probably eats soy nuts and tofu sandwiches every day. I don’t know. I haven’t asked.
There have been patients who have the worst eating habits and need help. You wouldn’t believe what some people view as “healthy” nutrition. Still, when giving advice, I try to be balanced. Perfection can be challenging to obtain–if it’s even desirable or definable when it comes to food. All sorts of things thought to be healthy at one time are now considered off-limits (Wonderbread). Things that used to be considered unhealthy are now considered fine in moderation (coffee, wine, chocolate, fat).
Good rule: Eat food as close to the source and least handled as possible–salad, fruit, veggies, protein. The more processing, the less healthy. Still, one of the joys of life is having complex taste buds that can be delighted with something as bad for you as a Dorito or piece of chocolate cake. If 90% of person’s diet is healthy, 10% indulgence can make for balanced fun. And a child raised in a tolerant environment will be less likely to be obsessed and have issues as an adult.
Aside: Laura also mentions TV, computers, pop culture, etc. Nazis. Protection from a certain amount of junk food for the mind is also helpful, but obsession creates obsession. Kids are resourceful and the forbidden fruit tastes sweetest. I go for more of the “poison the pot” school of thought. That is, sit with them during Hannah Montana, say, and dissect in excruciating detail the superficiality, narcissism, and wrongness of some of the things therein. It sucks the joy right out of the experience to actually “see” what you’re watching. The other benign stuff, teach them moderation.
“Little Marxists”
Monday, December 15th, 2008Dr. Helen answers a question from a librarian/teacher about goose-stepping 4th graders and how to help kids get properly educated about such things as capitalism versus socialism.
In our kids’ school, the Third Grade project is starting a business, paying more rent for better space (the front classrooms), choosing partners, a product to sell, marketing it, etc. Well guess what? There’s much gnashing of teeth when a kid picks a slouch for a partner. There’s agony (even though the teachers try to spin it positively as our “civic duty”) when the teacher comes and collects the taxes from hard earned bucks. It’s a nice learning experience all the way around.
What would be an even better solution in my opinion is to create a socialist week, in all it’s mediocre glory. So everyone works as a group, makes a crappy product that no one wants to buy, two kids do all the work, but all the kids get the same pay and the government takes 80% of their income. Then, a kid decides he’s hurt his toe and can’t work but gets the same pay. If they work harder they only get a C.
If kids got to experience both capitalism and socialism, they’d make the right choice because socialism is inherently unfair, rewards failure, and is a disincentive to achievement and production. Kids are hardwired for fairness. They get it.
While I know education is important, I think how a kid is raised is even more important. A dull-witted parent emphasizing self-esteem over honest achievement will destroy the best school lessons. And a parent who emphasizes hard work and morality will inoculate against soft-headed ideas rooted in post-modern and Marxist philosophies.
Team sports help because there’s winners and losers. Individual sports help because there is only achievement. Getting a job during High School helps a kid manage his energy and money.
Marxism has to be taught and indoctrinated because it goes against natural law. It is antithetical to how men are wired and ignores basic psychology. Marxism sounds great on paper and stinks in real life. It feels good to believe in collective everything, but it falls flat in practice. That’s why any training about these philosophies needs to be taken out of the realm of theory and into real life.
Get a kid on a ball field or court and he’ll learn the concepts of talent, hard work and winners and losers pretty quickly. Let him makes some money and then have the government take half to spend how they see fit, and he’ll understand why excessive taxation is a disincentive.
Real life cures Marxists.
Cross-posted at RightWingNews and the Houston Chronicle
