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This is a rather . . . unorthodox method
Parents strike to protest messy kids.
I have to think that it would have been easier for them if they had pushed the issue more when the kids were younger.
I have to think that it would have been easier for them if they had pushed the issue more when the kids were younger.
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"Should have" doesn't do the kids any good now. Neither does "too late" - they're twelve and seventeen, they and society will have to cope with whatever skills they can pick up in the next seventy-odd years. Giving up isn't exactly an option.
They'll either learn or live in squalor, and I'd rather they had practical guidance and support on how. Speaking as someone with lifelong organisation and houskeeping problems.
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I also have housekeeping and organisational issues, and sometimes my house is just barely above squalor. But I didn't have those issues when I lived with my parents, because there were consequences. And the day my parents "begged" or "pleaded" with me would have been a cold, cold day in Hell.
If you're pleading with your 12 year old, you've already lost control.
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The story reminds me irresistibly of the episode in Little Women when Marmee goes on strike. And really, if any set of children had domestic virtues dinned into them from the cradle, it must be those four. I never could quite get into that episode as the author probably wanted me to, though, because Beth's bird was let die just to teach her a lesson, and then she was comforted with the offer of another one.
P.
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I get slightly annoyed with the whole "I can't control my kids" stuff. My parents raised nine of us, and without ever hitting us all she had to do was look at us and I would jump.
If I disobeyed something, my father would never yell, he would leave me a chore list three pages long and I would go nowhere, do nothing, and wouldn't be allowed near the phone until it was done. Period.
And as for the lawn thing? They would have moved me out before they moved out.
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Some children are harder to control than others, though. I guess with nine children you'd see a pretty wide cross-spectrum.
I'm the youngest of three, and my brother and sister were fine, but my parents' position is that I was genuinely impossible to control. Screamed for hours nonstop for no reason. Bit and kicked.
At twenty-four I'm still learning some things people are 'supposed' to have learned in early childhood. It's *extremely* tempting to blame someone, my parents or me, but blaming won't get my teeth brushed or my floor cleared.
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[Garnered a lot of letters, too.]
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This happened to my husband. Our daughter was four, he had removed her from church for being disruptive, she was having a tantrum in response, he was trying to carry her to the car, and she flung herself backward will all her might. He just barely caught her before her head hit the pavement. A woman approached and told him she'd seen him throwing our daughter down and was going to report him. To his credit, he thanked her for her concern and invited her to do so. She didn't. But if she had, I doubt not that we'd be under review by child protective services even as we speak.
~A
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Interesting what you said about child protective services: We've got a real problem with it in Texas. They are desperately short of caseworkers. The woman who cut her daughter's arms off? Had been investigated by CPS for neglect. Obviously they found nothing wrong. Then there were two cases just a few months ago, with children being beaten to death. One parent had been investigated by CPS five times prior to the child's death; the other six times. What's sad about Texas is that calling CPS is an empty threat.
As to the woman in the parking lot? Sounds like she's never been a parent.
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We live just south of San Antonio. I didn't consider it an empty threat; despite the sad situation of CPS here, my husband has co-workers whose children call and report abuse in retaliation against their parents' attempts to control them.
There is no system that will catch everything, alas. And it always seems that when the searchlights of any government entity turn in my direction, I never manage to be one of the ones that fall through the cracks.
~Amanda "one of the lucky 45,000 people nationwide selected for a random IRS audit in 2003" Geist
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I usually tell them I'll sell them on eBay.
~A
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