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JodieLyn
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| Posted: Nov 05 2011 at 2:28pm | IP Logged
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I guess I'm assuming relationship since the children (young children) are being left with her. And so she'd also know whether or not the children were generally required to use please/thankyou etc.
But then I also tend to be on the if you're the one close to the child and something is going on.. you say something. It's how I grew up.. and how it works around both my family and dh's family and even our church to some extent. Not that anyone is quick to correct especially for little things. But we've been around each other a lot and have that relationship.
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JodieLyn
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| Posted: Nov 05 2011 at 2:35pm | IP Logged
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And while some definitions of discipline include punishment.. not all do.. there are quite a lot of them that do not.. but include instruction and correction.
So that also makes a difference in discussion. I was considering discipline to mean the later and did not include punishment when dealing with other's children except if something like sitting on the sidelines when safety is an issue is considered punishment.
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Jodie, wife to Dave
G-18, B-17, G-15, G-14, B-13, B-11, G-9, B-7, B-5, B-4
All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
-Sir Walter Scott
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MNMommy
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lapazfarm wrote:
Angie Mc wrote:
deloresofmary, what I have found most helpful is to challenge myself to give mothers and their children 100 courtesies before giving any correction. (No one likes being corrected so it is always a negative thing, even if just a little sting among loved ones.)
Once I've given 100 courtesies, I have built the beginnings of a relationship...so I have to treat it with great gentleness. I then consider if the relationship can last on minimal corrections. I'm willing to correct children/teens *sparingly*. And I never tell a grown woman how to parent her children. Never. If a friend asks me for advice directly, then I offer carefully. For each correction, advice offered, comes another 100 courtesies from me.
If a child or children are so out of control that I'm constantly concerned or feeling the need to correct, I check my heart first. Do I need to offer a courtesy? Do I need to smile, joke, feed, hug, etc.? If I find that I have given to a reasonable extent then I look at the objective behaviors of the children. Do they cause big harm? Do they cause big damage? Are they mean-spirited, demeaning of others? If not, can I look past their behaviors and simply be kind to them? If they are just being kids (who will do kid things) can I be the adult...detached and kind? Can I focus on the good?
With this criteria, I'm able to honestly love and enjoy the company of most children and teens. They are kids for goodness sake! With this criteria, I choose my women friends carefully, praying for direction about who can reciprocate courtesy, fun, thoughtfulness, and other traits that help us to be better moms, wives, women, together.
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YES!!!!
I agree with this wholeheartedly. Thank you, Angie, for articulating it so beautifully! |
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I agree. Thank you so much for saying far more eloquently what was in my head and heart.
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Jennifer
Tired mom to - 10yo dd, 7yo ds, 6yo ds, 4yo dd, 2yo ds
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SallyT
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Well, on rereading my own answer here, I can see a lot that fell through the cracks of my thinking. So much depends on the child -- age, personality -- and my relationship to the child. I deal mostly now with older kids who have been my kids' friends for a long time and in my house a lot, and with whom I can have a kind of joky relationship. I also tend to presume that they really do know how to ask for things politely but are either forgetting or are trying to be cool in front of their friends, or something. (and in truth, most of my kids' friends are unfailingly polite, so it doesn't come up that often)
With a little child, I think I'd tend to see substance over surface, if you know what I mean -- like what Jennifer described in the instance of the five-year-old saying, "May I?" I wouldn't correct that child. I might gently say to a five-year-old who said, "I want some water," or "Give me some water," something like, "May you have some water, please? Yes, of course you may." Not making them say it, but modeling how they might ask by rephrasing the question. Even if you don't know what another family's rules are, I don't think it hurts to make use of a teachable moment, as long as the child doesn't feel put on the spot or humiliated, which would negate the teachable-ness of the moment.
On the other hand, when my oldest daughter was five and six and in school in England, her friends used to come home with her in the afternoon a lot and have dinner with us. I was astounded that they'd invariably say things like, "I don't like *that!*" outright at the dinner table. I wouldn't give them a disquisition on how to behave or send them from the table (as I would my own kids for something like that), but I'd say quietly, "Just eat what you like and don't eat what you don't like." Anything to defuse the need to *say* that they didn't like what we were having.
I might say, "Try it; you might like it," but I'd never force the issue. And I'd *never* have said to their mothers, "Wow, your kid has terrible table manners," or, "Does your child really not ever eat anything other than chicken fingers and potato smileys?" I just figured that inasmuch as they were often a cultural education for our kids, maybe we were something of a cultural education for them. At times I've felt that way with different ones of my children's friends -- for the only child of a never-married single mother, who spent her "after-care" time with us during one school year, maybe the cultural education was immersion in the daily life of a family with a father and more children. For the smart-mouthy friend of my son's (and we did reach a point of actively, though quietly, discouraging that friendship, because this kid was mean to our younger children, blatantly disrespectful to us, and always trying to get our son to do things we'd outlawed, chiefly playing "T"-rated video games), we at least tried to model a culture of The Family Where Children Do Not Argue Incessantly With Grownups Who Have Already Said No, including not letting him get away with it in our home.
I don't know that this was "discipline" so much as just not giving in when he clearly expected us to. We didn't feel that it was in our purview to impose consequences (as we might with our own kids), but we sure as heck didn't feel we had to cater to him in any way, beyond the normal bounds of hospitality (eg, I'm sorry that none of the toys in our house interest you, but I'm not taking you to the movies. End of discussion.)
Finally, we dealt with it by not inviting him over any more, which I think came as something of a relief to our son, who always felt torn in his company. But this was really an extreme case, and a much-older child who between one thing and another had no real excuse for not knowing how to behave. It may just have been a phase; it's not that I'd never ever have him over again, but at the time, whatever benefits there were to having him over were far outweighed by the amount of conflict his presence always seemed to generate in our household.
So it's worth considering that as a family, we are a culture, and that visitors to our home (of any age) are like tourists in our little homeland. Of course we show them courtesy and hospitality; it's a gift to us that they want to visit us. At the same time, regardless of what their home culture might be like, as natives of our own land, we're not prevailed upon simply to put up silently with infractions against our own laws and conventions. The burden is on us, as the "natives," to make people welcome while charitably demonstrating as necessary what our laws and conventions are, without compromising the relative peace and order of the homeland.
Just food for thought here . . . The phrase *in loco parentis* always sounds so clear, and yet so often it's not.
Sally
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MNMommy
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SallyT wrote:
| So it's worth considering that as a family, we are a culture, and that visitors to our home (of any age) are like tourists in our little homeland. Of course we show them courtesy and hospitality; it's a gift to us that they want to visit us. At the same time, regardless of what their home culture might be like, as natives of our own land, we're not prevailed upon simply to put up silently with infractions against our own laws and conventions. The burden is on us, as the "natives," to make people welcome while charitably demonstrating as necessary what our laws and conventions are, without compromising the relative peace and order of the homeland. |
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Yes, this is where we are with our guests, but I am sad to say that I had to grow to get to this point. I remember waaaaay  back when I only had two kids. Two very well-behaved kids. I distinctly remembering hosting a playdate with two little kids were not taught the same manners and expectations as my children. Their behavior appalled me in a judgmental way. I remember "requiring" them to say please and thank you. Looking back, I didn't approach it the right way. I should have given a lot of grace and overlooked their lack of surface manners, and I should have modeled the correct language when truly necessary. I overstepped my boundary and tried to parent them.  Their poor mother was overwhelmed with them, and I'm sure I didn't help her. Now that I am an overwhelmed mother of five, my heart truly goes out to that mother!
I now give a lot of grace to my little visitors, and I find most of them to be very enjoyable. The 5yo who comes to play every Wednesday afternoon doesn't say please or thank you, but he is a very sweet little boy. His heart is lovely, and that's what is important. I don't require him to say please or thank you, but I do require him to not be rude. I think there is quite a bit of gray area between polite and rude, and I really try to look at the heart and not be legalistic. I love rules and order, so I naturally tend toward the legalistic side of nearly everything.
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Jennifer
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dolorsofmary
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ok then I didn't mention this I guess because I was being self-effacing but the same child on another playdate stated 'why does your house stink so much! I'm going to have to hold my nose!' He never says please, thank you, or may I. I like the suggestions of joyfully modelling saying please and htank you. He is 6 yrs old same age as my son. I ask you ladies for advice because I realize that I have only 1 and in having one is very different from having many so you have set me straight, thank you. I didn't mention his comment about the smell of my house becuase I thought maybe it did stink, I don't know, my sniffer doesn't work that well. we had some ant problems (so did they) and we had some ant spray in our home some time ago and maybe that smell lingered. I apologized for the smell and I mopped the floor and he said that it smelled good after that. So whatever. I didn't want him going to him Mom saying my house stunk. And I thought - maybe it did?! Well not sure what to do about that. kids have good sniffers. My sniffer was very good when i was pregnant but not anymore. Oh well.
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MNMommy
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dolorsofmary wrote:
| ok then I didn't mention this I guess because I was being self-effacing but the same child on another playdate stated 'why does your house stink so much! I'm going to have to hold my nose!' |
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I have to at your update only b/c of what my dc did this weekend. We pulled into their cousin's house, and they all got out of the van and exclaimed, "Their house stinks!!" It did stink since the farmers were spreading manure in the fields. My kids aren't used to the smell, so they naturally commented on it. Their comments were rude and yet accurate. We all laughed at the kids and continued on with things.
I'm sure your house doesn't stink. Your house probably just smells different than his house. Yes, it's rude for him to say, but 6yos aren't known for their speaking filters. I would have laughed at him, told him I didn't think the house stunk, and then I would have asked him if he could handle the smell long enough to play. If he said no, then the playdate would have been over. If he said yes, then the kids would go play. I wouldn't have expended effort to make my house smell "better" for a 6yo. I mean, who knows what a good smell is for a 6yo boy????
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SallyT
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Right -- kids really are sensitive to differences in smells and tastes. I can remember being very aware of how my friends' houses smelled when I was a child -- not that I could define what the smell was that was different, but it was just a "not-my-house" sensation. And I can see a child being . . . blunt . . . about that, not really thinking of causing offense.
I think I'd just say, "Hm, gee, I don't know . . . " and let it go. Odds are in five minutes the child would have gotten involved in something and forgotten all about holding his nose. I have discovered that kids who say things to my kids, like, "Wow, you have a messy room," (this is true, usually!) don't usually go home and relate these things to their moms -- they really don't care about the housekeeping beyond an initial reaction. It's just something to say, I think. I happened to remark to a friend of mine, whose son had been to play with mine, that I'd been a little embarrassed by how messy my son's room was, because hers had remarked on it, and she laughed. "You ought to see his room," she said.
Of course, sometimes it turns out that there really is something gross in my fridge, or the trash needs taking out, but I'd wait till the kids were playing to deal with it, so that it didn't look as though a 6-year-old guest was issuing orders to me about how to keep my house! Pride, maybe, though on the other hand, maybe it's also a teachable moment for that child that his un-thought-out words *don't* have the power to make grownups jump to respond.
Sally
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Topic: disciplining other peoples children
