Discipline

One of the residual issues from my childhood surrounds discipline. It is quite a difficult issue for me. When we were first pregnant, I told my husband in very strong language what would happen if he ever thought he could hurt our child in any way. He is a nice guy so it was not at all warranted, but I felt compelled to be clear.

As the years have passed, it has been difficult for me to separate "good" anger and "bad" anger from my husband in the name of discipline. My instinct is to stop it. We have had some serious discussions about it, where I analyze his motivation and his behavior in response to whatever transgression, was it a reasonable response, blahblahblah. I have to admit that he is not abusive, but there have been times when I thought the situation could have been handled better. Anger in itself isn't a bad thing, it's what you do with it that can be. I understand that--in my head.

When it comes to my responsibility to protect, I am probably overzealous. I am probably overprotective as a response to no one protecting me when I was a child. It is probably not fair to my husband that I am so analytical of his every move during times of discipline--who wants to be analyzed when they are angry?-- but I am. To me discipline is to be used to teach, not to hurt. I am not completely opposed to hitting but sometimes when we're angry it's hard to stop and think, "Is this a good thing to do?" But I don't understand the point of striking out in anger because it isn't going to make anyone feel better.

I know, oh how I know, that one has ADD tendencies and that can be quite frustrating. I understand that. But yelling and getting mad isn't going to help. We have certain natural materials to work with, like clay, and it is our responsibility to take the materials with the qualities already present and try to produce the best possible results while not altering what was already there.

I try not to undermine his authority in front of them. It may not be healthy that I essentially act like a referee when I feel it's getting too close to the "unhelpful" line of discipline, but that's where I'm at right now. I wrestle with it. I wrestle with the unfairness that is to my husband. I wrestle with not wanting to create spoiled little monsters. But I also wrestle with the line between beneficial discipline and detrimental anger. In another person, no less.

Observations-Does Double Make You Better? More Believable or Sincere?

I saw something recently that tickled me: someone had not one but two ichthus fish symbols on the rear of their car. The exact same symbol, same size even, one over the other with maybe 2 or 3 inches between them.

What is with that? Does that make it more believable that the occupant is a Christian? Did they "not really mean it" the first time so they had to put a second one on there? Are they saying that they were blessed with a double dose of Christianity, like some people have a double cappucino mocha? One wasn't adequate?

And if the only way a person can tell that you are a Christian is by your bumper stickers or the ornaments on your car, does that make it real?

To take that a step further, can someone really tell by your behavior that you are a Christian? Just because someone happens to be a good, moral person doesn't automatically make them a Christian. Hmmm.....Wow, this is going beyond the humor I saw in the double symbol, I will stop now. These are awfully deep thoughts on way too little sleep. ;)

Observations-Women's Bathroom Doors

A recent random observation:

Have any of you women ever been in a restroom and wondered how no one noticed the huge gap between the stall wall and the stall door? I mean, it's a women's room, is there really supposed to be a 3" gap on either side of the door? Argh! A little privacy, please!

Precious Pets, Part 3

I have given more thought to why it bothers me that my parents can show affection for their Precious Pet (although mother doesn't like Precious Pet 2) and realized that part of the disbelief is because they(Precious Pets) are so demanding. (Yes, they're cats.) I was so careful to not have needs or wants in an effort to be loved, yet the one Precious Pet makes ridiculous and loud demands--even in the middle of the night-- and they don't mind. That is unbelievable.

My mother has this thing about sleep. She complains all the time about how she doesn't sleep much, and has all kinds of outside influences she blames. (Your father won't let me sleep, my aches & pains kept me up, I just couldn't sleep, etc. Yet she won't do anything about it, like exercise or take something to help her sleep. Or go have a sleep study done and find out what's wrong--but no. She'd rather complain, it guarantees her years of something to complain about, I mean talk about.) When I was a kid and would get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, she claimed she would hear the floors creaking and would get up to hiss at me to go back to bed, that I'd woken her up. Um, what about going to the bathroom? I wasn't supposed to go, according to her theory of the world and how it worked. I often wondered what she would say if I started keeping a bucket in my bedroom for those midnight calls of nature.

And it tends to make me wonder if she was ever really asleep when I supposedly woke her up trying to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Yet the damn cat can start demanding his treats in the middle of the night and she thinks it's funny that he's so spoiled and she indulges him??

I have called her at 6:30 p.m. in the evening--yes, before 7 p.m.--and been scolded, "Some people are sleeping!" (This was when I was an adult, and you'd better believe that I didn't call again for months after that.) Yet her already-fat cat can wake her up meowing at any hour of the night for more food which he doesn't even need and it's okay? Something is wrong with that picture.

I resent that I was forced to ignore my needs as a child, while the Precious Pet can be as demanding as possible and it's okay.

It feels good to be able to state that clearly, instead of wondering why I am so resentful of a darned cat. It isn't the cat.

Lighthearted Look at Negative Messages

Sometimes I have a somewhat warped sense of humor. This is a true story, and is being shared as "funny." Feel free to laugh at my precocious naivete. (a deliberate oxymoron which does fit)

Imagine you are a child. A female child, about the age of 10. You see someone's p*rn magazine and you are sure that what you see in the pictures is "bad" so you assume that everything in it is bad.

Switching to 1st person: I saw a phrase that perplexed my 10-year-old brain. It wasn't in the dictionary, which was further indication to the child me that it was "bad". This was before computers in the home and the internet. So I filed it under "bad word" in my brain to make sure I wouldn't say it.

The years passed. Imagine my horror one day when part of that phrase--the part that I thought was "bad" because I couldn't find it in the dictionary--was on a billboard! I was struck dumb. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, couldn't do anything but look at the billboard in horror. What horrid entity actually paid to put that obscenity on a billboard? Was our society really going to h*ll and like now that p*rn was being put on billboards for all passersby to see?

Then it suddenly hit me what else was on the billboard. Of course! It was an advertisement, and it wasn't for anything related to p*rn. The word was a brand name of a particular product. It was solely because of its usage in a p*rn magazine that I had thought it was a "bad word." Oops!

And all these years I've thought it was a "bad word". I laughed my butt off over that one for a long time.

I Don't Give a Damn.....

In the moments before sleep I let my mind wander, and recently I was reminded of a statement my mother once made to me: I don't give a damn what your father does to you as long as he doesn't hit me. That statement seemed strange even at the time she said it many years ago, as I wasn't discussing physical violence and I'd never seen him hit her. Apples to oranges. I interpreted it as her saying that she would rather him hit me than hit her. I knew he had a bad temper and would show it, but he usually exhibited it to her in covert ways. He would drive recklessly to scare the hell out of her, he would take it out on her favorite child, etc. But I never saw him physically threaten her, and I never saw him hit her.

I don't give a damn what your father does to you as long as he doesn't hit me. I don't give a damn what your father does to you as long as he doesn't hit me. Over and over I have been repeating it, trying to figure it out. At first that was how I thought she meant it--as if he would hit her if he didn't hit me-- but now it dawns on me what she really meant. At the time she said that I had been begging her to get me away from him. Her response --properly punctuated--was, "I don't give a damn what your father does to you, as long as he doesn't hit me." The comma is the difference, and it separates the two acts; it is not equating his hitting her with his hitting me, it is stating her limit.

"I don't give a damn what he does to you, as long as he doesn't hit me."

That was her line in the sand. If he crossed that line, then she would leave him. Me, I was unimportant. Whatever he did to me didn't matter. Hitting her would be the last straw. Anything else she could live with.

Well, that's good to know.

Precious Pets, Part 2 - Patterns Revisited

This post is going to make more sense if you have read the first post in this vein.



Hm, technical difficulty--the link isn't showing up. I'll work on that.

I was thinking about something that I had noticed recently. It disgusts me that my parents fawn all over their Precious Pet, as if they are suddenly animal lovers and humanitarians, and the way that they pander to Precious Pet is disgusting because it's not like I saw anywhere near that much concern from them when I was a child. In my head I know that their current displays of affection aside, they really don't care about the Precious Pet. It's a diversion, another object for them to have a tug-of-war over.

In a completely shocking development, my parents got another Precious Pet. Actually, they took in a stray--also wholly shocking against the backdrop of their past. I don't know who my father was trying to impress, but I guarantee you that the "idea" was his and there is an ulterior motive . What has also been interesting has been my mother's reaction to it. The animal is completely anti-social (never has been socialized) but physically beautiful. I say that about how pretty it is because my mother constantly talks about how "ugly" this animal is, and she goes on and on about how it is not a pretty animal. Repeatedly calling it "ugly." And yet, I guarantee you that if I took its picture, you would all ooh and ahh over how pretty it is, because it IS pretty. But for some reason my mother is blinded to that, either unwilling or unaccepting of that fact, so she continually talks about how ugly it is. Oh, there are similarities there. Somehow Precious Pet #2 has been assigned the household role that I used to play, and Precious Pet (although maybe only "precious" to my dad and for a motive) #2 is the object of a lot of animosity from my mother. Despite the fact that much of my situation with them and this animals' are completely different, it has been assigned a role I know all too well. It absolutely hit me smack in the face when she started going on and on about how "ugly" this animal is after I had seen it. When I disagreed and started listing its attributes, she immediately started listing all its physical "flaws." Um, did she have to stare at it for hours on end to come up with a freckle on its nose? I couldn't find evidence of any such freckle, although I admit that I didn't get out a microscope. (So she was probably lying about the freckle.) Sheesh. It totally gives me a whole new...."appreciation" for her claims about me now.

Isn't it interesting how much insight the continuing patterns can bring? Her resentment of this animal oozes out of every pore, despite the fact that this poor creature did nothing to deserve it. It is quite illuminating to see so objectively that her treatment of me may really have not had anything to do with me or how unloveable I was. It was all about her and the warped relationship between my parents.