Maybe the cuddly method isn't so bad

One of the basic tenets of today’s feel-good, nobody’s-at-fault child rearing method is follow-through.
If a child isn’t supposed to watch television until he finishes his vegetables, don’t turn on the TV. If a child doesn’t do a chore, don’t give him money for ice cream. And if you threaten to throw a toy out of a moving car, throw the toy out of a moving car.
The problem is, none of the people who write touchy-feely books on parenting expect anyone to, 1) threaten, or 2) throw anything anywhere – ever.
Those people didn’t ask how I do things.
It started with our 3-year-old boy. Driving down the street, fresh from McDonald’s, The Boy hit his little sister with a Happy Meal toy. The toy was Superman, or WALL-E, or a whiskey bottle. Whatever it was, she started crying.
“Hey,” I said in the Dad Voice. “Stop hitting your sister with that toy.”
The back seat immediately became quiet. The Dad Voice is deadly. When properly executed it can freeze kids within 20 feet and, depending on the age, make at least one of them wet their pants.
But this quiet was too quiet. A false quiet. The kind of quiet the talking apes are using as they plot against us. The Boy was up to something – he was just waiting.
Then The Girl started crying again.
Today’s parenting books would have had me stop the car and talk with my 3-year-old over Prozac and a nice mocha latte, tell my son it’s society’s fault for his anger, or get the kids into mediation.
I haven’t read any of those books.
“If you hit your sister again, I’m throwing that toy out the window,” I said.
That was a guy reaction. Boy has toy. Boy hits with toy. Dad removes toy with dramatic action to make point clear. In my head, it was brilliant. My wife would have said something like, “hitting makes your sister sad. Maybe you should think about how that feels because one day she may make you sad, too.”
I’m glad my wife wasn’t in the car.
I think today’s parenting started when moms adopted the cuddly philosophy of Dr. Spock’s “The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care” when dads were better suited to using Mr. Spock’s Vulcan nerve pinch which renders the screaming child unconscious for at least an hour. Society frowns on that.
Whack. The Boy hit her again.
“That’s enough,” I said, swiping my hand through the back seat, snagging the Superman toy – no, wait. I guess it was a whiskey bottle. What’s with Happy Meals these days? – and tossing it out the open window.
There, I thought. That was a pretty nice piece of parenting. I set a limit, I set a consequence, I followed through, and now … and now they’re both crying.
I guess there may be some merit to the cuddly Dr. Spock method, I realized as I was being pulled over by the police, presumably for littering. At least then if a cop walks up to my car window he won’t wonder why all three of us are crying.
Jason’s book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to the Show-Me State’s Most Spirited Spots,” is available at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com or tsup.truman.edu. Visit Jason’s Web site, www.jasonoffutt.com
 for his other books.