An Early Monday Update

I feel a little bad, actually, because once again I've arrived on a Monday with no subject in mind about which to blog.

Life has been a lot of the same for me lately: going to work, coming back, scrambling madly to get all the chores done (and failing), trying to spend some time with Bean, and then going back to work.

I did get to go to my first ever birthday party for one of Bean's friends whose parents weren't also friends of mine. This was a preschool friend, so it was kind of exciting for me to go. The parents had rented a room in the Children's Museum in Laval, which has an exhibit of all the different kinds of jobs you can have when you grow up. It didn't cover them all, but it covered a wide range, from farmer to policeman to astronaut to grocery store clerk to teacher to cook. There was also construction work and a very cool room devoted entirely to engineering and science with lots of bouncing balls that you could subject to gravity in varying ways. Bean had a blast in that room in particular.

I got to experience my very first "Mommy Wars" moment, too, which was unpleasant at the time.
When we first arrived, the very first thing Bean did was ignore our instructions to stay with us until we got all the way inside the play area. Instead he took off at a sprint for the nearest door, forcing his mother to chase him down and bring him back. She sat him down on a bench and told him off but good, whereupon he did what he does best, and wailed as if the world was collapsing around him. (Bean howls under three circumstances: 1) when he's hurt himself; 2) when he's not getting his way; 3) when he's getting berated for disobedience)

It was at that moment that another woman there with her young children stepped forward to address me in French.

"You can't talk to a child that way!" she exclaimed, wringing her hands at heart level. "I feel terrible just listening to it. He's scared!"

So I thanked her politely--if sarcastically--for her unsolicited opinion. I then explained that I'd rather Bean be frightened for a few moments than think it was okay to run off and put himself potentially in harm's way. I then implied not-so-subtly that she should take her opinion and shove it where the sun don't shine, and she went back to her own kids.

The thing is, I don't like yelling at Bean. My girlfriend hates it even more. We're at a point now with the discipline where yelling seems to be the only thing that (eventually) gets through to him, and even then it's short-lived. But, given the alternative, I'd truly rather he was scared of the consequences of running off, because he does it all the damned time these days. He runs off at home, he runs off at school (and once was "missing" for a good 40 minutes while his mother and the entire school staff looked for him, and when it was done and his mother was having a panic attack, he laughed because he thought she was making funny sound), and worse, he runs off in public spaces, through sliding doors and sometimes right into traffic. He's entirely heedless of anything we say, no matter the way we do it. We can reason, we can yell, we can do the counting to three thing, we can give time outs, none of it makes any damned difference: he still runs the minute he can.

So, yeah. Having a strange woman who doesn't know us from a hole in the ground come over and be judgy at us for our "bad" parenting? Didn't go over so well. On the plus side, all the other parents at the party (she wasn't with us, just another parent who happened to be there) were extremely indignant on our behalf. Who did she think she was? they wanted to know. Was it her child misbehaving? No! Etc. It was nice to have the extra validation, at least.

In short, the discipline problems with Bean continue much as they were before. I suspect that a slightly firmer hand might solve at least some of those problems, but then I'm a lot less tolerant of some of his behaviour than my girlfriend is. As an example, when watching television he won't sit still on the sofa, but rolls around and flails and flops, often kicking other people or jabbing them with his elbows accidentally.  I hate this, and as a result I won't sit on the sofa with him, because my girlfriend doesn't view it as a problem and therefore she doesn't make him stop (and that means I have no authority to make him stop either). She doesn't mind having him crawl all over her or accidentally kick/punch/poke her every two minutes. When I pointed out that if we had company over this would be a problem, she shrugged and said that he wouldn't be on the sofa anyway, so what was the big deal? The same goes for his table manners. Bean's manners are middle of the road, but they sometimes err toward the disgusting. I think he's old enough to be told not to smack and slurp his food, but my girlfriend disagrees, and I am not allowed to correct his table manners.

I can't tell if I'm too intolerant or if my girlfriend is too lenient. Either way, what she says goes, because even if I were to try to impose stricter limits, I'm not there half the time. I don't want to come back and play manners police on the days I am home. I'm quite sure all that will do is cause seven times the number of tantrums Bean throws, and also cause a lot of arguments and friction with my girlfriend, who is already extraordinarily over-sensitive about her perceived parenting failures. The slightest comment from me about anything translates to her as "You're a terrible parent and you suck!" So I try not to say anything, which gets extremely difficult when Bean is basically being a terror. I know it's not her parenting, but it's hard to express it in a way that says "I dislike your child's behaviour even though I know you are not responsible for it."

So, that's where we are. Disciple Problems, Redux.

Perhaps next week I shall come back with a more general topic, one which will give everyone food for thought. Perhaps not.