An informal discussion on raising the leaders of tomorrow

Oh and here were the funny FZ anecdotes:

"Cured" his kids of sibling rivalry by making a tape of them squabbling, then forcing them to listen to said tape while handcuffed together in the bathroom; this was to show them how dumb they sounded when bickering.

Growing up, Diva and her elder siblings were allowed to use dirty language at home, so long as they weren't doing it to start fights or otherwise be nasty. They were also permitted to stay home from school on the condition that they sit with their father and read to him from the dictionary, the encyclopedia, or the like.

Vaguely related to the theme :
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2098596/Photos-1970s-rock-stars-...

I have no idea what I am doing.

The thing about parenting is, the moment you master whatever stage your kid is in they are no longer in it. And the moment you think "ok, I got this handled." because your next kid is entering a stage you already dealt with you end up finding out you don't know anything again because this is a completely different person.

My only important rule is to accept them for the humans they are, to learn who those humans are, and figure out how to guide them through it all and keep them alive and whole and well adjusted as best as the human I am is able.

Also, my parent, lack of parent, step parent (then lack of) and grandparents did not get much right. If there is such a thing.

I don't talk much about my first twenty years, with anyone, because most people wouldn't believe and it is rare the person who understands. Good times though. ha. right.

My mom did a pretty good job.

I will never be a parent, but if I were I would have a 'laissez faire' approach.

My early years I was definitely raised pretty well. Although there were times when I was disciplined out of anger but I can say that it never got to the point of physical abuse. Considering my personality type my parents adapted pretty well. They were both fairly young and I was quite the spitfire, wanting to do everything myself at a very early age. They encouraged my independent nature and allowed me to try things that I was "too young,small" for(nothing illegal). I was taught manners and how to be considerate of others. Later in life, during some crucial years in my life, I didn't really have my parents to rely on anymore.

I definitely want to have my own kids someday. I'd definitely be open to discipline but more importantly I want to be available and involved in my child's life. I would want them to feel secure in who they are, teach them manners and to be respectful of all walks of life.

I hope that I'll be able to recognize the difference of personality types and have the wisdom to adjust to that.

I could write soo much more about this but I'll just leave it as is for now.

Oh and I would so use weird tactics like tying my kids up and replaying a recording of them squabbling.

From rock n' roll.

One method of discipline I heard of, for sibling fighting, that I always liked but never worked well with my boys (I think it would work better with sisters, or with brother and sister, perhaps) Is when they fight to make them stand on opposite sides of the room from each other and just look at each other for a while, a few minutes. Then have them, in turns, while looking at each other still, say one nice thing, something they like, about the other and take a step forward. Continue until they reach the center of the room at which time they should, in theory, have lost all anger and be giggling and wanting to hug each other.

We liked that one. We pretended to say nice things to each other so they would let us get close enough to resume fist fighting.

Which reminds me of some off the wall method I heard for dealing with marital or romantic disputes. I can't remember where, or if it was in a movie or book or what.

Both people stop talking, and then the begin taking all of their belongings out of the house and into the yard. Eventually there will be big items they have to work together on. Keep working until the house, or at least the main rooms are empty. Then go inside and make love (all the while knowing that was coming up next). Then laugh. Then go get your stuff and put it back in the house. I think it sounds pretty ridiculous, honestly. Funny to think of watching.

This is exactly what happened when I tried to make my boys do this.

Unless you realize none of her stuff is out here, just all yours, and she slams the door and locks it.

And then it starts raining.

No doubt.

This one time, when my boys were about 11 and 6 or so, they'd been squabbling all morning while getting ready for school and it was getting on my ever lovin nerves. I told them to go ahead and go get in the car and buckle up and that I'd be right behind them, but NO MORE FIGHTING. While I was getting everything together to leave the house, I could hear them yeah-yeahing all down the stairs, through the basement, and then outside fighting about who was going to sit where. I'd had it, so I grabbed my car keys and hit the panic button, which made the horn/security alarm go off. They sure knocked that shit off then!

Another time, I ran into the living room to bust up an argument, but I was going too fast and wearing panty hose, so I tripped and slid across the hardwood floor, all the way past them and through the hall into the bathroom. My shoulder ramming into the bathroom doorjamb is what finally slowed me down. They were too worried thinking that I'd just been killed to fight anymore.

Sometimes I think I'm doing it wrong.

When my mum and sister fought during the hottest days of the summer, I punished them by quietly going around the house and closing every window in the house and shutting off all fans and air-conditioners to not only quell the embarrassment of the whole neighborhood hearing them but also to melt us all and they'd knock it off after passing out from heat exhaustion. Inferno Death Matches!

My parents where pretty good with raising me and my siblings. Pops was the discplinarian. Mom was the nurturer. When I was little I used to think I was spanked too much. As I got older I realized I probably could've used a few more.

I'm hoping to be equal parts of disciplinarian and nurturer. I have a feeling, though, as soon as I have my first child I will have a better grasp of how I will go about handling things. As an uncle, I tend to be a little more strict with my nephews. Everyone lets my youngest nephew get away with everything. I do not and I think the fact that he knows I don't is why he does everything I ask him and looks up to me so much.

Really, I have an idea in my head about how I will be once I have children, but really I probably have no clue what I'll be in for. I'm sure I'll have a little Jr me that'll do all my bidding and a little princess that will make me putty in her hands.

Me and my cousin used to spend weeks at a time at our grandparents. We were like sisters, and we got along very well. But when we would fight, we would fucking fight. Our grandma would put us in the "bad girl chair" which would be a chair for each of us in a corner in the kitchen. At that point we'd get along because we had nothing to do but sit there with each other. We'd be so bored with fighting that the only thing left for us to do was get along.

I like this. Mental note taken.

Look at that motherly pride:

Eric Clapton's such a dickhead.

No clue. I read it somewhere at some point.

The sibling rivalry thing is a mystery to me. I was an only child, so I really dont get it. When my kids fight, Im kinda clueless. I always wanted a sister or brother growing up, so I dont know why they get so mad at each other. It is like having a sleepover all the time. When they were younger it was easier to break up squabbling. Now with Jack and Joe it is harder. When their Dad is home, they dont dare try to get in punches or anything when fighting. However, when he is out of town, sometimes they can get really mad at each other. Joe likes to pester Jack and mouth at him sometimes. Jack is 6'3" and Joe is 5'3". I will not allow Jack to hit Joe for fear of him cleaning his clock. Lately I feel Joe pushes this issue. He sometimes gets a punch in the arm or leg in and then takes off. Or, he lets his crazy temper take over and wants to go all bat shit crazy on Jack. So Im stuck trying to get in between him and Jack and not get punched by Joes flying fist. Jack can usually just hold or pin Joe back and avoided the punches. (Joe really does get possessed sometimes when he is mad LOL) So, now I say when this gets going with Joe.....you know Joe, Im not always going to be around when you go WWE on Jack to hold him back from hitting you and he will clean your clock one day. This usually puts a stop to it. Thankfully this does not happen too often and the rest of the time they are too far up each others butts to get mad about anything. Ahhhh brotherly love.
I dont think I will ever understand it. Haily thinks its funny when they are fighting and I am frantically trying to break things up. She's like, Mom you just start yelling out, "why are you doing this? why would you want to hurt your brother. you love each other." She finds it very entertaining.

Sibling rivalry is as real as can get. I've always had it, always been super selfish and resented everyone else for getting better presents or more attention or whatever. Now that my sister is 12, taller than me and wears my size (in clothes, her feet are 4 sizes bigger), it's getting even harder. It doesn't help that she is allowed to do tons of things I wasn't at her age. For instance, last year she slept over 3 friends and went to the countryside with one of them for a weekend. The first time I was allowed to sleep at someone else's house (a girl, obviously!), I was 16 and a half.
And the list goes on and on, but this is just me and my unsolved family issues.

This sounds so familiar.

My sister and I used to fight all the time (she's 3 years older than me). The fights stopped being physical by the time I was about 13, thank god. I remember it really upsetting my Mum that we couldn't get along (we of course would NEVER fight in front of my Dad, who had a very short fuse). I did want to play with my sister, but she always lost her temper and would smack me or be really mean... especially in front of her friends at school. I never really understood it. Luckily she grew out of it, and we bonded a lot more when my Dad left.

All I know is that my kid is going to be the President of the world. I've come to accept that as a fact. Yes... be afraid.

So the theme here seems to be that everyone without kids has sort of an idea where they want it to go and how they want it to be, and every one with kids knows they don't have a clue most days, just keep grinning keep grinning...

My good friend and I, who has four kids as well, a seven year old a three year old and twin two year olds, have this joke about the goal of parenting, the summed up everything of it.

The entire goal is to prevent them from dying and try not to kill them in the mean time.

That is about it.

So if I kill them while trying to keep them from dying, I only got it half-right. Well, I gets that's something I can't half-ass nearly as much as I do everything else.

So today The Telegraph ran an article naming 50 activities all children should do by the age of 11 3/4.

1. Climb a tree
2. Roll down a really big hill
3. Camp out in the wild
4. Build a den
5. Skim a stone
6. Run around in the rain
7. Fly a kite
8. Catch a fish with a net
9. Eat an apple straight from a tree
10. Play conkers
11. Throw some snow
12. Hunt for treasure on the beach
13. Make a mud pie
14. Dam a stream
15. Go sledging
16. Bury someone in the sand
17. Set up a snail race
18. Balance on a fallen tree
19. Swing on a rope swing
20. Make a mud slide
21. Eat blackberries growing in the wild
22. Take a look inside a tree
23. Visit an island
24. Feel like you're flying in the wind
25. Make a grass trumpet
26. Hunt for fossils and bones
27. Watch the sun wake up
28. Climb a huge hill
29. Get behind a waterfall
30. Feed a bird from your hand
31. Hunt for bugs
32. Find some frogspawn
33. Catch a butterfly in a net
34. Track wild animals
35. Discover what's in a pond
36. Call an owl
37. Check out the crazy creatures in a rock pool
38. Bring up a butterfly
39. Catch a crab
40. Go on a nature walk at night
41. Plant it, grow it, eat it
42. Go wild swimming
43. Go rafting
44. Light a fire without matches
45. Find your way with a map and compass
46. Try bouldering
47. Cook on a campfire
48. Try abseiling
49. Find a geocache
50. Canoe down a river

How many have you done?

And for the record, as a country girl, I did them all apart from 49... which I had to Google the meaning of.

1. Climb a tree
2. Roll down a really big hill
3. Camp out in the wild
4. Build a den
5. Skim a stone
6. Run around in the rain
7. Fly a kite
8. Catch a fish with a net
9. Eat an apple straight from a tree
10. Play conkers
11. Throw some snow
12. Hunt for treasure on the beach
13. Make a mud pie
14. Dam a stream
15. Go sledging
16. Bury someone in the sand
17. Set up a snail race
18. Balance on a fallen tree
19. Swing on a rope swing
20. Make a mud slide
21. Eat blackberries growing in the wild
22. Take a look inside a tree
23. Visit an island
24. Feel like you're flying in the wind I still do, because I'm really light.
25. Make a grass trumpet
26. Hunt for fossils and bones
27. Watch the sun wake up
28. Climb a huge hill
29. Get behind a waterfall
30. Feed a bird from your hand
31. Hunt for bugs
32. Find some frogspawn And we kept them in jars and waited for them to turn into froggies. It always happened during the night!
33. Catch a butterfly in a net
34. Track wild animals
35. Discover what's in a pond
36. Call an owl
37. Check out the crazy creatures in a rock pool
38. Bring up a butterfly
39. Catch a crab
40. Go on a nature walk at night
41. Plant it, grow it, eat it
42. Go wild swimming
43. Go rafting
44. Light a fire without matches
45. Find your way with a map and compass
46. Try bouldering
47. Cook on a campfire
48. Try abseiling
49. Find a geocache
50. Canoe down a river

And if they die while you try to keep yourself from killing them, still only half right.

Relate all that to economics and evolution. It is easy, of course. Everything you do for your child, is, at its core level, in an attempt to keep them alive, from feeding them to teaching them of human nature to handing them an instrument and making them go to lessons, fulfillment of the physical need of sustenance and shelter to creating connections in their brains that will allow them to logically obtain these things themselves at some point, and in a emotionally and morally un-corrupt manor. All the while using those same connections you were taught, and which were hardwired into you, to do so in the safest and most moral way you are able. from not feeding them a poison plant to not throwing your hands up in brute animal anger and saying That Is It! I'm done with you and bigger than you so you better start running. And what for? At the deepest level, so they can replicate at some point. Just like you did. And everyone involved with have the gains from that if it is all done right.

It is a little bit of a sick joke. But it holds more truth than most would admit.

WEEEEELLL, I wouldn't discuss it in economic terms in this case, but in the realm of biology, mathematics (again, particularly game theory) is still completely relevant. There is faaar too much to discuss in that department, and I'm a little hungover, so I'll just say that game theory in the biology world makes a pretty clear case of similar gene percentage between two organisms, and what they're willing to reciprocate for each other. You only share 50% of your genes with your kid. There's a threshold between what you're willing to put up with before deciding to invest in creating more kids.

1. Climb a tree
2. Roll down a really big hill
3. Camp out in the wild
4. Build a den
5. Skim a stone
6. Run around in the rain
7. Fly a kite
8. Catch a fish with a net
9. Eat an apple straight from a tree
10. Play conkers
11. Throw some snow
12. Hunt for treasure on the beach
13. Make a mud pie
14. Dam a stream
15. Go sledging
16. Bury someone in the sand
17. Set up a snail race
18. Balance on a fallen tree
19. Swing on a rope swing
20. Make a mud slide
21. Eat blackberries growing in the wild
22. Take a look inside a tree
23. Visit an island
24. Feel like you're flying in the wind
25. Make a grass trumpet
26. Hunt for fossils and bones
27. Watch the sun wake up
28. Climb a huge hill
29. Get behind a waterfall
30. Feed a bird from your hand
31. Hunt for bugs
32. Find some frogspawn
33. Catch a butterfly in a net
34. Track wild animals
35. Discover what's in a pond
36. Call an owl
37. Check out the crazy creatures in a rock pool
38. Bring up a butterfly
39. Catch a crab
40. Go on a nature walk at night
41. Plant it, grow it, eat it
42. Go wild swimming
43. Go rafting
44. Light a fire without matches
45. Find your way with a map and compass
46. Try bouldering
47. Cook on a campfire
48. Try abseiling
49. Find a geocache
50. Canoe down a river

A few of those on the list are specific to you culture and I don't think geocaching was a thing when I was younger. They should add:

Spinning til you fall on the ground.
Jumping in puddles.
Racing leaves/sticks in a stream.
Lay outside and look at the stars all night.
Build a sand castle(regional)

I know there's more but I can't think right now.

Also sledging would be like our baseball or we would play kickball in the street.

And spinning holding hands, like Jack and Rose do at the party in the third class. We always did that on our school hallways and the older kids laughed at us. Fuck it, it was a natural high and I'm not ashamed of it.

yeah, me and my cousin used to spin almost every chance we got at our old house that our dad's grew up in. We had trees in the backyard that we would climb and eat the fruit from. I miss that house. It had a good sized front and back yard. We also lived right next to the train tracks(Not Dangerous at all) and we would hop the fence and explore the different shades of shards of glass.

I haven't done 16 things on that list. Out of those though, the only ones I'd want to do now are canoeing down a river and maybe sledging.

What is a grass trumpet?

It's similar to a rusting trombone.

I don't even believe that Hattie did that before she turned 12.

I've done most of them. I would like to camp outside and canoe and that sort of thing one day. I used to like making paper boats and then sailing them down the gutter in torrential rain! Was anybody else a city kid? We had a game where you threw a football across the street to each other and if you hit the curb you got five points and if you hit the edge of the curb and it bounced all the way back to you then you got loads of points.

I love that game! I had no clue others played this as well. Only difference is that we got one point for hitting the curb, 2 if it bounced all the way back and 5 if you managed to hit the curb with your back turned to it.

I did that too! But I had Dad make the boats cause I don't know how to make them. I can do the weirdest Origami stuff but I can't make a plane or a boat.

Add make paper plane, paper hat, and paper boat to the list.

How do you not know how to make those!?

I never learned. I can't ride a bike either, because it got stolen from our basement as I was learning.

Anyway, to stay on-topic: Please, all mothers out here, read the "Mother" chapter in Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex". It's in volume 2. It will help you avoid so many mistakes I've noticed at my mum and I now realise why she's been acting like this for so many years. That book makes so much sense and you'd be doing you and your children a huge favour if you read that chapter.

I think parenting will be full of mistakes no matter how many books you read or tips you take.

Pretty much how all the parents in here said as long as you make sure they don't die and are taking care of your child as best you can you're doing something right.

Well, this is exactly it. It doesn't give tips, it explains the effects of certain behaviours. I know everyone's prone to making mistakes, but a child is more than a trophy or just..something. They're gonna grow up to be adults, and it's mostly up to the parents to make sure they end up being healthy adults.

I am fucked up socially and behaviourally (if the word exists) because of the stupid relationship I've had with my mother, and what I've learned from that book is WHY exactly she behaved like that. And I'm not clinging to the slightest explanation, it simply makes perfect sense. I'm not going to go into details because I'm already in the most fucked up mood tonight and it would only bring me to tears.

It's still my favourite game! I wish we could all have a Cult meet up and a curb ball tournament!
As an aside, I always had bad hearing when I was little because of ear infections and I always thought it was called "the curve" and not "curb". I remember my dad correcting me one day and he was looking at me like I was simple.