“Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.”
Oscar Wilde
Have I mentioned how gentle Pip is? Well, Pip is gentle. As a baby, a toddler, and a little girl; gentle, gentle, gentle. Crazybaby, on the other hand, is not. For instance, the recent introduction of hair-pulling by Crazybaby has not been met with enthusiasm.
When Crazybaby is frustrated and a head of hair is within her grasp, she yanks. Sometimes it’s Pip’s hair and sometimes it’s mine; Crazybaby isn’t fussy. Worse yet, when Crazybaby yanks a good fistful of hair and I reprimand her by grabbing her hand and saying “NO!” in my ‘stern-voice’… she smiles!!! Can you believe it? She thinks my firm, “NO,” is funny! I’ve never encountered such a thing. In all my years of parenting, combined with fifteen years of teaching, my “NO!” has never been met with smiles. It’s not funny. My “NO!” is quite serious. I just wrote a post about the necessity of NO in my Teacher’s Hat column, so how dare my “NO!” be taken lightly?
I think Crazybaby is too young for a time-out type of consequence, but too old to get away with hurting other people. What to do? This is unchartered territory. I thought there would be less unchartered territory the second time around, but as it turns out…kids are different! Who knew?