OMG NAP

[ailbhe]

Emer's asleep so I can switch my other brain on.

Non-judgmental play supervision: How do you go about allowing your children to choose their forms of independent play when you know that they are acting out violent, gender-stereotyped, or other undesirable roles? I don't have time to go into much detail now but am thinking of stuff like Barbie, guns, etc. Some toys give me the screaming abdabs but I also feel I ought to allow them to play with them, so I try to keep out of it and let it go on around me without voicing a judgment, but there again, I'm fairly sure they're not dim enough not to realise when I'm judging my little heart out.

Property: My kids have SO MUCH STUFF and one of the ways Linnea expresses naughtiness is to destroy her own stuff. In general I either confiscate it and mend it or confiscate it and bin it. I do not replace destroyed stuff. There's too much already. What Would LJ Do?

Consequences: Linnea ate the icing off the defrosted cake in a box on the counter this morning. The cake itself is fine, though probably not fit to be given to guests, but I think she has forfeited her right to eat any of it now. Am I a tyrant or is that a reasonable, connected to the event, direct, comprehensible consequence?

Laundry: Do you think small spatters of orange turmeric staining on the front fly area of a pair of brand new beige trousers would be better or worse than small spatters of white marks where I failed to bleach it properly? I need to make this decision soon. I suppose I can always dye them brown...

Comments

[heraldis.livejournal.com]

Consequence: absolutely what I'd do. When she compains it's very clear she's _had_ her share!

Laundry: not a clue. Which spatters woiuld be bigger? Dye them orange?

[(Anonymous)]

My childhood was filled with a prohibition on gun toys, which had only the effect of either restricting me from playing with kids who had them, thus making me miserable, or putting me into a "bad guy" role.

Letting kids play with annoying gendered or objectionable toys is not going to make them grow up to be tools of the violent patriarchy. Not getting told that there is a violent patriarchy, and getting an education on what it is, when they can understand it is a better thing.

IMO. I'm not a parent. I can only say what worked with me.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Oops. that was me.

[helenprev.livejournal.com]

None of mine are asleep and in fact are all being quite noisy so my other brain is filed away.

By which I mean I cannot sensibly answer any of your questions right now apart from number three and my answer to that is yes, definitely reasonable consequences and you are not a tyrant at all.

[tiggsybabes.livejournal.com]

I let mine play with what they want. Kate had a doll in the bath last night & I watched her pretend that she was a mermaid, get killed by the sea witch (a flannel) & then go up to heaven (on the taps) This is from Disney's Little Mermaid I guess, but it lead on to a discussion as to what heaven is & who goes there.

If mine had done that to a cake, they would def have forfeited the right to eating any. Choices was one of the things we learnt on the behaviour course I went to. The phrase to use there is "It was your choice to eat the icing before being given a slice of cake, so you've all ready eaten your share" or somesuch.

It's not the best example, as the behaviour has all ready happened. A better one is if the child is refusing to do something, like come inside for dinner, so you would say "It is your choice to either come inside now & eat your dinner or stay outside, have no dinner & go & sit in the "time out space" for not doing as I asked" Or whatever punishment is appropriate. You can do it from toddlers up to teenagers apparently & it does actually work as one of my friends has 5 children from teenager down to 6 & it works on all of them. It is apparently giving the decision to the child & not to you. I'm not making much sense as I'm tired & have a cold.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Laundry: stooooop. Scrub it with kitchen oil and that will probably dissolve the turmeric.

This LJ would mend the broken things and then give them away, and re-ice the cake and give it to everybody else.. I have no idea about the rest.

[rmc28]

My parents made it clear that toy guns were Disapproved Of, but let us get away with pretending sticks, fingers, etc were guns. I went through a Sindy+Barbie phase and grew out of it again; I think my mother restrained herself like mad not to make me feel bad about it (unlike my father and his 'helpful' comments on my meccano, grr).

Property: what you do sounds reasonable. Charles has Too Much Stuff already; I am already finding myself giving thought as to best direct the generosity of friends and family come his 2nd birthday. Is there any scope for boxing some Stuff up in longer-term storage and rotating Stuff, to provide a regular turnover of New Interesting Stuff? We haven't quite reached the point where I need to do this but who knows what it'll be like when he's 4? (especially if I can't slow down the influx of Stuff for him).

Consequences: sounds v reasonable to me

Laundry: not sure, I'd probably try bleaching and then dyeing if the bleach went horribly wrong.

[heraldis.livejournal.com]

We do similar. If R objects to doing things a certain way, then I point out it is my way or not at all, her choice!
Like you say, eat dinner at the table or not at all, childs choice.

[k425.livejournal.com]

Violence: Jack is reminded that we don't throw. He can hit his toys if he wants to, he can throw soft toys around his bedroom if he wants to. If he wants to play shooting he can, we play shooting each other with fingers or bits of lego, he makes "shooters" out of any variety of things. I did the same at his age and I don't have a problem with it. One of my friends refused to buy her boys guns until she got fed up with them sellotaping and gluing lego and sticks together and calling them guns. She bought them each a sheriff set and after half an hour's dashing round the garden shooting each other and taking turns to die they hardly bothered with the guns again.

Gender: I only say something if Jack says "girls/boys can't... or only girls/boys can...". I can't see what he plays at as being gender-stereotyped unless he does, and since he plays a variety of roles again I'm not too worried. I have noticed that he's not really aware of the nurses and doctors distinction. He knows nurses exist but as far as he's concerned all his medical care has been done by doctors even when I've introduced him to the nurses - in his mind 'nurse' is just another word for 'doctor'.

Property: If it's broken on purpose, it's gone. If he is sorry, I'll try to mend it, but no guarantees.

Consequences: You are not a tyrant. She is old enough now. I think Jack was around the same age when he went and ate some chocolates that were on the dining table after I'd taken them away from him in the living room. I had told him he could have some more after tea, he couldn't wait. So when I realised what he'd done I removed them again and told him he wouldn't get any later. He hasn't done it since.

Laundry: is there anything else you can use?
http://indianfood.about.com/od/quicktips/qt/turmericstain.htm
http://www.newscientist.com/backpage.ns?id=mg18224506.900
May help!

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Play supervision: I try not to let things I don't like take on the lure of forbidden fruit, so I would allow violent or gender-stereotyped imaginative play. But I would probably address it in one of several ways:

(1) Join in the game to make it broader and include different themes. "Then the general calls up and says 'Soldiers, I have a dangerous job for you. Some people are trapped by a flood and they need to be rescued.'" "Here comes Annie. She says 'Now it's my turn to be a firefighter and drive the fire truck!'"

(2) When invited to comment on the scenario, be honest about my reactions. For example, if my kid runs up to me and gleefully says "I killed a robber!" I might say, "Aw, it's always so sad to me when someone dies. The people who love that person will really miss him. Maybe next time you could find a way to trap the robbers."

(3) Look for opportunities at other times to introduce examples of values I admire, probably through stories that feature the breaking down of gender roles and/or nonviolent conflict resolution.

Property: I wouldn't replace a toy that was deliberately broken. I might say something pointed like, "Okay, that doll needs to be thrown in the trash. That's too bad that it won't be around to play with anymore."

I also put toys, but not Alex, in "time out." A toy that is used to hurt someone or damage something gets put on a high shelf for the day. I once removed every coloring implement from the playroom - crayons, colored pencils, markers, rubber stamps - for several days because I was so angry about natural wood blocks being scribbled on.

Cake: So very much a reasonable consequence.

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

"The cake itself is fine, though probably not fit to be given to guests, but I think she has forfeited her right to eat any of it now."

My parental judgment tells me that she has had her portion of the cake--the icing part. It's a nontraditional choice, but it's a choice, and now the cake part of the cake belongs to other people who did not choose to eat the icing.

[ailbhe]

Olive oil?

[kightp.livejournal.com]

IANA parent and have no advice to give on that front, but wanted to pass on a friend's solution to the Too Much Stuff issue: Once a year, about a month before Christmas, she sat down with her kids and had them choose toys and other belongings they'd outgrown, clean them up, wrap them and give them to the local women's shelter's holiday gift drive. She managed to both make a fun activity out of the choosing/cleaning/wrapping, and an opportunity to introduce her children to the concept of giving to others who have less than they do.

It started with just choosing one or two toys to give away, but kids are naturally soft-hearted ane empathetic; they wound up giving away much more than my friend had hoped they would.

Her kids are now mostly grown, and every one of them has social activist tendencies. (-:

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

This is going to get me into trouble, but.... Hee hee hee!

(I did the exact same thing to a cake when I was a little younger than Linnea, except it *was* for guests, and they *were* already in the house... Is it any consolation if I tell you my mom thinks it's funny now?)

As for the stuff, I have no personal experience of any of this of course. But I had what used to be called a "strict" upbringing and was forbidden to do a whole bunch of stuff. In some cases the result was an exact rebound (the forbidden fruit effect), in others I completely conformed to what my parents wanted me to do. I think kids are totally random that way. They'll grow up to be the people they want to be, and while you can try and influence them you can never be sure that what you're doing has the effect you're aiming for...

Not very helpful I know, but look at it this way: it's a tiny bit of responsibility you don't have to carry any more.

[ailbhe]

(1) I don't get to do because I'm not *in* the games; they tend to play near me but not with me. If I (or any other adult) join in, the game ends.

(2) Sounds good; I think I do this already but feel guilty about it, which isn't all that useful. I'm always uncertain about which of my beliefs are beliefs and which are prejudices. I must go and look up that link you gave me about a book about overthinking, actually.

(3) The books and stories and stuff we talk about is pretty clear; I think a lot of the "play I don't like" is Linnea exploring things she sees and hears about outside our house.

I put toys and people in time out, but we don't call it time out, we call it going somewhere to calm down. "People" includes me. Putting myself in time out is a remarkably effective tool.

[ailbhe]

We do already get rid of a lot; I guess part of me feels that I'm depriving them because they already have less stuff and less flashy stuff than a lot of their peers, but the quantity astonishes me.

[ailbhe]

This cake was thawed out for a specific guest, but I was able to tell her what happened, and she didn't mind - it was someone who left the birthday party early so hadn't tasted the birthday cake.

Then I burnt some muffins defrosting them in the microwave. It's been a bad cake day.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Something like that, yes. Anything oil-based and itself non-staining will do it, because the pigment is much more soluble in oils than in water.

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

Poor you... I hate baking. It's so demanding!

[clare-s.livejournal.com]

I pretty much let them get on with whatever play they are doing. If I feel it is getting too violent I will say something like that's not very nice, poor dolly.

Toys - sounds reasonable

Consequences - perfect.

Laundry - I normally shove everything in the wash and if it remains stained it remains stained and they wear a long top.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Oh, how I wish that I were not required to take part in pretend games. Or make up self-insertion fanfic for Alex.

I'm always uncertain about which of my beliefs are beliefs and which are prejudices.

I think that as long as you're not expressing them in a shaming way, and you are willing to engage with counterarguments from other people present including your children, your beliefs don't have to be 100% prejudice-free in order for it to be okay to communicate them.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Non-judgemental play supervision: Roll my eyes, recognise it as play, continue to set a better example. Step in and stop any actual violence. Helps that I got Agent Weasel to join an organisation that has _adults_ acting out "violence" in non-violent ways.

Consequences: Looks fine to me. Perhaps enlisting Linnea's help in re-icing it would cement the lesson for her. Then again it might be overkill. Hard to tell from this distance.

[(Anonymous)]

I use a 'Vanish' stick on stains like those. I find it works better than the spray, and I don't want to put anything like that in the whole wash!

My five boys never had guns to play with, and weren't allowed to watch violence on TV or play violent computer games - far more of a problem these days, in my opinion! Of course they all went through the stage of using their fingers as pretend guns occasionally, and made swords or bows and arrows from two sticks. However, although they were no saints, and have often fought together while they were growing up, they abhor all weapons and I think I can honestly say that they are non-violent almost to the point of pacifism, about which I am quite pleased and proud.
Elaine

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, and I agree she's had her share of cake.

Elaine

Alison :) New (to me) laptop -can't remember openid!

[(Anonymous)]

Games I don't like - I make disparaging remarks about what a ridiculous body Barbie has. I'm not going to pretend she looks normal! I don't mind them being played with - it's a different sort of make-believe than playing with baby dolls, and I quite like seeing the difference and which different children prefer.

I used to feel very uneasy about toy guns. Elijah, aged about 3, explained to me one day, very patiently, that they are *pretend* and don't have bullets and cannot hurt people. After that, I felt better. But you can only point them at people who are playing your game. It is rude and aggressive to point a gun at someone who's not playing guns. And if swords actually hurt anyone, they are put away.

Breaking things - well, if it's a recurrent thing, then no, I wouldn't give them back. Sort out the toys and put stuff away until she only has things out she does actually like, so if she breaks things she'll realise that she's the one who is suffering? I really wouldn't do the guilt-trip of other people's feelings being hurt if you break their gifts. I don't think that means anything to a 4 year old, and anyway, once they've given the gift, it's YOURS and they don't get to carry on having a say about what you do with it.

We do the pre-Christmas sort-out too. It tends to happen in September, ready for the 3 birthdays in a row before Christmas. Everyone likes it.

The cake - if it was a one-off, I wouldn't care. Slice off the top that's had licked fingers all over it, re-ice and eat, Linnea included. If that kind of thing happens a lot, then sure, do something about it.

Laundry - Oxiclean.