Escape Characters

"That shit doesn't fly"

Someone made four pies. Berry, peach, chocolate, and pumpkin.

I was so close. So close to making it this Christmas. But then somebody made not one, but four pies.

Four pies after a delicious and hearty meal of turkey, yams, green jello stuff, red stuff, cranberry stuff, and my fabulous dinner rolls. This mere hours after a hearty breakfast of eggs seasoned with Cavender's Greek Seasoning and waffles with peanut butter and syrup. And that after only a short but fitful sleep following two plates consisting of Christmas Eve family fiesta, including numerous enchiladas, beans, fistfuls of chips and gallons of salsa. And even before that, Christmas Double-Eve, with a delightful meal of turkey, stuffing, cranberry stuff, and mashed potatoes.

"There are four pies," I say to myself. Thankfully nobody hears my Star Trek reference.

I choose the berry pie. It is the closest.

I sit down with my prize. I begin to consume. And I begin to hear my niece scream from somewhere else in my aunt and uncle's house.

I look to see my mother is in the corner, holding back tears. My father is consoling my mother while trying to put children's toys back into boxes and bags. My brother-in-law has a solemn look on his face. My sister comes up the stairs, capable of motherly violence. She says to my mother, "That shit doesn't fly." My sister continues to pack up her children's trappings. My niece continues to bawl, doing her best to mouth the vowels to her apologies while guilt, rage, sugar, and Christmas spirit comes out of her in sobs. They leave without saying goodbye.

I inconspicuously walk over, trying not to alert the rest of the family to whatever might be going on. I ask, and my dad tells me that my niece (4 years old) hit my mom while she was trying to help my niece zip up her coat.

---

I don't know the specific reason. I don't know how my mom reacted at first. I don't know whether my mother scolded her directly, or had my sister intervene. All I know is that in the time it took me to make a bad decision regarding a piece of pie, I had missed life lessons being taught.

I thought about this for a while afterward. A long while, in fact, wondering at what I would have done in that situation, both as the parents, as the person being hit, and as the kid themselves. And I didn't really have a lot of good answers in any of the situations.

For instance: if my niece decided to hit me, I would immediately ask her why she was doing it. I would be asking her because hitting people, in an adult world, has severe consequences, least of which is what happens if the person being hit decides to hit back. In that context, a person who hits the other person has a very compelling reason to do the hitting, and, has some grasp on the consequences, however tenuous.

For children, though, as far as I've observed them being tiny emotion machines, I don't think rationality has anything to do with it. They feel anger, they act on it. They feel fear, they act on it. Their actions are almost always dictated by their emotional state. And their emotional state intensifies, accelerates, and generally becomes more volatile with lack of sleep, too much sugar, etc. (Which is probably why my sister and brother-in-law are finding it less and less funny when relatives feed their kids sugar just to see what happens.)

So my asking a 4-year-old why they hit me would be pretty pointless, and would probably only yield a continued sneer.

As a responsible adult, my duty would be to establish consequences. In the same situation, my sister would not want her daughter getting the idea that it's alright to hit people, or at least, that she could get away with it. That would, imaginably, negate plenty of hard work spent trying to eradicate such behavior, and enforce potential inconsistency in the rules ("I can do X while someone is around, but not when mom or dad are around").

Here's where the problem becomes complex to me.

As a consequence to hitting, it can never be my place to hit a child back, or, threaten to hit a child back. Hitting other people's children is culturally and legally unacceptable (as well as hitting/spanking your own children, to an extreme degree). However, in the real world, if you hit somebody, they can and will hit you back (and in a child's world, too, kids have no problem hitting each other). The reason for not hitting in an adult world seems obvious, but a child would have to learn the lesson not as a consequence to their own hitting but by either being told, or having some other consequence, perceived equally terrible, to occur upon them hitting another person.

Which leads to things like scolding, time-outs, grounding, and the revoking of privileges. Kids respond to this because it affects their freedoms directly, and for lasting periods of time. However, these punishments are involved: they require continued action (by the parents), and some historical context to determine the severity of the punishment (i.e., how the length of time one is grounded relates to the misbehavior, and how it has related in the past). Neither of which are available to, say, a random family member who was just hit by a 4-year-old.

In the absence of a parent, the adult has the choice of verbally scolding, or putting the child in time-out. Cursing or yelling at a child is out of the question because it shows the child that there are at least emotional responses to their actions (which may be desired if they're trying to make somebody feel bad). As for time-outs, the responsible adult is unable to adequately assess the situation because a) they have no idea how long a time-out should be, or should be given the current misbehavior, and b) whether time-outs are even used at home in the correction of the child's behavior.

If parents are there, while your decision as the responsible adult may be made easier by deferring corrective action to the parent, you're still enforcing a bad trend in the child's mind. Again only based on my observations, but children have an acute sense of "the rules" and "who is in charge." Parents are always in charge, in that you cannot do anything wrong while the parents are around. However, outside of the parent's field of vision, children witness exceptions to the rules all the time. Mom says you can only have one piece of candy, but Grandma gives you another one. And Grandpa, too, if you ask nicely. And Uncle eats all the pie he wants, and he doesn't have to ask anyone, etc., etc.

The "bad trend" I'm getting at is when children learn that the better they test their boundaries, the further they can exercise their freedoms. Like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park, continually testing their electric fences for weaknesses, children take advantage of every rule they can get away with breaking, and learn that the easiest way to get away with it is to fall under somebody in charge that isn't aware of the rule.

My first time watching my niece, she asked for her gummy-bear vitamins. She said she got two of them a day. I asked her if she had already gotten her vitamins that day. She said no. I gave her two vitamins. My sister called 10 minutes later to warn me that my niece already had gotten her vitamin (not two, but one vitamin), and that she would ask for more, and that I wasn't to give her any more. I took this as a lesson learned, not only that my niece was cunning and manipulative, but upon watching her for the first time she immediately knew that I was unaware of any number of rules that were well established elsewhere.

Without the presence of somebody to enforce consequences, children have no qualms with violating the rules to get what they want, or to act upon their emotions.

So the idea, then, is to establish yourself in the child's eyes as someone who is capable of enforcing consequences, even if the rules they have aren't immediately apparent. However, if a child hits you, and you immediately go to their parents, you potentially erode whatever authority the child has assumed you hold. Talking to their parents may establish clear and prompt consequences, but opens doors later if a child knows that they can't be punished if their parents aren't around, or at least, they won't be punished immediately.

So back to my question I can't seem to answer: As a responsible adult, in the interest of teaching a child not to hit, and in the interest of establishing immediate and relevant consequences, and in the interest of not undermining one's authority and the (most basic) authority of adults that aren't the child's parents, what does one do when a child hits you, or commits some other egregious behavior that requires swift and exacting punishment?

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"You're a good grandma," I told my mom, giving her a hug.

Probably not a fun end of a Christmas for my niece. I'll venture that she had her stars removed from her behavior chart, and Elfie Elf-elf, the "Elf on the Shelf" that made sure she was being a good girl for Santa, was pretty disappointed.

I finished my pie, rinsed off my plate, and said my goodbyes, and promptly went home.

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Later, after a harrowing drive home and being sick for a few hours, I'm trying to keep down some chex mix and milk, and watching bad sitcoms.

Maybe one day I'll want kids. But it's the parenting bit that I'm not sold on.