I'm finally back! Although I enjoyed my time in Florida, a week and a half just seemed way too long to stay down there. I brought a little notebook down there with me so I have several different things I want to write about but I will need to spread all of that stuff out over several days. I also absolutely love my new car and I am overprotecting it with a zeal that almost border on obsession.
However, before I tell you about all of that, I would like to ask that you would keep my friend David from LeTourneau in your prayers. Yes, this is the same David who has an eccentric obsession with all things banana. He was in a car wreck and was banged up fairly badly. For more information, go to David's blog and read all about it.
Now, for the first of my rants.
Travelling with little kids suck. I went to Key Largo with my cousin, her husband, and their family. They have an almost four-year old daughter, Hannah, and a a seven-year old son, Logan. Before I went on this trip I thought that Hannah was a sweet if slightly spoiled child and that Logan was an intelligent and tough, if small, kid. How little did I know that my impressions were almost totally and completely wrong. Shelli, if you ever read this, I'm sorry for bashing your kids but this is how I see them.
Hannah (if you can forgive my harshness--words can not accurately describe the tantrums she could throw) now appears to me as a conniving, manipulitave, spoiled, lying brat. In order to try to get people to buy her things, she would go through little phases. First, she would ask nicely. If that didn't work, she would throw a tantrum. If that didn't work, she would try to be so cute that you would buy it for her. When she threw tantrums, she would cross her arms, stomp, and start screaming silently. You know what I mean? That open-mouth-but-no-sound-only-air scream. After a few seconds of that, she would go into yelling and crying. Eventually, you could tell she was forcing herself to keep screaming because the tone of her yell would end. She lied to her parents several times during the trip. On the way home from the airport, she cried and yelled for at least thirty minutes for "Momma to sit by meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee." Usually, when everyone ignored her little fits, she would eventually shut up. Not this time. During that time, Logan was aggravating her, which probably caused her to keep going. Her mother eventually compromised and leaned across the car to hold her hand. After a few minutes of that she fell asleep.
Logan turned out to be a hard-headed, whiny, argumentative, wanna-be know-it-all crybaby. He argued with his parents about everything. EVERYTHING! He argued about what people said, he argued about what people saw, he argued about facts in books and movies, etc. No matter what you were talking about he would try to push his way into the conversation and pretend that he knew about it. He actually said to his mother on two different occasions with all seriousness, "I know everything." It is impossible to convince him he is wrong. You have to prove it to him. When he wasn't arguing, he was whining. About everything. He was hungry or thirsty. He needed to use the restroom. He didn't want to leave. He didn't want to go somewhere. He wanted to go somewhere else. It is important that you note that saying something once and then repeating it several minutes later to make sure the driver doesn't forget is not whining. Repeatedly saying it over and over until either what is being said is fulfilled or your get spanked is whining. As for being a crybaby, crying after you are spanked does not make you a crybaby. Crying for fifteen minutes after your mother spanks you once on the leg is being a crybaby.
Solutions for these problems? It seems to me that the two children above no longer respond to any kind of threat from their parents. Occasionally they will try to act decently, but that is only after being told several times, threatened with a spanking, and either parent actually walks over to the kid like he (or she) was going to be spanked. If I were those two parents, the next time either of them didn't do what I asked, whether it was something as trivial as picking up a piece of paper to something important like not playing in a street, I would grab the kid and spank him (or her) until he (or she) could not sit down. You would only have to do this a few times and several of the above behavior problems would be solved. Would this work on every child? Probably not. But there is a difference between disciplining your child and abusing your child. Corporal punishment would work with these two.
That's all I'm going to talk about concerning the trip at this time. However, I have one more thing to say.
Katy has a post in which she talks about having a really weird dream and dream analysis. I once had a really weird dream which resulted with me waking up in the middle of the night in tears. This dream was so strong emotionally that I still have a vivid memory of it. It was so strong that I did my own little analysis of it and wrote it down. I'm hoping I can find that analysis somewhere and I will share it. If not, I'll try to remember everything I thought about that dream and re-create it.
Coming Soon to a blog near you:
Thoughts about dreams, air travel, recently read books, freedom of speech, sleep deprivation, seasickness, and selfishness.