Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Punishment

Today as the boys got in the car, little kid was crying.

"What's wrong?" I asked. (Because you have to ask. Even though you know there's a 90% chance you'll get some ridiculously petty answer.)

"My brudder pinsed me," he sobbed, clearly hurt and embarrassed.

"Big Kid, you pinched him??"

"Mom, I had to. I didn't want to pinch him," he replied.

"Why in the world would you have to pinch your brother, Big Kid? That is so not cool that you did that to him!"

"He was singing a rude song. I had told him twice to quit and he wouldn't so I pinched him."

"Big Kid!"

"I'm not havin' him singin' rude songs. Trust me, you wouldn't have liked it."

"You're not his boss! You are NOT the parent. You do NOT discipline him. You have no right to pinch him!"

"Well, it's the only way he listens, by pinching."

"But it's not your job to make him listen!" I said.

"Whose job is it when you aren't around?"

"No one's! You can tell him not to sing that song and that it's rude and that you'll tell an adult, but if he chooses to sing it, you do not have permission to discipline him."

"I'm just tryin' to make sure he gets raised right! Singin' rude songs is not gettin' raised right! It's making me angry that you don't care!"

"I do care and it's nice that you care, but this is mainly my job. You cannot punish your brother, you do not have the authority to punish your brother. And little kid, you don't sing rude songs!"

And then I took away Big Kid's computer time...and with it went my only hope for some peace and quiet this afternoon.

I think I'm going to just start pinching people instead.

2 comments:

JT said...

Obvious question: what song was it?

Unknown said...

A song a friend of Big Kid's made up about shooting Rudolph. Really not the end of the world, mostly just a really dumb song. ;-)