Lately we have been struggling with discipline. I am sure most, I mean, ALL first time parents go through this. Ryan is mean. He bites, smacks, scratches, pokes, and screams. He hits the dogs and his parents. He bites other kids and the teachers. How do you "punish" someone when they don't know what they are doing is wrong.
Last week(I'm sure all of you know this by now)I was approached in the parking lot of Ryan's daycare by a man. He was the father of one of Ryan's "friends". I guess he had walked into the classroom right after Ryan had pushed "Ava" down, who happened to be this guys kid. (He pushed the little girl down onto her padded diaper-protected ass!! Aww how sad.) He said that he was only telling me about it because he felt that I needed to know. Of course I was in utter shock. How dare anyone approach me about my kids behavior...Right? That's the teachers job! After putting two and two together, I figured it out! The teacher was the one who ratted Ryan out to the parent. After politely explaining to the dad that Ryan is a bully, and we are working with him on it, I laughed it off and walked away. I tried to make light of it, mostly because people are crazy and I didn't know what this guy could or would do to me or my kid. After he drove off, I flagged down the first teacher I could find and basically unleashed. Then, after feeling like I over reacted, it was followed up by feeling completely violated and unsafe...I got over it. And now I'm at the place where not wanting to deal with Ryan's bad behavior meets forcing myself to come to grips with the fact that my precious angel is a monster! So now where do we go? What do we do? I don't believe in spanking, I know that's just going to teach him to be angry and scared of his parents. I tried swatting his hand when he gets into stuff. Again...its in the spanking family and it doesn't work. We are trying time out and redirection.
You know you want a family. You want a baby and pray to God that he blesses you with one. You become pregnant and you are so excited about the future. You go through hours of labor and suffer for weeks after. Then one day you wake up to a screaming red-headed little boy who has his legs wrapped around your neck, screaming, bouncing up and down as if you were a horse, and think to your self...oh my god...this is payback.
I guess we will have to see how it works. I will be sure to keep you all posted as we shape our little bully into the sweet little monkey that we all love so much!!
