I’m not sure you can do all three of those things at the same time. Well, yes…it might amuse you to do the first. I don’t personally find it funny, I find it kind of disturbing. But then I don’t know you or your child, so maybe something is missing in the translation. But the last two? Either you use it to prevent him from going into areas you deem dangerous for him, or you are trying to teach him that it is an inanimate object so that it isn’t something he should be afraid of. Those two things seem to me to be diametrically opposed to each other. And that would appear to be sending conflicting messages to your child.
If my child had an unreasonable fear of something, I would try to do what you have done, show him that is was not “real”. If it was a real thing, like spiders for instance, I’d try to educate him about spiders, teach him what he should do when he encounters spiders, educate him about there being some spiders that are dangerous and some that are not.
I can’t see how your child can learn to not be afraid of the vampire doll if you are still using it to frighten him.
It strikes me that by constantly bringing it up to scare him, you’re slowing down his “getting over it” process. It also strikes me that making your kid cry for shits and giggles doesn’t really count under “keeping him safe” - quite the contrary, in fact.
No, I’d take it out when my friends were over so he’d cry and that would amuse the hell out of all of us.
Honestly, I do not know many people who are amused by a crying baby. Most parents seek to minimize the crying, not provoke it. What do you do when he cries? Comfort him? That must be confusing. OR do you just let him cry, oblivious to it? Either way, you’re a fucking jerkoff.
So are you using it to help him get over his fear? Or do you want him to fear it so you don’t have to supervise him as he wanders all over your house? Again, confusing, but I don’t think you exactly have a cohesive child-rearing philosophy going on. Also, ever heard of baby gates? They’re cheaper than therapy or a defense attorney for him will be later in life.
Not to mention hours of hilarity with your fucking idiot friends.
First of all, “we”? There’s another so-called adult involved in this crackheaded idea? My god.
Also, you’re only teaching him that his mother is a whimsical bitch who laughs at his pain. The rest of your rationale is bullshit, but you won’t admit that because you think this whole argument is vastly entertaining, don’t you?
Yeah, I can picture you “making him” touch it and it “makes me” want to punch you right in the face.
I’ve done that, too. In this case it was a baby quilt with the alphabet appliquéd on it. The letters went around the edge, but on the bottom, the lady who made it turned the letters right-side up. This was so that when you looked at the whole quilt the letters weren’t upside down. Unfortunately, when my son read his way around the quilt, he turned in a circle while sitting on the quilt. This meant the bottom letters were upside down and backwards for him. It was endlessly frustrating, and he would begin to cry because he couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Once I figured out what caused his dismay, I hid the quilt from him. I couldn’t throw it away because a family member made it for him, but it stayed tied in a white plastic bag on the top shelf of his closet.
No, it serves no purpose at all.
I will always have plenty of opportunities to help my child overcome things that upset them because throughout their lives, children will be faced with an almost limitless number of daily frustrations and fears that come along in the natural course of life. Why would I add to that burden by artificially manufacturing scenarios in which I scare my child half to death for fun?
Once he gets to high school and college his friends will do that.
Come now… It’s one thing to take an odd stance on a particular issue. It’s another to take a borderline indefensible position on just about every topic that comes up. She’s either a very disturbed individual or, far more likely, enjoying the reactions.
… And instead, to be very afraid of his parents, whom he now knows can’t be trusted not to pull out scary fucking stuff to make him cry. Great plan! :smack:
As far as the whore stuff, is anyone else singing the lines from Evita, when she’s on her world tour and gets an unpleasant greeting in Rome?
Okay, some feminists are overly reactionary and emotional, I would agree with this without a problem. But to me, “feminism” still generally means nothing more than believing that men and women should be equal, and that’s where I completely lose catsix, who has entirely redefined it to mean hatred of men. Plus, she doesn’t seem to believe that men and women are really equal, and while some of her points make sense (I would expect to see more male firefighters than female ones), she presents them in the most agressive way she can think of.
As for Blanche, she does claim to be familiar with message boards and to know that “attention whore” doesn’t mean anything like “whore”, but still doesn’t like the word. Yes, I think that’s a little silly, and I think her reaction to seeing that she was discussed on snark boards was over the top, but I’ve seen a lot of worse things on this message board. Everything I’ve seen of her convinces me that she’s entirely honest with us, even too honest (therefore, not a troll), and I don’t think her positions are even very extreme. I’ve all seen them before here.
Children cry very easily, as I’m sure you’re aware, and as was discussed at length in the other thread. Usually it doesn’t mean anything, and they’ll go back to laughing just seconds later. I’ll repeat my earlier anecdote: my girlfriend bought her son a plush toy. He happens not to like it. The toy is usually on their kitchen counter. One time I took the toy and showed it to him. He answered with a “NO!” My motives were to see his reaction, and at the same time to show him the toy in the expectation that maybe some day he will accept to play with it. Does that make me an awful person? I assure you that I only have the little guy’s best interests at heart.
I’m sure what Blanche does is quite similar. Her son cries as soon as he sees the vampire toy. Unless I’m really misreading her posts, she doesn’t attack him with the toy, or keep him for extended periods of time in restricted spaces with the toy, she just shows him the toy. And he cries. She does that because it’s funny – really, I can’t be the only one to see the humour in a young guy who’s afraid of nothing starting to cry as soon as he sees a glimpse of a goofy-looking vampire? --, because it helps keep some parts of the house out of bounds to him – I read the post about using barriers or other things to keep him out, but as anyone can expect, it’s not always possible, for various reasons – and to help him overcome his fear of this object. (I will however agree with Scotticher that the last two goals are contradictory, and Blanche could do well to consider this.)
Yes, I think it’s pretty much the same. My father used to do this because my reaction was funny. It amused him. And I agree with him, while it’s a quite stupid gesture on his part, my reaction was indeed funny. I guess what you don’t like is that Blanche does it in front of friends. You may think that this is because she wants to mock her son in front of other people, make them laugh at his son. Unless I’m really misunderstanding her posts, what I understand is that she merely does it because it’s cute. This is also how I feel: a tough young guy who isn’t afraid of anything, but who cries as soon as he sees a particular goofy-looking toy, is especially cute.
I suppose you’re going to consider that I’m an horrible person for this, finding that a crying child can be cute. After all, when they’re crying, we’re supposed to jump to their help and stop their crying, not find it funny or cute (even if we go reassure them right away, and they start laughing less than 30 seconds later). But the only thing I can offer is my experience with my girlfriend’s son. He cries and screams for every possible reason, and the only way to stop it would be to give him everything he wants, which I’m sure you will agree would be awful parenting. Sure, you’ll answer, but at least I shouldn’t find it funny or cute when he does. Well, oftentimes it ISN’T, but sometimes it’s just over the top (as in the aformentioned toy examples, both Blanche’s and mine) that it really gets funny. And I really don’t think it’s wrong to find it funny. The child isn’t harmed in any way by being angry at his father or afraid of a toy for a few seconds. It really isn’t anything near the order of magnitude of locking a child that’s afraid of the dark in a closet, alone, for extended periods of time, as Maureen mentioned. I repeat: it’s just showing a kid a toy, leading him to cry a few tears, putting the toy away and then hugging the child. To him, it’s equivalent to bringing him to a place where he’s afraid to be (happens every day, don’t have any choice, since there’s so many places in which a kid will feel afraid; in the case of my girlfriend’s son it’s the street – many big noisy trucks there – or home improvement stores – noisy machines!) and then hugging him and reassuring him.
Another confession: my girlfriend’s son is currently in a “no” stage. He tends to answer “no” to anything we ask, often with a smile on his face. I like to make up convoluted or meta-referential* questions to see what his answer will be. I find it cute. I guess I’m going to hell.
*This word probably doesn’t exist, but that’s the only way I was able to phrase it in a single word. What I mean is that I ask him questions such as “are you able to say yes?” or “are you able to say no?”. Usually he’ll answer “no” to the first one and nothing to the second. He really understands everything, and just likes answering “no” because we’d like him to do otherwise, as everyone who sees his facial expression will figure out.
Just to add to my previous post, if it was really traumatizing to Blanche’s son to be exposed to the scary vampire toy, don’t you think she would have realised it? Don’t you think he would have, say, continued crying and screaming for a long time after she’d put the toy back in its place and gone to hug him, convincing her not to try this again? Everything she says leads us to believe that he was not scarred at all and went back to do whatever he was doing before everytime she tried this. As I’ve said before, to him, this wasn’t any different than going to a place that scares him (and with some children, this happens every day). In fact, if anything, it was less traumatizing than this, since when a child is in a place that scares them, or with people they don’t really like, it usually lasts longer.
Now, for those who think only sick freaks might consider crying children to be cute or funny, regardless on the circumstances, consider this. Psychologically, it makes sense that we should be programmed to take care of children that show signs of distress, since sometimes it means they are in need of us. People usually have a strong psychological reaction to things that are helpless or cute. So, we could say that finding children who cry to be “cute”, and being compelled to go investigate and take care of them, is in fact the healthy reaction. It reinforces the bond that exists between the child and its parents: child is scared, cries, is conforted by its parents; parents see crying child (whether they are the ones who made him cry or not), find it cute, are compelled to go see child.
So a parent following your ‘healthy’ strategy would continually make their child cry, then comfort them, then make them cry again?
Rubbish. A normal parent tries to make their child happy, since there is an incredible bond between a parent and a smiling child.
Children benefit form the security of their parent’s love, not being taught that their parents like to make them cry (and that the child only gets attention when it cries).
Blanche, you’ve been a skilled and effective troll throughout your guest membership. Your own reactions have been pretty predictable when you’ve been called on your bullshit - you backpedal, and elaborate, and sometimes act stupid or ignore the callouts, and then scurry off to shit somewhere else on the MB. It was pretty funny for a while, but the novelty’s worn off now and my short internet attention span demands new meat. Bye!
Oh come on! Teasing a child with a toy is hardly akin to terrorism. I have a 2 year-old boy who’s utterly (almost) fearless. He jumps off the side of the swimming pool, he climbs on anything he can wriggle up and he’s bonked himself good on the head at times while doing so. It can be funny to watch the highly exagerrated reactions of a small child. My five-year-old boy freaks out if he sees a spider. His dad will, on occasion, chase him around with the smushed spider just to get a larf. It’s funny.
Has no-one else ever gotten a giggle at their kid’s expense? It’s a part of life. I doubt we’d trot out the spider and chase him around when we had company, but we’ll tell the story and the company will probably laugh too, since it’s just so funny to imagine.
You’re saying that you agree with what Blanche does except the part about what she actually does. What do you think of routinely mocking your son’s fear of spiders to his humiliation in front of other adults?
