Scale
My son completely lacks an appropriate sense of urgency. It doesn’t matter if he dropped a Cheeto and the dog ate it or if he’s on fire and in a pit of cobras. The reaction is the same. Emit blood curdling scream that pierces the skulls of those around him. Everything is a crisis. Obviously, the number of times he’s dropped a Cheeto or can’t find the toy he’s looking for occur slightly more often than catching fire and falling in a pit of cobras (I really should move that thing). So the result is that I don’t really go rushing when he howls like a banshee any more. This annoys the wife a little. Not his screaming but that I don’t go rushing to see what is wrong. Because it’s always nothing. We’re working on appropriate reactions, which will probably be met with about as much success as working on our ‘inside’ voices.
July 8th, 2011 at 10:39 am
LOUD NOISES!!!!!!!
The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
July 8th, 2011 at 10:39 am
Been there and done that, and when he learned that screaming would not bring me running he quit doing it
July 8th, 2011 at 10:40 am
Trouble is, the wife goes running.
July 8th, 2011 at 10:46 am
Ever so often I find myself tearing across the house, wondering if I should stop and get a shotgun to fend off the zombie horde attempting to eat my wife’s face only to find her screaming and pointing at a 2cm spider 10 feet away from her.
July 8th, 2011 at 10:48 am
Justin, are we married to the same woman?
July 8th, 2011 at 10:51 am
Unc, I got bad news for you. It doesn’t get any better as they get older.
BabyGirl G. is very much the same way, and I suspect for the very same reason – it gets results in the form of attention.
And if only one parent is reinforcing the behavior, well… It keeps going well into the elementary school years at least…
July 8th, 2011 at 10:58 am
Tell that bitch to be cool! Be cool bitch! Be cool!
July 8th, 2011 at 11:31 am
I’ve been having some luck pretending that I cannot understand my five year old when she yells and making her repeat herself at an appropriate volume.
July 8th, 2011 at 11:39 am
Duct tape, the solution to so many of life’s little problems.
July 8th, 2011 at 12:02 pm
“Trouble is, the wife goes running.”
Well at least you know where the problem is.
Kids are really smart about getting attention. Unless you’re disciplined, they will train you to do what they want.
July 8th, 2011 at 12:20 pm
If he ran to a microphone everytime and screamed I would say you adopted the son of Chuckie Shummer.
July 8th, 2011 at 12:20 pm
I had the exact opposite problem. My daughter used her very own sign language quite expressively before she learned to talk. She could point and gesture quite well enough to get me to perform many a desired task when still unable to crawl. She continued using her signs instead of vocalizations until I stopped responding to anything but clearly stated words.
On the other hand, my wife once put her out on the back patio after dark, in the rain, when my little darling would not stop crying, screaming, kicking and yelling about going to bed. This ultimate time out lasted about 10 seconds before darling daughter became compliant, and she remembers it still at age 17. Don’t mess with my wife, is one lesson I already knew and my daughter learned.
We won’t mention the teen years, except to say, boys are different from girls, and you’ll enjoy those few years in many interesting ways.
July 8th, 2011 at 12:32 pm
My grandson used to do that. Percussive maintenance to the posterior fixed it.
July 8th, 2011 at 12:42 pm
How tall do they have to be before they can go to military school?
July 8th, 2011 at 12:56 pm
If you keep running he’ll keep abusing y’all. Kids are opportunistic and self-interested.
July 8th, 2011 at 1:07 pm
Don’t give him Cheetos?
July 8th, 2011 at 1:29 pm
Marge: “Homer, use your inside voice”
Homer: “I DON’T HAVE AN INSIDE VOICE!!!”
July 8th, 2011 at 1:44 pm
I find that my kids have a hurt cry, and a not-hurt cry. It baffles my friends and family who don’t have kids when one of my spawn cries out in the house and I do nothing. Then later on, the same kid will cry out a little differently and I go running off to help. It’s like I developed special hearing.
July 8th, 2011 at 2:50 pm
I won’t promise it’ll get better as he grows older, Unc. Just keep telling yourself, “Eventually I’ll grow old and die.”
No, seriously. It’ll be fine, in another twenty years you can throw him out.
July 8th, 2011 at 3:05 pm
When the worst pain you’ve ever felt is a papercut…
“OH MY GOD THIS IS THE WORST PAIN IN THE WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Once you been shot, stabbed, burned, had a couple joints pop, and had some nerve damage…
“hmm… I’m bleeding? How the hell did that happen?”
July 8th, 2011 at 4:38 pm
Mikee, you should know your wife would/could never have been so firm if your daughter had been your son.
I commend you on being able to be firm with your daughter.
I have two brothers, one had a son, the other a daughter. My SIL who had the son fawns over him like a perfumed oriental prince, and my brother who had the daughter does the same with her, while her mother, my other SIL is more firm and no nonsense.
As much as I hate to echo leftist language, I think there is some sort of sex-role stereotyping going on here.
July 8th, 2011 at 4:40 pm
It has generally gotten better with the Weebot. It’s been replaced with preteen DRAMA!
July 8th, 2011 at 5:48 pm
Chris, I once got a fairly nasty slice on my hand; the first reaction was to look at it and yell “DAMMIT, I don’t have time for this!”
Unc, was once at a campout that included a family with five kids. At one point Saturday I was talking with the mom when there was a scream of “MOOOOM!!”
“Is anything broken?”(yelled)
Silence.
“Is anybody bleeding?”
Silence.
“I don’t want to hear about it!”
July 8th, 2011 at 5:51 pm
I’ll throw in, several years back was helping some friends move. The wife had a son from previous marriage who was being a royal PITA, and I finally said “C, if you do that again I’m going to kick your skinny butt clear up between your shoulder blades.”
Looked confidently at me and said “You wouldn’t do that.”
I leaned over him and quietly said “Ask my kids.”
He got a funny look on his face, and was very well-behaved after that.
His mom wanted to send him home with me.
July 8th, 2011 at 6:08 pm
Just insist they aren’t loud enough for it to be serious and make them go louder and louder and louder until you say it’s loud enough. My 33 year old son still won’t slam a door. (He still remembers, too)
July 8th, 2011 at 10:56 pm
A spray bottle of water, directed at Junior’s face (well, the spray, not the whole bottle), will distract him from screaming about whatever minor problem has stressed him. Of course, he may scream because he’s wet, but in that case, he’ll actually have something to scream about.
In some respects, kids are similar to dogs and cats. The spray works on the furry kids, and will work just as well on the non-furry ones.
July 9th, 2011 at 10:59 am
Reportedly my mother used the “water in the face” on me when I was a tot. The difference being was that she used about half an inch of cold water in a glass. She said that when we were in a store & I threw a fit, she would ask a clerk for a cup of water (which they assumed she wanted to drink). Me, hearing that, shut up.
I can’t verify the stories as they occurred over 60 yrs ago and my memory just isn’t that good, but both she and my older sister claimed it worked well.
July 10th, 2011 at 5:29 am
Duct tape is good; I find chloroform to be equally essential…
Funny, after I mentioned that to my sisters I got LOTS fewer requests as an emergency babysitter… 😎
July 10th, 2011 at 5:55 am
Meh, nothing will work unless you and your wife present a unified front.
July 10th, 2011 at 9:52 am
Heh. I just visited my daughter, who now has 2 babies (one is 1 year old, and the other is almost 2 months…). Grandpa is just sitting back and smiling…
July 10th, 2011 at 11:58 am
Was guilty of the same thing when I was a young lad.
July 11th, 2011 at 11:33 pm
As you are fully aware, I do not have an “inside voice.”