Best Discipline Method Ever

I have a subscription to a parenting magazine.  Why?  Who knows?  Certainly not because I'm interested in adding to my arsenal of tasty meals in 20 minutes, or potty training tricks and tactics.  It is because they are basically free, and students sell magazine subscriptions as fundraisers and when they hit me up I always order something, and this includes a parenting magazine because I am a parent, and I can't get over the LOW LOW price!  

Well.  This is all a waste of valuable resources and I will stop subscribing to parenting magazines for the same reason that I will never again subscribe to a newspaper.  That reason being that I already know everything.  All of the information in the world handily beams itself into my brain (with a brief stop on my laptop screen on the way).   Once there I sort it into various compartments.  The information gleaned from parenting magazines goes into a compartment which long ago reached critical mass, so I'm ending it.

However, having said that, I have to admit that I've learned at least 2 things by reading these magazines.  The first is that cuts and abrasions do not 'need to breathe', that they need to be covered properly with a bandage to heal most quickly and effectively.  Please wash your abrasions thoroughly, add some Polysporin or something and then cover that owie up.  Don't force your skin to make a scab. 

The other important thing that I learned was in last months magazine in a Tips and Tricks section.  A mother of 2 boys said that when her boys fight she makes them sit on the couch and hold hands (silently) for two minutes!  Wonderful!  The punishment for aggression is not further aggression or isolation,  it is affection.  Does it work?  Yes.  Very well.  

Leif and Laika do not want a two minute hand holding session on the couch.  But every once in a while one of them will provoke the other to the point of attack and then someone will smack someone in the belly or the nose and then next thing you know they are listening to a younger, infinitely more innocent Michael Jackson singing 'Ben' and are no longer just holding hands, but are laying on one another wistfully ruminating on the loneliness of a pet rat who feels that he's 'not wanted anywhere'. 

Here then, is a photographic image in which I have captured the technique in action. 

Sidenote: Laika lost the shirt about an hour prior to the disciplinary event.  

Tuesday

This is what happens when Leif gets an ice cream cone.  You can wipe his mouth continually and he will just keep licking and smacking his lips and getting this effect.  I showed him this picture and he said, "Hey there's a guy in my soccer who looks like that.  I'm serious.  I've seen him a few times."
Here's Tineke sitting patiently in her car seat while Laika is in gymnastics.  Later on, as I changed her diaper in the car (without blanket) she decided to pee straight up like a little fountain (girls can do this too!).  I'm so glad we have leather seats.  I'd like to say they paid for themselves today, but actually Erik is paying for them.  

As I wiped the seat down Laika was watching me and talking.  

"You aren't mad at Tineke, right?" 

"Right.  But I just want the seat to be clean again."  

Laika thinks about it.  "It would be distressing for the next person who sits in it, right?"  

I think about it.  "Not if we don't tell them!"

Godzilla!

Oops.

I said that something (I can't remember what) looked like Godzilla.  Then Leif said, "No mommy, Godzilla is a gorilla."  Then I said, "No, it's like a giant lizard."  Erik backed me up, and then offered to prove it by showing Leif some old Godzilla movie clips on YouTube.  You can guess how this might turn out.

Leif and Erik enjoyed the clips.  Laika did not.

Erik stopped the clip as soon as he sensed her tension, but the damage had been done.  She is now afraid of the giant fire-spewing lizard, and I'm just waiting for her to run to our bed in the night.  

We spent all evening talking about how Godzilla is actually a nice man named Jeff, who lives in Japan (but I thought that 'Jeff' sounded really non-threatening), has two kids and now works in a hot dog stand.  He doesn't even have that Godzilla costume anymore!  The buildings were made out of cardboard!  Then Leif sat down with a piece of paper and a felt.  He drew a picture of a tall building and a small man.  He said, "OK Laika, so this is how buildings REALLY are. But this is how they made the man in the Godzilla suit look big. . . " then he turned the paper over and drew a big man and a tiny building.  He said, "This building is made out of cardboard." Laika said, "I get it Leif!  I didn't know they were made out of cardboard."  So, she GETS that Godzilla isn't real, and really believes it, but is still worried that he might catch a plane to 'our village'.  This is part of being 3.

At least this fear is a little more understandable than Leif's big fear: 

the scary letters on the Curse of the Were-Rabbit poster.