Postcards from the edge

There will be a Thanksgiving photoblog soon, I promise. But first.

If there’s one difference that my wife and I have had on raising our kids, it’s on corporeal punishment. I detest spanking; I always have. My parents never rarely spanked us as kids, preferring to discipline us using other, though equally effective, methods. In fact, I only remember ever being spanked twice during my childhood. (One I remember what I did and I deserved it. The other, I don’t.) Therefore, I made a silent vow when I became a dad that I was only going to reserve spankings for the most extreme of situations. While my wife and I are on completely different sides of this fence, we’ve come to a truce and are accepting of the other one’s feelings on the matter. That’s compromise. That’s what marriage is about.

I reached the dark, ragged edge of parenting tonight. The precipice. The blurred line between bad dad and disciplinarian. And it all began with a burp.

We have a rule in our household: burps and farts are fine, but you need to say “excuse me” afterwards. I admit, it took rigorous training for ME to adhee to this rule, but eventually I acquiesced. We expect the same from our kids. So when Norah, after a gigglefit in the living room let out a loud burp, I asked her to say “excuse me.” She does this just fine almost every day. She knows how to do it. She usually takes great delight in announcing her gaseous emissions by excusing herself. Tonight she didn’t.

“I don’t want to.”

Well, this isn’t a debate, little lady. It’s good manners to say excuse me.

“I just don’t want to, Papa.”

And here’s the part where I ask if I need to count to three. If I get to three, then she needs to go stand in the corner. I got to three. She stood in the corner for two minutes. Was she ready to say “excuse me?” Oh, hell no. Another 2 minutes in the corner. Ready? Nope. Okay.

I’m going to make a long, sordid story short: Corner. More corner. Crying. Corner. Spanking. Potty. More crying. Corner. Mama spanking. And finally, to bed without milk, without stories, without Papa making funny faces at the door. Bed.

And during all this — cajoling. PLEASE, Norah, all you have to do is say “excuse me.” Then you can go play! Then you can have ice cream! Then you can watch a video! Just. Say. The. Damn. Words.

You remember your high school physics? This is what happens when an unstoppable force (Norah) meets an immovable object (her parents).

The worst part for me was that I broke my silent vow. I spanked, I mean bare-butt, whip the hand back, spanked, my daughter. She’s gotten flicks to the ear, her hands slapped, that sort of thing, but I’ve never full-out smacked her ass. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t believe she would let something so small get so out of control. But I’ve seen older children who had no respect for their parents, who knew that, eventually, they’d get their way, and they’re hell-children. No way could I let her win. This was not about pride, this was about authority.

And I hated it.

When I took her to bed, sans milk, sans stories, sans books in bed, she was sobbing. I told her that, yes, I was going to leave and that I wasn’t coming back until morning unless she said “excuse me.” In between sobs I made out the following question:

“Papa, *sob* maybe if *sob* *choke* I say *sob* excuse me *sniffle* then *sniff* Mama could *sob* say goodn-n-n-n-n-*sob*-iiiight?”

Of course, honey. Just say the words. I’ll give you until the count of three.

One.

Two.

…

… Just say it, honey, please?

…

Three. I shut the door.

It’s almost 45 minutes later now. She’s still up there intermittently screaming, crying, and being quiet. I feel nauseous. I don’t know whether to sit down and cry, or go have a stiff drink.

“She’ll live,” Rachel said, and I know she’s right. She had my back in this, and gave me comfort as I rested my head on her shoulder, weary beyond words. This was MY discipline, and I had to be the one to do it. My litterbox, I’ve gotta scoop it. I read somewhere that the best way to discipline children is that no matter how bad they are, no matter what rotten things they do to try and test you, that you have to show them that you can and will be worse. That you’ll make the hard choice to make them miserable in order to teach them a lesson. I hate that sentiment. But in this case, it rings true, if a little hollow.

I’m just so ANGRY at her, that she could be so stubborn at age three that she can force me into this impossible situation. Over something so trivial, so mundane. That she could push, and push, and fly into the very face of reason over a burp, and two little words. All those tears, all that wasted energy, the loss of priviliges, ice cream, night-time books, rice milk. It just doesn’t make sense.

I’m a good parent. But tonight I feel like a rotten dad. The nurture instinct is strong within me; I don’t have the discipline gene. And every time I stand upon that jagged cliff-edge of discipline, holding my daughter out over the edge, every instinct within me screams to put her down and back away from the edge.

Lessons are learned from falling down. So whenever she and I are on that rough edge from now on, God willing, I’ll still let her fall. The only difference is now I know when she’s falling, I’m still holding her, falling down into that chasm with her.

Because I jumped off with her. And because I’ll never, ever let her go.

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