Wendy Mogel asks, “Should We Speak to Little Boys as We Do Little Dogs?”:

My question to the parents in my office is this: What percentage of your communication with your son consists of nagging, reminding, chastising or yelling? “Uh … 90 percent, 100?” Which I know isn’t true, just as confidently as I know these boys aren’t mentally ill and these families aren’t rife with hidden dysfunction.

I do it 110 percent with my boys and they still don’t listen. I even feel annoyed at myself for keep repeating it. For instance, I told Đán not to lean over his chair every time we have dinner. The other day, I was so fed up that I didn’t remind him. He fell off and hurt himself. He cried and blamed on me for not reminding him even though I told him so so many times. Our dining table and chairs are higher than the usual set because I did not think about kids when we bought them.

For Đạo, no matter how many times we asked him not to bring toys on the dinning table, he does it every time. We have to ask him to put them away every time. I told my wife, I am getting tired of getting to get out of bed, to brush their teeth, and to put on their clothes. If we don’t remind them they wouldn’t do it on their own. I guess they’ll be ready whenever they are ready.

Mogel advises:

Shower your son with the easy affection, appreciation and tolerance you show your dog.

I never have dog; therefore, I wouldn’t know how to appreciate and tolerate dog.

Emily F. Popek provides some tips for parents to deal with their children’s temper tantrums and meltdowns:

• Take a Breath
• Let Emotions Happen
• Get Curious
• Set Boundaries With Compassion
• Examine Your Yeses and Nos
• Get Some Distance

Chiều Chủ Nhật đưa Đạo và Đán đi học võ. Đến sớm trước 15 phút nên ngồi xem hai anh em nó đấu với một đứa nhỏ khác. Thằng nầy không phải bạn học võ cùng lớp. Cũng chẵng quen biết. Nó cao lớn con hơn thằng Đạo. Đạo và Đán cùng phe nhưng vì yếu và nhỏ con hơn nên bị thằng kia vật xuống mấy tấm đệm. Thầy cũng ngồi đó nhưng đang đọc báo nên không để ý. Tôi cũng theo dõi nhưng không lên tiếng. Hai thằng này học võ đã sáu tháng rồi mà vẫn chưa áp dụng được để tự vệ gì cả.

Sau giờ học tôi đưa chúng đi ăn với đứa bạn Mĩ lúc trước cùng làm ở trường đại học Vassar. Nó cùng gia đình đi Washignton DC để tham dự biểu tình về luật lệ súng ống. Lúc ra Eden ăn tối hai thằng nhóc nói lia nói lịa. Đạo thì nói về lịch sử chiến tranh thế giới thứ hai. Còn Đán thì tò mò hỏi “Ông thở được không vì lỗ mũi của ông thẳng quá.” Rồi lại hỏi, “Ông bơi được không vì lỗ mũi cũng ông dài quá.” Rồi lại hỏi, “Tại sao râu và tóc của ông trắng hết vậy?” Thằng bạn Mĩ trắng trả lời cũng ná thở.

Lúc ăn xong chuẩn bị chia tay, thằng bạn cười và khen, “Hai thằng con của mầy hiếu kỳ và thẳng thắn lắm.” Tôi cũng trả lời, “Tại mình quen biết quá rồi nên tao cũng không ngại.” Thật sự tôi cũng không biết tính tình của tụi nó được như vậy bao lâu. Nhiều lúc gặp mấy đứa con của bạn bè ở tuổi 11 hoặc 12 chúng nó thấy tôi cũng chẳng chào hỏi. Đợi ba mẹ nhắc nhở chúng nó mới mở miệng. Thế rồi hỏi nó câu gì thì nó trả lời câu đó chứ không hề nói năng gì thêm cả.

Ở tuổi này chúng nó rất hoạt bát và dễ dàng làm quen với bất cứ lứa tuổi nào. Già bé gì cũng được cả. Hy vọng rằng những đức tính đó sẽ không thay đổi. Đừng giống cha nó vừa rụt rè vừa ngượng ngịu trong xã giao.

I had a brief conference with Xuân’s teachers this morning. They described him as energetic, curious, and strong-willed. On the positive side, his strong-willed allows him to focus on a project for long time. On the negative side, he has to have something when he wants it badly. Xuân loves to be physical. He enjoys instruments and often use toys to make noise. He also loves to sing.

They are working with him on using toys and food for their intended purposes. He might be bored with the toys and the food; therefore, he uses his creativity to do something else. Shouldn’t we encourage his imagination? At home, he turned everything into musical instruments.

They are also working on getting him to play gently. With two older brothers, Xuân can be a bit rough, especially when the older brothers don’t physically hit him back. I kept telling them to stop him. He should not be hitting. We have been through these before. Đạo used to get into trouble a lot for scratching other kids.

Now he is very gently. Sometimes he just unintentional plays a bit rough. Like last night, he bit Xuân while they played together. He was meant to bite lightly, but he left his teeth marks on Xuân’s finger. It drives me nuts that he does this repeatedly. The other day, he meant to touch Đan’s face gently, but he slapped him with red finger prints. He’ll learn one day after I yell at him enough.

Lúc trước thấy một chị họ bên vợ tắm cho thằng con 13 tuổi tôi hơi ngạc nhiên. Giờ thằng lớn đã gần 9 tuổi mà còn phải có ba phụ tắm cho.

Sáng nay nó muốn ăn cereal và muốn tôi đi làm cho nó. Tôi bảo con tự làm được mà sao phải. Chỉ cần lấy tô, muỗng rồi đổ sữa và cereal vào. Thế mà nó cũng cằn nhằn đợi tôi la mới thôi.

Hôm nọ nó bảo rằng nó chưa có khuynh hướng đi đại học vì nó vẫn còn muốn ngủ chung với ba. Chú tôi từng nói nếu để nó ngủ chung nó sẽ ngủ đến 18 tuổi. Chắc là vậy rồi.

Ellen Barry:

Limited risks are increasingly cast by experts as an experience essential to childhood development, useful in building resilience and grit.

Outside the Princess Diana Playground in Kensington Gardens in London, which attracts more than a million visitors a year, a placard informs parents that risks have been “intentionally provided, so that your child can develop an appreciation of risk in a controlled play environment rather than taking similar risks in an uncontrolled and unregulated wider world.”

I am guilty as charged for being over-protective. I still watch every move my toddler does when he’s at the playground. My first boy fell down from the top of the slide. Thank goodness the ground was mulch not concrete. My second boy never seemed to learn his lesson and I don’t want to spend hours in the ER room afterward, which we did several times already. Call me a sucker and a typical parent all you want, but I rather be cautious than sorry.

Pamela Druckerman:

Modern parents spend far more time with their children than parents did in the 1960s. Yes, a mother reading work emails at the playground has briefly stopped interacting with her child. But Kamenetz — a mother of two — says if she couldn’t do that, she’d need to be at the office.

We know it’s crucial to stimulate and speak to young children, and our generation of parents complies to a possibly unprecedented — and exhausting — degree. Kamenetz notes that we need occasional breaks from this. She bemoans “an ideological stance that judges mothers for not being fully available to their children at all times and that scapegoats working-class families in particular.”

The strong wind over the weekend was terrifying. Other than a few hours without power, nothing has damaged. There were moments I felt like the roof was flying off. I re-nailed the gutters and aluminum trims a couple months ago; therefore, nothing blew off. I am glad that we survived the catastrophe. On top of all, we survived the kids’ conflicts.

The boys played well together for the most part. They still argued from time to time, but no crying, screaming, and whining. I consider that to be a progress when you put five kids together in one house of a couple of days. The boys even decided to have a sleepover. I was a bit anxious at first, but they seemed to get along fine.

The parents had agreed to step back and it seemed to work. We give them a chance to they talk it out. We only intervened if things got too rough. Fortunately, we didn’t have to do much of it. It’s so nice to see the kids played together peacefully. They put less stress on us. The iPads helped too even though I feel guilty as hell for giving in to the evil of technology. What is there for them to do when the are stuck in the house? Letting them running around the house drives me nuts as well. Overall, we had a wonderful time being stuck in the house.

Răng non của thằng Đán lung lay cả tuần nay. Nó bảo tôi nhổ cho nó. Tôi lắc lư và ngọ nguậy mãi nhưng nó không chịu ra. Khi giựt hơi mạnh thì nó than đau. Máu đã chảy ra nên tôi sợ bị nhiễm trùng.

Hôm qua thấy chổ đó xưng lên và nó than đau mỗi khi ăn nên tôi cũng xót ruột. Tối qua tôi lo lắng ngủ không được nên sáng sớm gọi lấy hẹn nha sĩ cho nó. Trưa nay khi mẹ nó đến trường rước nó đi thì nó gọi video cho tôi khoe rằng nó đã tự mình giựt ra.

Thằng con trai giữa này của tôi cũng lì thật. Mai mốt tôi để cho nó tự mình nhổ lấy luôn.

Geraldine DeRuiter recounts the story of her bully:

In 2010, after years of finding nothing, I learned from a friend that my bully had been murdered in his home not far from where we grew up. Consumed by the story, I pored over every news article on his death I could find. He had been dealing pot and was killed in a robbery gone wrong. One of the murderers had been his childhood friend.

DeRuiter also gives a different perspective on the bully:

Nobody wants to extend sympathy to a tormenter. The trouble is, school and neighborhood bullies aren’t adults. They’re kids, and many are grappling with their own problems. In 2008, the Institute of Education in London published a report that found that bullies had higher levels of anger, depression, emotional disaffection, paranoia and suicidal behavior. Other studies have found that as they grow up, bullies tend to have more trouble keeping jobs, have more problems with alcohol and drugs, and are more likely to have criminal records. A large number of bullies are also victims of bullying, meaning they face some of the same pathologies that they induce in others.

“These kids have been told that they’re worthless, that they’re stupid. They’re dealing with trauma, and they don’t have the social skills to process it. Punishing them just makes it worse,” says Julietta Skoog, a school psychologist with Seattle Public Schools and co-founder of Sproutable, a company that creates video-based parenting tools. “It’s never just ‘I feel like being a jerk.’”

As a victim and survivor of bullying, I also wonder how my tormenters turn out. One of them showed up on Facebook. We were neighbors. I was around eight or nine and he was two years older than me. He beat me up because he thought I made fun of him, which I did not. He was stronger and a better fighter than me; therefore, I was not stupid enough to piss him off. The punch was not as hurt as the embarrassment when I mom got involved. She banned me from speaking to him. As time passed, he wanted to hanging out with me again, but I could not. If he apologized, I would have reconsidered it. Now we are friends on Facebook. He seems to be doing fine. We did not bring up the past. The memory still lingered.