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on May 22 2013 - 06:00 AM
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Yea. I said it.
And at the time, I meant it.
Last weekend we went to my hometown, Chicago. Niko-chan LOVES my mom (Do-Da as he calls her) so we try to visit as much as we can… considering it’s an 8-hour drive.
Chicago is full of great museums and one of the best for kids is the Museum of Science + Industry. The museum is a very tactile and interactive, much more enjoyable for young kids than a traditional museum.
I would love to say that the Museum trip was a wonderful, relaxing visit that I will cherish for all time. I would have LOVED to have been able to say that… but no. It was VERY stressful as Niko ran from one display to another, trying to kill himself.
He’s at that age where he can run incredibly fast with no regard to his surroundings. He showed us how good he was at it several times throughout the day. Then for lunch we had a total meltdown over an apple and the fact you can’t take it out of the food court.
My parents were having a great time watching us trying to shepherd Niko throughout the museum. I heard several times that we kids were the same way and they loved seeing us scramble.
In a huge mistake, we decided to enter the Gift Shop.
The Gift Shop is filled with the normal gift shop stuff, which includes large vats of polished rocks and racks of squeeze toys. Then there are the shelves of expensive, breakable statutes…. Trying to navigate around those is a bit rough.
I was talking with my niece and I look over and there is Niko… with his paws full of cheap-trinket necklaces. By cheap, I mean the quality, not the price. I would have to estimate he had about $200 worth of nickel-plated, crystal necklaces in his hands.
“Let go NOW!” I said sternly to him.
“Noooooooo,” Niko said in a loud, whiney voice.
“I said LET GO,” I told him as I tried to grab the necklaces out of his hands.
“NOOOOOOOOO.”
That’s when I said it. Louder than I though.
“Let go of those before I beat you!”
I did mean to say it, but not that loud. And I wasn’t really going to beat him, but I was prepping to spank him. It’s amazing how quiet a large gift shop can get when someone looses it.
Its great looking around and seeing a bunch of people judge you after a long, long day. Hello woman with an $800 stroller. I’m sure you’re glad a barbarian like me isn’t raising your child.
Where is my husband you ask? I LOVE my husband, but I have never met someone who has to go to the bathroom so much in my life.
So, have you done this? PLEASE…. Tell me I am not the only one who has lost it in public!
I tend to whisper in their ears. It seems weird, but I get more of a response from them if I whisper it into their ear with a stern voice. There have been several times I would have liked to yell, but I know that won't really get me anywhere with my kids! (My kids are a little older than Niko, but I do remember yelling at them at that age. We also didn't go a lot of places if we couldn't be good.)Love this. Had I been there, I would have understood. There have been times I got on Bo in public and felt eyes watching me in the store. Don't worry, people with children, especially boys... knows how it goes. Screw the others without kids who don't know what it's like.I hate those people who put their little cherubs on a leash but I'll tell you what strollers were my friend when my boys were little. It kept their hand off of stuff I didn't want them to touch. Although they didn't much tell us no because they learned really early from my husband that was cause for a spanking and when he said it he more then meant it. The hand was already on its way to the buttocks. I've never spanked I'm a whimp. But I have sympathized many times with moms losing it in the store. Many times I've walked over and said OMG I've been there with the tandrums, trust me it gets better. And they are so quick aren't they.I have no self-consciousness about losing my temper with my son in public. Or spanking him in public, either, although he's too old for it at this point. I'm on your side!One of my daughters had some pretty intense tantrums due to some behavioral issues she had. Staying home didn't always work out so we would suffer through it. We had some pretty specific strategies and others didn't always understand them (we worked closely with a therapist) and I would suffer through the glaring eyes of others. Yuck! It does get better..I actually like going shopping with my kids now, for the most part!DD was 2, we were in a long checkout line and she was whiney and tired. (so was I ) The woman behind me leaned over and said, "Just give her the damn gum." Of course I didn't ! I did threaten to spank her once when we were on a plane and nothing seemed to make her happy. And the woman next to me leaned over and said "you will not spank that little angel. She's just tired like all of us are."I know it wasn't funny at the time, but reading this blog had me laughing. A lot. Been-there-done-that kind of laughing. I used to tell my kids, "If you don't stop doing (whatever) by the time I count to 3, you're going to get (spanked/timeout/whatever discipline worked the best with that kid)." And I ALWAYS followed thru, because the little stinkers wouldn't listen if I didn't. We reached the point where they were doing the right thing by the time I said "2." I also learned to tell them before we entered a store, "No asking me to buy you things. Good boys will get a treat after we leave, and bad boys will get nothing." My Dennis the Menace type DS would say, "Define good, and what kind of treat are we talking about." Thank God no well-meaning, know-it-all types ever interfered with me in public - I'm sure I would have told them to go to hell.
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