The bruiser

My sister has three kids. These kids don't really hang out with their father's side of the family, so we are all they know. They drive me crazy. As soon as the eldest girl turned 2, she figured out the speed dial, and thought it would be great to call me. It was not. At least now she is 7.5 years of age so I can have a somewhat normal conversation with her. Unfortunately, the youngest is 2 and the cycle of unintelligible phone calls started yet again.

As so many things in life, the raising of children has changed. When I was little, we got threatened a lot (my Dad would give a menacing tap with a rolled up newspaper), and my Mom was quite liberal with the spanking. "Because I said so" was a valid reason to listen to what my parents told us to do. Even back then, I thought I was getting it easy because after spending time with my grandparents, I realized my parents were pushovers in comparison.

I have been thinking about this subject for a while now, ever since that Tiger mother thing came out. You don't want to be a Tiger mom is fine, but calling someone terrible names because they choose to be one is acceptable? You don't want to spoil your kids, fine but yelling at that parent who does is okay? Parenting styles come in all forms, and no matter what children will both need therapy and have affection from whatever you choose (within reason).

So my preachy rant stems from a recent story. My sister has chosen the let's-reason-with-the-child-and-not-yell-or-spank-the-child-of-parenting. A very different approach from what we grew up with. And the kids seem pretty okay with it, except for driving me nuts with phone calls all the time. In the past week my eldest niece has taken to hitting a girl in her class. As she told me tearfully, "Emo[Aunt], she was really bothering me and not leaving me alone so I had to hit her to make her stay away."

I found all this mildly amusing, as I had spent my fair share of time in the vice principals office.
(Although in my defense I never hit another girl nor did I ever hit anyone who did not hit me/sit on me first.) My sister, on the other hand, has found this whole thing very distressing. First, she could not understand where my niece learned to hit someone as hitting is not allowed in her house. But more distressing were the mothers that were whispering behind her back at the supermarket, and the fact that they all speculated she must hit my niece and that is where she learned the behavior.

I told my sister to chill out, that bougie moms have nothing better to snicker about, but that seemed to have no effect on her. My sister seems to still be upset at those judging her and her poor parenting skills.

When did the pressure to be the perfect parent get so crazy? Why is it a competitive sport? What really is the consequence of not being a perfect parent?

Personally, my dad and I are happy about the incident. Not because my niece is a bully, or that my sister is distressed, but because it broke up a little of the monotony in our lives. Quite frankly, my niece's last phone call about her class room drama was really the most interesting phone call I have ever had with her.