"Bad Girl!!!"

dragonlady wrote:

In article ,
"R. Steve Walz" wrote:

Anyone who makes a 4 y/o apologize for saying ANYTHING should be
beaten!!

You really ought to read a little more carefully before you fly off the
handle -- though I know how much you enjoy gonig over the top in your
criticism of nearly everyone. I suppose I should be glad to give you an
opportunity to yell at me.
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Quit posturing and pay better attention. I read it all.
I just see more in it than you do, and yes, it is there.


I didn't actually MAKE her apologize; I asked her to apologize, and
told her that if she didn't, the boy in question (a 10 year old whose
company she really enjoyed) probably wouldn't want to play with her any
more, since he didn't like being called names and had been so upset by
this one that he'd felt compelled to come and tell me he didn't want to
play with her if she was going to keep doing that. (He was a very sweet
kid, and not prone to tattleing -- he was visibly upset by hearing
language that I know was NEVER used in his house.)
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You, a much larger person upon whom she depends even ASKING her to
makes her become dishonest and non-genuine to herself, and that makes
her resent you. Apologies are only real when unbidden.


I've never forced my kids to apologize -- a forced apology is pretty
meaningless. However, I've let them know how their actions have made
other people feel,
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And so you don't think SHE knows that? You really ARE a fool!
Pretending she doesn't know that at some level calls her own
competence to know such things into question in HER mind. And it
delays the full flower of that sophistication in her. You sound
like the kind of idiot who thinks he taught his child to talk or
walk!

She doesn't need you to tell her such things, wait till she asks
YOU for suggestions, if you shut the **** up they actually DO,
you know, in fact quite a LOT!


and that NOT apologizing would have certain
consequences -- in this case, not being able to play with a kid she
liked, not because *I* wouldn't allow it, but because *he* wouldn't.
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So now you're arranging her friendships?
Pitiful. How crippling.


Once she realized that she really had made him feel bad, and that the
language was really over the top for most people, she was genuinely
sorry.
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And you had short-circuited her own process and made it a pale ghost
of her actual inner self. It was to please you, and to an important
degree of depth, entirely ungenuine.


Interestingly, as she has moved through her teens and into her twenties
(she'll be 21 soon!) she's always been very careful about her language
around adults or young children or anyone she knows might find it
offensive. She's perfectly willing to use scattological terms -- I've
heard her with her friends! -- but I've also heard her explaining to
younger teens that they should clean up their casual use of swearing
around people who find it offensive (mostly us unreasonable adults . .
.); her general position seems to be that language should only be used
to offend someone on purpose -- not because you're too lazy to clean it
up.
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She is now successfully brainwashed and says things she doesn't
really even believe just out of habit, thinking she must do so
to be accepted. Monkeys imitate.


meh
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care
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You don't get it.
Steve