Violent Acres

“I don’t get it,” my friend fumed to me on the phone this morning, “Why do kids even like you?”

Yesterday, she had introduced me to her nephew. My friend is an aunt who loves to spoil and she promptly set about plowing her young nephew with bubble gum and toys. Yet…it was me the little guy followed around all afternoon. She didn’t get it and neither do I. I’m like a surly version of the Pied Piper.

This morning, she called me up and demanded to know my ‘secret.’ I had no idea what to tell her. Truth be told, I’m generally pretty mean to children.

For example, one of my favorite games to play with toddlers is to randomly knock them on their asses. Thousands of people are reading right now, horrified by the concept, but I can assure you, kids love it. If you don’t believe me, I challenge you try it out. Go up to the very first 2 year old you can find, push him down, and laugh. Watch in amazement as this little kid excitedly begs you for more. A very advanced version of this game includes you pretending you’re not going to push him down anymore and then….BLAM….knocking him flat when he least expects it. I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes on numerous occasions. Repeatedly falling down almost seems like a drug to little kids.

Another terrible thing I do to kids which they inexplicably seem to love is tell them crazy ass stories in an attempt to scare the shit out of them. It’s my favorite form of discipline. If a child is running around in a restaurant, I’m liable to lean in a whisper that he’d better stay seated or else the poisonous snakes under the booth might wake up and bite him. Or, if we’re in a department store and I don’t want him to touch anything, I’ll likely point to a sign on the wall and say:

“Wow. Look at this sign! Do you know what it says? It says if you touch anything in here, a vicious man eating dragon will come out of the back room and rip the flesh from your bones. I mean, you can do whatever you want. But, if you ask me, this sign looks pretty official. I surely don’t want to chance being eaten. It sounds painful.”

Perhaps these kids will all grow up with severe mental problems. But until then, they are more than content to listen to my stories about monsters, or trolls, or unicorns, or sparkling little pixies who keep them safe at night while they sleep in their beds.

On the upside, I’m generally pretty good humored when it comes to kids. In fact, I’ve only lost my temper a single time when dealing with a child.

It was actually late one November evening right before my stepson turned 4. I had been out of town for the week and didn’t return home until 1am on a Saturday night. It was my husband’s weekend with his kids and he had put them to bed at a decent hour, but my stepson had gotten up after everyone else had fallen asleep. Since my stepdaughter and husband both sleep like the dead, no one had noticed him stirring.

I quietly stepped into my house only to instantly find my exaggerated stealth was completely unnecessary. My stepson was sitting smack dab in the middle of my living room, wide awake, casually yanking books off my shelves and tossing them across the room while the rest of the household slept peacefully.

“It’s too late for you to be up,” I told him, “I’m going to need you to go back to bed.”

“I’m not tired!” he insisted.

Since it was 1 o’clock in the freaking morning and I was exhausted from my trip, I decided to compromise.

I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and said, “How about this? You can sleep on the couch tonight. I’ll put the TV on and I’ll sit with you until you fall asleep.”

My stepson seemed to thaw to this idea and I proceeded to make him a nice little bed on the couch. Then, I turned on Nick at Night and sat down with him. Almost instantly, he decided he wasn’t going to lie down anymore.

“I’m not tired!” he yelled at me.

“Even if you’re not tired, you need to lie down on the couch and watch TV,” I countered.

He adamantly refused. I just as adamantly insisted. Finally, he decided that enough was enough. Come hell or high water, he was getting off of the couch. Calmly, I grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him back. He lunged away again. I pulled him back. Rinse and repeat.

Ultimately it hit him that he wasn’t going anywhere. Furious, he started screaming. Not crying, mind you, but screaming…shrieks of pure, undiluted, 4 year old rage.

Did I mention that it was 1 o’clock in the morning and I was exhausted from my trip? Because it was and I was.

Still, I decided to be the Zen Master. I refused to acknowledge his fit. Instead, I sat peacefully beside him, calmly sipping my bottle of water and only reacting to his tantrum long enough to pull him back on the couch every time he attempted to lunge away.

I wish I could say that my stepson gave up quickly, but he is a stubborn sort of child. His screams went on and on and only seemed to grow in volume. After a solid hour of this, I began to get unnerved. I was honestly afraid he was going to scream himself hoarse.

On top of that, I was so fucking tired I could barely see straight. I wanted nothing more in the world than for this kid to go to bed so I could follow suit. I started to get angry at my sleeping husband. How the hell could he not hear this ruckus? And why wasn’t he getting up to deal with it?

At around 2:30am, I finally lost my temper. I reached over and dumped the rest of my water bottle out over my stepson’s head. Shocked, he swallowed his sobs and stared at me.

I thought to myself, ‘Holy shit! That worked?’

As if he could read my mind, my stepson answered me with a blood curdling shriek that chilled the very marrow of my bones. His face turned crimson and his entire body shook with rage. He balled up his little fists and actually took a swing at me.

“That’s it!” I yelled at him, “If you can’t use your inside voice in this house, you will have to sleep outside!”

Then I picked him up under his armpits, carried him to the back door, and plopped him down on the deck outside.

“And there are wolves out here!” I yelled again right before I slammed the door in his face.

I stood by the back door and marveled at the scene I had created. Here it was, mid November, and I had a soaking wet 4 year old kid standing on my back porch in the middle of the fucking night. If that’s not a picture of perfect parenting, then I don’t know what is.

Just then, I heard a little knock on the door. “V!” a tiny little voice called to me, “I won’t scream no more!”

I opened the door. “Good,” I replied, “Then you can come inside.”

He skulked back into the house, glaring and cutting his eyes at me the entire way to the couch. He reluctantly curled up on the little bed I had made him, pulled the covers up to his chin, and almost immediately fell asleep. I sat with him for a few more minutes to make sure he was going to stay put, then I went to bed myself.

This incident happened over 4 years ago. Not once has my stepson ever screamed in the house again.

Believe it or not, the kid actually likes me, too. I don’t give him bubblegum and the only toys he gets from me come on Christmas or his birthday, but he still laughs hysterically when I smack him upside the head with a pillow and blame it on a ‘ghost.’

It’s the same way with all the children in my life. The more rotten I am, the more they love me.

My friend doesn’t understand how this works. I’d explain it to her, but I can’t figure it out myself.

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