Category: Family

I’ll confess to being somewhat addicted to playing the trump and trick genre of card games. The ones like hearts, spades, hi-lo-jack (or pitch) and even a little bridge (though it’s been so long that I probably couldn’t remember the rules) all have a pretty similar them of a hand consisting of a series of tricks that are won and lost according certain seniority rules.

The nice thing about hearts is it’s so easy to play, since just about any Windoze machine out there has the game on it. The kids have watched me play it any one of a number of times. Now that they’re becoming more comfortable with computers, they’ve even started dabbling with the game. The boy in particular has taken an interest in hearts.

So when he started asking me questions about how to play, I decided the best way was to actually teach him. One thing I know, having tried to explain the basic rules, is that even though the concepts are simple they have their own language and to explain the language a deck is required.

So I set about explaining the makeup of the deck: the suits and the relative strength of the cards and so forth. I put a lot of emphasis on the suits, because understanding the suits is key to understanding how to play hearts. Telling them that Ace is highest, 2 is lowest and all that is pretty easy. But explaining that sometimes, because a 2 is the right suit and an Ace isn’t that the 2 still wins is bound to cause some confusion. After that, we played some dummy hands because seeing it in action is worth more than a thousand words of explanation. The lass took a keen interest and sat and watched and listened very intently as the boy and I went through a few dummy hands.

Eventually, I dealt her in as well for a dummy hand and we went through the motions several times. We played with all cards showing and didn’t keep track of scoring. Well, I didn’t keep track. The boy, on the other hand, was a human abacus making sure he always knew who had the most hearts and where the dreaded Queen of Spades ended up. At one point, when he ended up with a few hearts, he asked if we could give “the other player” some hearts so that they could tie.

Sigh.

The whole thing held their attention quite impressively and by bedtime they both seemed to grasp the concept of “highest card in the suit led.” They even remembered how the player with the 2 of Clubs always starts a new hand. Thankfully, there were no tearful episodes either. Sometimes, that’s the best to hope for.

So the kids have taken to regularly calling each other “stupid” and “idiot” and other wonderfully charitable sorts of adjectives. It would be one thing if it was just an every-now-and-again sort of occurrence. For instance, the boy is upset with the lass for some transgression and lashes out a bit. OK, fine- they have to be allowed to vent a little every now and again. Unfortunately, they’ve taken to doing it so regularly that the Wife and I felt the need to start intervening.

On the one hand, we can’t force them to like each other all the time. On the other, they’ve got to understand that resorting to name calling just doesn’t fly. The Wife and I have alternated between letting them pass, snapping at them and timeouts and the like to try and convince them to knock it off. Or at least to scale it back by and order of magnitude. Progress has been slow to non-existent so far.

So now, we’ve brought out the big guns. We decreed last night that they shall not be afforded cartoon time in the morning before school if we hear them call each other “stupid” or “idiot” of whatever other pejorative comes to their little mind. We were figuring to make it to the weekend.

Naturally, this morning, the lass wakes up in a not so good mood and let’s fly with an “idiot” at her brother.

I’ll tell you what: spittle-flecked rages and ear drum shattering cries of anguish when it seems like forever since one kid or the other has won a hand. Not so subtle attempts at cheating by trying to substitute the next card in the stack for the current because the kid took a peak and knows they’re about to lose another hand. Long, wailing laments about how it isn’t fair that they haven’t won a ‘war’ in “forever.” Longer, louder wailing laments when they haven’t won a game in “forever” and it should be “their turn” to win. Accusations of cheating, bending of the rules by pulling a clump of cards off and then “just happening” to pick the highest one out.

It’s also good for early bed times, under the right conditions.

In short, it’s good for building character,

Having read the latest in the ongoing “The Lass vs The Boy” wars, I got some advice from the Mom (my Mom):

Sounds like the kids are either having ‘hormonal’ issues with their behavior ….. or are just having simultaneous growth spurts and vying for top billing … they are certainly ‘taggersizing’ their parents … no friends, no electronic games, no special activities, no life …. levers are getting harder … maybe: take EVERYTHING away … only pre-committed activities then home … nothing else until they get the message … might take a week for them to see the consequences … it’s hard dealing with two competitive little personalities … challenge, challenge, challenge … no easy solution.

Mainly, I’m struck by the approach here: “take EVERYTHING away.” Wow. Definitive, harsh. I can just imagine them coming home and being relegated to sitting, no speaking, not even allowed to twitch. “I saw your finger move! That’s another week! No A MONTH!” I have a younger sister and brother- little wonder we walked the straight and narrow most of the time.

I think the main thing to realize about behavior patterns like the kids are exhibiting right now is it needs to be dealt with consistently until the message is received. Excusing it (Oh, they’re just tired from a long day at school) is tempting because nobody we naturally want to be understanding, but it doesn’t do the kids any favors. Or us for that matter. Misbehaving is misbehaving and granting excuses ultimately encourages the behavior.

In my mind, the nub of the problem is, where their sibling is concerned, the boy and the lass have no impulse control. All they see is the challenge of an opponent who, in the heat of the moment, must be vanquished at all cost. Damn the consequences. It’s that last part that the Wife and I have to break through- start getting them to think for just a second “If I do this, Mom and Dad are gonna kill me…” Or something close to that.

I think I get the Mom’s thinking.

Tonight was our Joining Night for the Cub Scout pack. My Den grew from 6 kids to potentially 11. We also seemed to have picked up about 5 kids for our Tiger Den, which is what our Den started at last year.

Thankfully, this year’s group was just as befuddled about Scouting as we were last year. Good to know it wasn’t just us at the time. I tried to help them out, give them a blueprint of what they would be doing as Tigers and give them an idea about the Pack meetings and so forth. Don’t know if they felt any more comfortable with it by the end, but they’ll come up to speed.

The boy was in rare form all night from the time he got home. Running around and screaming and contorting his face. Remarkably, he did his homework without complaining. Then went right back to taggersizing his sister. Probably have to chalk it up to excitement about Scouts. He wore his shirt to school today, which earned him a reward at the meeting along with the other kids who wore their uniforms.

The lass was pretty good today, but the excitement of Scouts got to her. By the time she got home, she was screaming at anything that didn’t go her way, including not being able to buckle her seat belt and breaking a pencil multiple times. There was something about water at bedtime as well, can’t really be sure what it was about though. The only thing certain was she needed to go to bed. Badly.

Just another night with the Scouts.

Lest anyone think it’s just my kids who like to exploit a situation for their own gain, I’ll relate this quick story about the boy’s friend. For the purposes of this post, I’ll refer to him as “the friend.” (I know, highly original.)

The boy spent the afternoon after their soccer game with the friend. They were both in pretty good spirits because they’d won their game. While over there, the friend and the boy wanted to play the Wii. There was just one problem, the friend had been banished from playing the Wii for the weekend because he’d hit his younger brother earlier that morning.

But the friend is persistent and creative so he decided to try and exploit the boy’s presence as a guest. He told his Dad that the boy “was bored and really wanted to play the Wii.”

The friend’s father was relating all of this to me and I just had to laugh. I’m pretty sure the boy has tried that tactic as well, with a similar result.

The result was surely not quite what the friend had hoped for. The boy and the friend’s younger brother were allowed to play the Wii for a time, but not the friend.

So yesterday, the Wife and I tried to talk to the kids a bit about what happened 10 years ago on that day. I even pulled up some Youtube footage so they could see the destruction. Being the age they are at, the idea of a large building being destroyed only existed in their minds as action in a movie or video game, so they thought it was kind of cool.

The Wife and I both explained that there was nothing “cool” about what happened. That there were real people and real lives lost that day. As well as the real destruction of buildings around Ground Zero. By the end of it, they understood that a bad thing had happened that day.

But still, it seemed clear that the concept was too foreign to them. Or, perhaps more accurately, it was something that hadn’t happened to them so they weren’t too bothered by it. After thinking on it, I concluded that making that day theirs wasn’t possible. Something conceptually, but intangibly, large isn’t within their capability to truly appreciate.

In some ways, that’s just as well. They are still young and should be allowed to have their innocence and to worry about whether they have to eat hot dogs or ham sandwiches for lunch, about whether they’ll get enough time on the Wii or DS, about their dance classes and soccer practices. They should have their chance to believe only in all the good things in the world.

But that time can’t last forever. The only question is whether it’s something they’ll come to understand in their own time, or if the lesson will be forced on them by their own 9/11. I know which one I hope for them.

The lass came home from school today and couldn’t have been happier. She found a potential new friend just down the road, she got to see Louie and she is officially in Kindergarten. As far as she’s concerned, it’s all good. She was even ecstatic about getting 3 folders for her class. “You’re never going to believe this…” she said. She was right, I never would have believed it.

Then there was the boy. Who sullenly slunk off the bus with nary a word. He shuffled down the driveway in the rain, unwilling to respond to my questions. Finally, when I asked how the teacher was he replied “The should call her Mrs. Yell, ’cause that’s all she did all day.” Strong words. Why was she yelling?

“She yelled at us to be quiet and to sit down and to pay attention.”

Hmmm. I suspect that his definition of yelling doesn’t match my own. Frankly, I’m disappointed in myself; perhaps I should yell more so he can tell the difference. I also know that his teacher is a new one and likely wanted to lay down the law with a bunch of 2nd graders who were all still a bit over excited at seeing each other after Summer vacation.

He also wasn’t too excited at the prospect of homework. Nor his assignment book where he’s supposed to have us sign off on his doing 10 minutes of reading a night. Plus he’s got spelling tests coming up every Friday.

So, in all, plenty of things for him to get worked up about. One hopes there’s no where to go but up from here.