The Beatings Will Continue…

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.