you're going on the naughty step

I watch a lot of little angels and supernanny shows. It never fails to make you feel better about being a parent. The people they have on that show are DISASTERS at being parents! Their kids run riot and scream and destroy things and the parents have no clue. No control. They don't see that their whole household is run by their 2 year old. Mine isn't, so I'm doing good.

But when the telly goes off, things are far from perfect. Why are there toys scattered over every bit of floor space in the apartment? Why is there an ikea igloo where the coffee table should be? Why are four and a half year olds still not dressing themselves and drinking out of sippy cups? Ooooooops.

Thats the problem with our generation. Our parents were brought up strictly. They brought us up more relaxedly. And we just want to be friends with ours. We need to be taught how to parent. Also, where women burned bras to free them from the confines of running the household and pushing us into equality in the workplace (not that that ever fully worked out), they actually burned us here 50 years down the line. Because society has shifted, you need 2 incomes to maintain a decent quality of life. But men are still perceived as the breadwinners and women are still supposed to take care of the kids, mostly after working a full day of work. You come home ragged and getting through the evening with tired kids can be a real shlep.

Supernanny's mantra is simple (so the voiceover guy says): punish the bad behaviour and reward the good.

Yeah, I try that. I'm probably better at the punishing than the praising. I think that I've successfully implemented only one thing from watching supernanny. Yes, at least they wipe their own asses. I'm in a post-modernist nirvana.