For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for February 08, 2022

kids’ll be kids

Elly, watch what you say around April. You know she’ll repeat it.

And here we have the flip side of the Car and Michael.

John, would you say the same thing if you had to clean it up every day?

Tough on teen son…..soft on baby girl!!!!!!!!!!

Easy for John to say when it’s Elly cleaning up the mess. Let him clean it up and he’ll change his tune.

Get real. Children that age don’t understand that dumping food on the floor is not acceptable. She is almost two. She can’t communicate to her mother that she doesn’t want to eat what she was served or is not hungry. So she simply throws food off her tray. Or as John said, she likes the sounds of food clatter on the floor. I know my granddaughter likes to play with her food but she does not when she is actually hungry. So I watch her for whether she plays with food or not. I take the food away when she plays with it.

Put April on the floor and let her eat when she’s hungry.

She has him wrapped around her finger. She’s definitely a Daddy’s girl.

The trouble with Elly (among MANY others) is that she’s trying to force April to adhere to a set schedule—something a kid that age is incapable of.

She wasn’t crying until he looked in on her. Why did he have to stir the pot?

Seems she learnt a lot of new words.

OK, so dad’s an idiot…

April is going to love the cabaret someday.

John, I would stay away from Elly for a while particularly if she has a sharp knife in her hand ! ! ! !

I’m calling BS on two year olds not knowing better. Yes there a lot of things they do not know, but there are so many things that they do know the difference between what is acceptable and what is not. They can be quite manipulative. They do not have fine motor skills and accidents including messes will happen. Not saying the mom was right, but giving a two year old a blanket they don’t no better is false.

I know a little boy that would push his mom’s buttons every evening and get an ear full, too. In a way, it was the only time his mom talked to him at all. I noticed this and broke that habit by taking the boy and his little brother to stay the weekend with me, giving mom a weekend off. They were reunited on Sunday at church and the cycle was broken.

Anyone who puts food in front of a toddler and walks away deserves every mess they get. That’s why you feed them and then take the food away before they start flinging it. Around 4 yrs old they start to know a little better but you still have to watch them closely. They don’t go off to college not knowing how to feed themselves but 2 yrs old is way too early to expect they will not make a mess if you give them the opportunity.

Elly makes her own sounds in her own way.

I remember a story that my mother told me about my brother and me. I don’t remember who did it, but apparently one of us kept throwing a teddy out the window of the car. And how she said that you do that one more time, we’re not going to go back to get it. We tested that and apparently the car didn’t stop to go back to get it. We learned a valuable lesson: she means what she said.

See yesterdays strip, April already has Daddy wrapped around her finger

The same argument, slightly modified, could be applied to what happened with Michael. So…your precious sports car? Drop the hammer. Messes that you never have to touch? “Oh my poor baby!” Also, still laying the foundation to create monsters.

there WAS no mess -the dog cleaned it up!

This must be the first kid they’ve raised, eh?

She knows which side her bread is buttered on…Papa!

Try pancakes instead.

Daddy’s little manipulator.

From now on, John cleans up April’s messes; Elly cleans up after Michael.

The Old Hippie is coming around to a better way of thinking!

I wonder who is the harder disciplinarian on Elizabeth? We’ve seen that Elly will advocate for Michael when John’s ready to tear the kid’s head off, and now we see that John has a heart of solid marshmallow when it comes to April.

The thing to notice here is that there was no private discussion or negotiation. With Michael they went behind closed doors to discuss (and yes, the kids listened but the attempt was made). Here, Daddy just made the decision to give in. What happened to the united front they were supposed to present? Believe me, 2 yr olds learn very well and she just learned that she can get around mom by crying to dad.

Let’s see. Last week when Mike failed to be responsible, mom kissed Mike’s rear end being nice and dad was trying to discipline him. Situation reversed and mom is having a stroke while being angry about spilt milk! Hum?

Neither of these guys has any parenting clue. It is an attention seeking behavior. The first time or two that a kid dumps cereal (or does most any other unacceptable thing) it’s an experiment to see what will happen. If the parent goes nutso, like a certain mother portrayed above, the kid is delighted! and does it again and again. The proper response to this sort of thing: “We don’t do that.” combined (perhaps) with a light slap on the hand. The kid may try it a time or two again, but will quickly get tired of the lack of reaction. The rule: Give attentive response to acceptable and good behavior, and as little reaction as possible to the unacceptable.

She is too young to equate actions and consequences. She didn’t look like she was feeling punished, singing away in her crib.

Mike is old enough to have made a conscious decision to take the scenic route home. However he did not intend to miss the exit and get lost. John had a right to be upset, but I think he overreacted because of his precious sports car. Elly was right to try to get him to calm down.April is a toddler. In toddler logic if she has food placed in front of her she doesn’t want either because she’s not hungry or because she doesn’t like it, which I suspect may be the case if she’s done it three times with the same food, giving it to Farley makes perfect sense. She’s probably seen the rest of the family give their leftovers to Farley. And as a toddler she isn’t capable of getting out of her chair and setting the dish on the floor like everybody else. So she dumps it on the floor so Farley can eat it. Instead of losing her temper maybe Elly should try giving her something different and see if she eats it.

Last week she was undermining his discipline of their son. Two sides of the same coin.

IF Elly had done what she SHOULD have done as a mother, that is, sit with April and help her learn to eat, there would have been no food thrown on the floor (or very minimal; at least not the entire breakfast). It’s hard to believe that Elly raised 2 other kids; she’s entirely clueless here. You can’t PUNISH a toddler for anything, as some have pointed out – they don’t understand consequences to actions yet. They also don’t know how to eat properly yet, how to dress themselves, how to braid their hair, or a million other things that they need to be taught by their mothers!

Funny how John wants to lower the boom on Michael and forgive April at the drop of a hat.