5 Delightful Ways to Torture Your Children
June 18, 2009
Let’s face it… we all want to torture our kids. And if we’re really honest about it, we’d like to thoroughly enjoy the process. After all, they won’t be kids forever. But, with so many interesting ways to torture them, how do we find the very best? I’m sure you each have your personal favorites, but I wanted to share my top five with you. It’s taken me years to perfect these techniques for maximum results, and now I find them completely delightful in every way. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I do:
1. Unplug Them
If your kids are anything like my son and his friends, they are hopelessly addicted to electronics. You can go around boasting about how you only “allow” them one hour of  TV or video games each day, but the fact is, most kids will spend the remaining 23 hours counting down to their next “fix”. They have so many options for electronic highs these days, and all of these are carefully designed to bait and hook your children… sometimes it seems an impossible battle. But, as seen in the photo above, it can be done.
When you unplug your kids you will immediately notice two unexpected results: they don’t actually die, and they do eventually remember how to interact with real people. It takes a while, I’ll grant you that. First they’ll fuss and complain, say they’re bored and that there’s nothing at all to do. This is where the real torture comes in. You can say something like, “It sounds to me like you have become too dependent on electronics and have forgotten how to play like a kid. Maybe we should stay unplugged for the rest of the week so that you can relearn how to play.” Within minutes, they’ll be playing something, anything. Everybody wins!
2. Ignore Them
This technique is one that I have only recently mastered. In fact, prior to starting the blog I don’t think I ever ignored Hunter. Then I went through a transitional phase, during which I was ignoring him in order to work on the blog, but I felt terrible about it! It wasn’t delightful in the least! I was consumed with guilt that if I ignored him I would scar him for life, and if I abandoned the blog to be with him every second, I would emotionally scar countless millions of readers who have grown dependent on my sage advice (hey… it’s MY mental dialogue; I can enhance it as I see fit.)
So I did the altruistic (and perhaps a little selfish) thing and opted to continue with the blog. At first he paced, and pouted, and sulked around looking dreadfully neglected. But I pressed on and continued to ignore him, firmly believing in my cause. And guess what? Boredom turned into the slightest desire to find something to do. That led to a rediscovery of abandoned toys and all sorts of random things in his closet. Then his imagination went wild, and he started doing all sorts of creative things. Then I realized, when I wasn’t ignoring him, I was stifling his independence and creativity!
3. Nauseate Them
The best way to accomplish this is to force them to eat all sorts of colorful vegetables they hate, then make them get up off the couch to run around outside in the unbearable summer heat. A word of caution with this one: you’ll want to pick your battles. Food wars can reach epic proportions when you are trying to get a stubborn child to consume one of those awful things that somehow ended up with most of the nutritional content on the planet.
Sometimes it’s better to trick them into submission with reverse Jedi mind tricks. Instead of saying, “You WILL eat this lima bean and brussel sprout quiche,” try saying, “You CAN’T have this grown up food yet… maybe when you are a little older.” Then eat it in front of them all the time, so they get used to seeing and smelling it, and start to get a little curious. When they ask to try it the first time and don’t like it, you say, “I didn’t think you would yet… you’re not quite old enough for this.” Pretty soon they’ll be downright determined to master that grown up food, come what may.
4. Enslave Them
Everyone knows that one of the main benefits of having kids is the free slave labor. Once they get past being completely dependent, and before they realize we can’t actually FORCE them to do anything, there are a few years during which kids will do just about anything simply because you said so. I like to call this phase The Golden Era of child rearing. When you have a car full of groceries, you call the kids out to help bring them in. When all the beds in the house need to be made, you get the kids to make their own. When the garden needs to be tended to, you bring the kids out to help.
The beauty of making the most of this slave labor is that they learn some useful life skills along the way, while everyone gets to spend time together. On many occasions I’ve made Hunter help me prepare a lasagna or a meatloaf, simply to involve him in something I need to be doing anyway. While we work together in the kitchen, we talk and joke and infuse the meal with extra love. Although I often have to drag him in there, he always ends up saying how much he loves to cook with me. What can I say? I love doing anything with him.
5. Humiliate Them
This was my mother’s favorite technique, and I’m beginning to see why. She was a stubborn one. No matter how many times I told her I didn’t want to be hugged or kissed, she did it anyway. She even did it in front of my friends! The woman was merciless in her approach to torture. Then she would throw out I love you’s and all sorts of things that totally embarrassed me. My friends thought I had the best mom in the world. ”Whatever.” That’s what I would SAY, but deep down I knew they were right… and I smiled inside.
So now it’s my turn to humiliate Hunter, and boy do I. Every chance I get, I’m stealing kisses and hugs, and threatening him with MORE kisses and hugs. I tell him I love him so often that he says, “I already know that!” in a bored and irritated tone. That’s when I know, the torture is working. When I say I love you and he’s sick of hearing it…I guess I’m doing a good job of making sure he’ll never forget that… No matter what.
Do yourself a favor, and torture your kids today. They’ll thank you for it later.
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Obrigado!!!
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