Plundering The Past
Lifted from an offline journal, originally written August 2003:
I don't engage in corporeal punishment with my kids, not that I'm 100% ideologically opposed to spanking, but I feel it should only be used in the most serious of circumstances, and it's just as well with AE, my darling four year-old daughter, as she's both hyper-sensitive and very stubborn, and research shows kids on the Autism Spectrum don't usually learn much from spanking.
Anyway, two brief vignettes:
1) The other evening I had told AE to quiet down, as she was speaking rather loudly, and I was afraid she'd awaken her baby sister LK.
She became visibly upset, her eyes pooled up, and she said, rather determinedly:
"Well, I'm just never going to speak again!"
BTW, she did.
2) I had occasion recently to scold AE, and she had cried long and hard - was very hurt by it - but by the time she was ready for bed she'd seemed to have gotten over it, or so I thought.
After we'd been through her bedtime routine, and just before I turned out the light, I went through the little routine we always do, but this time her final answer deviated somewhat from the script:
Daddy: "Who loves you?"
AE: "Daddy loves me."
Daddy: "And who loves Daddy?"
AE: "Well, I love Daddy, most of the time, but not every time - not always - not when he scolds me."
Well.
She actually did speak again, not long after her self-imposed vow of silence, and last night, when I arrived from work, she greeted me with a hug and told me how glad she was to have me home.
So, for the moment (at least), all's right with the world.
Until next time.
And there most certainly will be a next time.