John has Feet of Cliché
Before Lynn Johnston became mistress (chief torturer?) of the final panel pun in For Better or For Worse; back in 1979, it appears she was quite fond of the final panel cliché. The phrase, “Just wait till your father gets home” was dated, even back in 1979.
I have always found it to be a method that is fairly impractical. Although it has the advantage of not administering punishment when the parent may be angry about whatever the event was, it has the disadvantage of not giving the child an immediate punishment directly related to their actions. I always hated having to go through the explanation part of it. “Your mother is upset because you yadda yadda, and so this is your punishment.” When my kids were little, the attention spans were so short, you really had to strike while the iron was hot.
I have always found it to be a method that is fairly impractical. Although it has the advantage of not administering punishment when the parent may be angry about whatever the event was, it has the disadvantage of not giving the child an immediate punishment directly related to their actions. I always hated having to go through the explanation part of it. “Your mother is upset because you yadda yadda, and so this is your punishment.” When my kids were little, the attention spans were so short, you really had to strike while the iron was hot.
posted by howard at 11:58 PM
2 Comments:
The Ellys of the world try to not remember how short attention spans are. After all, she was still angry at Mike even though he had forgotten why so he had to deal with her hostility. This had the lovely side-effect of convincing him that his parents were arbitrarily punishing him for not being cute and timid like Lizzie thereby reinforcing his need to exact vengeance upon her.
Personally, I did not like the "Wait till your father gets home" idea of disciplining children. There comes a point where the child gets to the size or strength where their mom is no longer their superiour in those areas, and I think that method of discipline works to the disadvantage of the mother, if the only reason the child obeys the mother is the knowledge that she can command the wrath of the father. I think the mom needs to set herself as a discipline unto herself while the child is smaller, so that it will carry over to when the child is bigger.
I know with my son and his short attention span, later discipline was completely ineffective. I can't speak for little Aaron / Michael, but if the 1979 strips are any evidence, he pretty much ran amok with little to no discipline from either parent. I wonder if this is the reason that Elly developed her screaming and shrieking method of discipline, where you make so much noise the child will stop being disobedient for no other reason than to get you to stop.
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