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Have you ever been somewhere when you see a child misbehaving?  Isn’t the look on the panic stricken Mother or Father’s face priceless?  You can easily tell when the parent is flustered, by the beads of sweat emanating from the brow of this person who is quite obviously overheating and sweating buckets, trying to get that child to pipe down.

Well, I’ve seen it many times before, and in the beginning they start off by saying something calmly like, “Now Tommy, you behave yourself and act like a big boy.” Then, when that doesn’t seem to be working they decide to say something like, “Now Tommy, Mommy has told you several times now, but you don’t seem to want to quiet down. Now you need to calm down, deep breathe, and count to 10. Then things will be better.” At which point the child refuses to succumb to their Mother’s pleas at keeping the peace, and the child begins shouting at a mind-numbing octave louder!

At this point, everybody in the near vicinity of 10 miles or so, hears this child screaming at the top of their lungs, meanwhile the Mother’s face is turning bright red with embarrassment.   The Mother is now not only frustrated and embarrassed, but her temper is beginning to steadily climb.  “Now Tommy,” she says with a stern look in her eye, “I told you that you can’t have that, and you’re going to just have to deal with it.” As soon as the words left her mouth I cringed knowing full well that there was going to be hell to pay for her little comment.

He then became even louder causing my ears to ring, violently thrashing and clawing at her, kicking and punching her and before anyone could get in two words edgewise, and it seemed like the sound was unbearable,  “Stop Shouting!” she shouted.

The child just sat and stared at her with his mouth wide open and he didn’t utter a peep.  She then looked him straight in the eyes bowed down her head and  spoke something to him in hushed tone, that was inaudible to everyone else.  He sat there behaving himself the rest of the time, until they got from the register at the store to their car, and I’m guessing he probably didn’t say a peep the entire way home.

But, the inquisitive part of me wondered, whatever did she say to him to make him pipe down?  Did she threaten him?  Did she come around to his way of thinking and purchase whatever it was that he was having a tantrum over?  I wonder…

All  I know is, as a child the thing that affected me most, was when something was taken away from me for misbehaving.  Shouting, spanking, threatening, or anything else you could think of, never worked for me.  But when my Mom said, “You behave yourself, or I’ll find something you really love and take it from you, until I’ve decided  that you’re sorry enough for what you did.” That was enough to make me walk in a straight line from there on out. And If I ever forgot about what she could do to me, and took my chances by misbehaving, she was right there to remind me of just what my punishment would be.

“Oh no Mom, anything but that!”

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