The other night, as we were watching the wrap up of election coverage (at least as far as we’re concerned), I flipped around a bit, and saw a program that interested me.

It is called Nanny 911 The show is about a group of professional nannys that are called on to help families with crazy, out of control children. One of the nannys is chosen, and stays with the family for a week, giving guidance and instruction on how to make the children behave. Of course, there’s nothing about spanking, but it’s still a fascinating show.

Last night it was a couple reaching their ten year wedding anniversary, and they had two children: a boy named Dylan, 6 years old, and a girl, Natalie, 3 years old. They were both horrible. The boy was especially bad… he would hit his mom, and cuss at his parents.

The nanny observed for a day, taking notes on specific ways the parents were failing in their duties. Then they had a family meeting, where the new rules were established.
And then the enforcement came, which was pretty neat to watch.

My summary of the situation, so far as I could tell with what they filmed and how they edited it, was that the mother couldn’t stand to here her children cry, and so constantly gave in to them, letting them do whatever they wanted (even though she screamed “No!” an awful lot). The husband was essentially absent. He would stand on the sidelines, observing, and not taking any part in controlling the children, unless his wife demanded that he come. And then he would only do what she told him to do; nothing more, nothing less. Because the dad/husband wasn’t leading, the mother/wife was in charge. And because she was weak, the whole system was weak. It just didn’t work.

And it was really sad, because even though this mother loved her children, and was doing what she thought was best for them, they were very disturbed and unhappy children. She didn’t want to let them suffer at all, but her understanding of what suffering is was wrong. She didn’t teach them to be disciplined, or content. Those children lacked authority, and that clearly has a bad effect on kids. They love to be told what to do. They need to be told what to do.

When the nanny started teaching the parents how to deal with the children, the dad got it, and started following through. The mom, however, didn’t. She still couldn’t stand to have the children cry. But the dad then started to actually put his foot down, and tell his wife how things needed to be. He relied a lot on the nanny to keep his wife busy, but he was at least going in the right direction.

If they had spanked their kids, though, I think it would have been a lot easier. There would have been much less anger in the household. The way they did it… if they children didn’t obey, they were sent to their room. In their room they cried and screamed and kicked and shouted and had a fit. They did this until one of the parents would go in and give them another chance to obey. If they didn’t, more of the same. I imagine over the course of the week there was hours and hours of this type of thing. With a spanking, it it quick. swat swat swat. Now you’re forgiven, come out and behave yourself. Sending them to their room just seemed to prolong the disfellowship.

Convicted spammer gets nine years in jail

In Virginia, to boot!

I voted for Peroutka. He, obviously, didn’t win. But, I didn’t expect him to win, and I’m not upset about him losing.
I do not believe Bush will lead our nation in the direction we need to be going. I don’t believe Bush will do anything to slow the abortion madness. Or any other madness. I am glad that I did not vote for him.

That being said, I am not adopting a “shake the dust” attitude. I’m not going to simply wash my hands of it, and go away. My hands are clean, but I can’t just leave. I know that I, and other Peroutka voters, need to start working with what we have.

We need to work on a plan, as barlow put it. I don’t want to be one of those people that points out every mistake and complains about it, without actually doing anything to change it. I’m reminded of a commercial where someone drops their trash on the sidewalk, and a group of people gather around it, some disgusted, some making excuses why they aren’t doing anything about it. Then one guy comes along and just picks it up and puts it in a garbage can.

I want to put the garbage in the garbage can.