Turning party time back into bedtime

You have two kids. Your house has two bedrooms. That makes four people in an 1,100 square-foot house. The baby has outgrown the walk-in closet. You share a bedroom with your wife (for your sake I hope this is the case.) You have to face the inevitable mathematics. The kids are going to have to share a room too.

Dun, dun, DUHHH!

Dramatic pause.

That puts a nasty kink in bedtime, which formerly involved placing one child in his bed, then walking across the house to put the other child in her bed. Now, the children, who also happen to be best friends, find themselves in the same nightly cage. Party mode naturally follows. So what can you do to quell the bedtime bedlam?

Another dramatic pause - mostly because I have to gather my thoughts.

Basically, you're hosed. At least during the honeymoon period. Unless you're willing to use some pretty harsh discipline to keep the kids in their own beds, there will be miniature havoc wreaked in that bedroom - fact. Let me just share a typical experience during our "combined resting antics period" - CRAP for short. 

We put the children in their beds. Easy enough. We turned out the lights. Check. We left. Wrong answer! Instantly we would hear the flick of a light switch from the living room, which our son had recently discovered he was tall enough to reach. Uncontrollable giggling promptly followed. We returned to the room to find the pillows piled at the end of the bed, sheets torn apart, and our son climbing the bars on his younger sister's crib so he could perform the daredevil feat of a quadruple back flip with a half twist onto the pillows waiting to stop his fall on the bed. Our daughter, loving the show, squealed in delight from her crib.

We firmly ordered all to return to a sleeping position on beds. After they rush to obey Mommy and Daddy, we flick the switch and walk away again. Mere steps down the hall, the click of the light switch stops us in our tracks while introducing a new nervous tick.

We found we had to use some pretty firm discipline to get them to stay in their beds in the end. They're best friends. They are 14 months apart and love each other to pieces. We work hard to keep it that way. However, we just want them to ignore each other when the lights go out. After various failed or lackluster methods, we finally came down in physical discipline's camp. 

Yes, we spank. And it works beautifully. During the first three months of shared bedroom, we avoided the S-word like it was an actual swear, like so many touchy-feely self-help books would have you believe. Consequently, bedtime was not so much a single event but a string of less-effective disciplines that stretched bedtime into a nightly 3-hour occurrence. We often fell asleep on the living room couch at 11 p.m. to the sound of delighted screams from the back room. 

As soon as we began doling out immediate retribution for something they knew they weren't to be doing, the results came quickly. The best part? We only had to spank a couple times before they knew we meant business. Now we'll sometimes listen to one or the other singing or gabbing away for an hour or more from the confines of their bed, but they don't leave it unless they have to use the potty. 

Try to get those results with timeouts and loving talks.

I'm open to other methods, but that's what worked for our fun-loving children. We always made sure they knew we loved them after "reproving them with sharpness," but that's what we had to do. It's the only thing that worked. Do you have your own methods for turning party time into bedtime? 

A few thoughts on schooling and education

Today I read a post on a blog somewhere about a parent who was upset that their child was disciplined with a verbal warning by a teacher for taking the name of the Lord in vain. This parent was about to take the matter to the principal or superintendent or some such nonsense. Now, I don't care whether you agree that that is swearing or not, that teacher should have a little authority over her classroom.
Stay with me here. We send our children to schools to be taught. Children and teenagers, as a general rule, don't want to learn. They would rather goof off in back texting to friends, talking, or otherwise not paying attention. With me so far?

OK, now we take a teacher who desperately wants to teach these kids, but can't get anything through because they are busy talking, texting, and probably even taking the name of the Lord in vain. Now, imagine this teacher tells the kids to quiet down, put cell phones, iPads, and MP3 players away and heaven forbid, pay attention to the lesson.

Then, when the children are forced to do these things, they go home and whine to their parents about what their teachers made them do. The furious parent calls the principal, wanting justice for their child, who had such a hard time because of a private, verbal reprimand. The poor tender feelings of their young one must be considered. The principal, knowing he answers to such taxpayers in one form or another, reprimands the teacher for what? Disciplining her class in a way she sees fit.

Suddenly this teacher has no ability to take care of matters that prohibit, in her eyes, education. In a school. When I was in school, no student whined if a teacher told him not to swear. It was understood that you walked into that teacher's "house" when you walked into their class, complete with house rules. Whether or not you consider taking the Lord's name in vain, that teacher's ability to keep an orderly class, and therefore educate your children has diminished. That teacher, hands tied, is forced into mediocrity and a lack of discipline.

19th century teachers could cane a kid's bottom publicly for failure to spell "flog" correctly. Now overly concerned parents have steered teachers toward mediocrity by saying discipline should remain in the home, where discipline is in scant supply, I imagine. If you don't like what a teacher does, home school. You have full control over your children in such a situation. But if you want to send your children off to surrogate instructors, you better be prepared to allow those teachers a little influence over your child, including, yes, disciplining them when they do something the teacher finds offensive or someone else in the class could find offensive.

Is this the way to to shape our kids education? Or should teachers be allowed to punish children for doing things that even their parents might say are OK in their book?

A child's personal prayers

Used to blessings on food, I got this gem out of my 3-year-old's personal bedtime prayer tonight: "Please bless us to have another yummy dinner to-morning." In case you're wondering, "to-morning" is a new conjugation of "tomorrow morning." And yeah, dinner makes a good breakfast.