Discipline 3 – In defense of what us Parents say.

Sarah and her best friend Dom visited this weekend and we thoroughly enjoyed our time with them. While we were sitting on the beach Café in Durban, Sarah and Dom were playing the fool and enjoying the views and when I say views I am not referring to the sea and the lovely beaches!! No they were surveying the talent and got caught quite a few times as they forgot to close their mouths when they were drooling.


We sat there and the topic of my last two blogs came up about how Parents have the ability to ask the dumbest questions or make the most idiotic statements. Of which I have been told I am most seriously guilty of – so here are a few more that the girls and Bern came up with;

“Do you want me to ground you?” Sarah’s comment this weekend was “Yes mom, please and then can we go and have a Brazilian wax as this is right up there with my favourite things to do!”

Although I must admit there have been times when I have said to my children, “Do you want me to force you to go out?” As there were times when I could have done with some me time.

This falls into the same category as “Do you want a hiding?” Sarah and Dom asked me why is that parents ask the most obvious questions to which they already know the answers to.

I responded in a mocking response (reminding them of their favourite response to any question I asked them as a child “IDONT KNOW”

I believe we parents ask these nonsensical questions as we are quite out of our league when it comes to understanding the minds and calculating behaviour our children seem to have especially as they hit the teen years. I have a theory, Aliens do exist. They inhabit the modern teenager and do not leave their bodies until the parents have totally surrendered or the teenagers are out of the home. In some cases, I know of some people who are still inhabited by aliens.

When a parent asks this question “Do you want me to ground you?” What they tend to forget is if you ground the child you are also grounding yourself, so its double punishment. The child hates you and you are stuck at home with them while the rest of the family continues with their fun and games on the weekend.


The only time this threat works is if there is a special date or occasion and you as the parent know your child will be a saint until the event has taken place. Then all bets are off.

When I as a parent asked one of the following I have to admit I had reached the point of no-return. My brains were mush and I was almost a weeping puddle of a pathetic mother who like so many other parents has wondered how our parents managed to cope.

“Do you hear me?" And this is said with a pitch at the end of the hear part and me. Picture this, you are standing right in front of your child, more than likely nose to nose and you waggle your finger in their faces and ask them “Do you hear me?” – However this is when the insanity sets in because you repeat your question possibly more than twice.

The transformation in your child can only be described and butterfly into caterpillar. They look at you with their beady eyes, the full emotion of how much they dislike you at this particular moment not masked one bit. They stare back at you and bite their lip as if they want to swallow the words they so long to say. You don’t see that you are in fact in quick- sand; no you are by no oblivious to the terrors that await you. So you ask again “Do you hear me?”

To which they reply “I don’t know!” The answer to every question you ever ask them and this continues up into their 20’s, I only hope not into their 30’s because so help me... I will have a nervous breakdown.

You know they hear you and you know they are trying to get away from you, however you have now become possessed and you rattle off instructions and threats of mass destruction, you either choose one of the following – or if you have totally lost your path back to sanity you use quite a few combinations all at once.


“Do you understand me?” My thought as a teenager used to be how can you expect me to understand you when you can’t even understand what you are saying, and Oh please use a tic tac.

“What are those things on the side of your head – Ornaments?” No dad, these are my antennae and if you not careful I will…. But no we answered our safe answer --- “I DON’T KNOW”

“YOU WAIT TILL YOUR FATHER GETS HOME!” – poor dads, they come home ready for a love and cuddle from their kids and the kids meet him at the gate apologizing and blaming each other, or as is the case in our house..

Bain and I hid my father’s belts (well burnt them to be honest) we snuck into the room after he got home from work one night, took all his belts including the one he had in his trousers which he had hanging on the chair…. And we burnt them. The next Day my dad wanted to know where his belts were and of course no one had a clue. This was the case with most questions, like what happened to my slops (ummmm we got rid of those too) where all our wooden are spoons (ummmm well you see they just vanished).

A person would swear Bain and I got into trouble a lot, which was most probably true as we were terrors, but in hind sight the hidings were not that frequent but we sure remembered them.

Enough now, I could go on and on as my children so often tell me, but I think we need to focus on how we are going to find a cure for the alien’s that take over our angels at the age of puberty and if we are lucky they return to us between 16 – 20! Thank goodness I talk alien from time to time and they talk human from time to time.