Abuse with an Excuse

                While I think there are some parents who don’t love to visit our house due to the constant mess, there are also many who tell us our place is a peaceful oasis, a zone free of parent-child stress and strife. When the girls were young, I’m happy to say, adults were always delighted to meet and spend time with our unpunished children who would talk with them and not display fear and mistrust, which is just the experience that we once had that started us down this road (See ‘Story 4, The Aha Moment). To repeat something I said somewhere else, it seems that if you don’t punish early, you will never have to. The lines of communication have always been open in my family. We’ve never considered punishing, never had to consider it, not since our younger one – a hyperactive child– was a toddler. Then we considered it, but that’s all, thank goodness. She has always been tougher than us, born that way. I’m pretty sure that if we had picked a fight with her then that she’d have been kicking our asses for years by now.