A little tyranny goes a long way

"We're going to be empty-nesters for a week," I said to my husband. "Buzz will be at church camp and Ben will be away ..."

"Oh, really?"

"Mmm-hmm. Do you know what that means?" I purred.

"Oh no!" he groaned and smacked his forehead with his hand. "That means I have to take out the garbage!"

And that, my friends, is the difference between newlyweds and almost 22-years-wed.

Sigh.

I joke about the sacrifices I make for my kids, but they make some, too. They have to jump away from the computer as soon as Dad or I say we want to get on, and they'd darn well better salute when they do it!

OK, that is so not true. We have to give Ben a 15-minute warning that we want to get on, which gives him time to complain about his awful parents to the 25 people he is chatting with at the same time. Then he has to shut down his FaceBook, MySpace and a dozen other social sites in case Mom or Dad actually read (the horror!) the inane giggles his friends send him.

But the kids do make sacrifices. They've had to give up fancy, expensive vacations when they realized the only other option was giving up food instead. They can't veg out in front of the TV until they get chores done. They have to load dishwasher (once a day) take out the garbage (once a week), and do laundry (once in a blue moon.) We are obviously horrible, demanding, tyrannical parents.

I've found the key to being a tyrannical parent is in knowing what threat works with which child. Disciplining one by sending him to his room and another by making him mow the lawn raises howls of "Unfair!" but I'm less concerned about fair than I am effective. If I send my oldest to his room, he was happier than a pig in ... mud. In his room, he could read, draw, or his favorite hobby, sleep. Sending the middle child to his room, however, was the equivalent of exiling him to Siberia. In February. There's nothing an attention lover hates more than being forced out of the limelight.

The youngest has been the toughest nut to crack. He likes everything. If I ban him from the computer games, he's perfectly content to sit at the dining room table and draw. If I take away the sketch pad and pencils, he'll play computer games.

If I just force him to sit in one spot and do absolutely nothing, he talks. And talks. And talks. Within 15 minutes, I'm not sure who's getting punished, him or me.

Luckily, he's also the most easy-going and cooperative of the three, so we've rarely had to come down on him. We've been lucky, really. All three of the boys rarely misbehave, but when they do, it's a doozy and with the older two, usually involves curfew. I nipped that one in the bud with the almost-17-year-old recently by pointing out that curfew is not a Mommy rule, it's a law.

"If you get busted for being out late, I'm the one who gets in trouble," I told him.

Before he could follow his first, foolish impulse to say, "So what," I went on, stretching the truth just a little. "And if I go to jail, who's in charge?"

He turned a little green.

"Dad."

"Yep."

My husband is the disciplinarian in the family. He accuses me of being too soft on the kids and I accuse him of being too hard. Between the two of us, we're balancing it out just right or we're laying the groundwork for yeaeeeeeaaaaaarrrrsssss of therapy. But since the three have yet to get into serious trouble (knocking wood now), I'm inclined to go with the latter.

It's hard, these days, knowing how to deal with the pint-sized miscreants. I'm not a big believer in corporal punishment, but I have swatted a behind on an occasion or two. I save it for when I see the kids doing something that could be really, really bad for them, such as playing with fire, running into the road, or sniffing around my Godiva chocolates.

I can remember getting spanked, and on one occasion whipped with a belt. I remember what triggered the spankings, but all I remember about the belt was being totally outraged. If I can't remember the cause, then the punishment wasn't that effective, was it? A friend of mine used a flyswatter and she would only smack down on a hard surface near her young daughter. It made a great, loud noise, caused no pain, and usually startled the kid into better behavior. I tried that once and discovered yet another difference between little boys and little girls.

Ka-POW!

"Cool, Mom! Do it again!"

But for one blessed week this summer, I don't have to worry about how to deal with my offspring. I just have to figure out to get their dad to take out the garbage ...

-- Mary Reeves is a staff writer for the Times-Gazettte. She can be reached by e-mail at mreeves@t-g.com.