Beat Your Child!

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"You can stop talking now, Granny, because I've already stopped listening," said my co-worker's four year old to her grandmother during a discussion about Never Cry Wolf.  They were noticing that she was starting to fib, and grandma had taken it upon herself to nip the habit in the bud with a fable.  Obviously, it didn't work.

My co-worker relishes telling "cute" stories about his children,
which often leave my Inner Chinese Mama bristling with indignance.  "You need to SPANK YOUR CHILD!" I want to say, "BEAT HER/HIM/THEM to stem this unacceptable behaviour!  Take away their privileges and what they love most!!  Prey on their fears!!!  Do what you have to; don't let them grow up into rude, obnoxious pieces of sh!t!!!"  I don't vocalize any of that, of course.  Instead, I smile and play along with an amused chuckle.

It's not that I necessarily believe in spanking, and if I ever have children, I have no idea how I will discipline them.  But I certainly had the stuffing lovingly beaten out of me as a kid and look how well I turned out!  I'm a (nearly always) courteous, respectful, and considerate human being!

It's the same with many of my friends with similar upbringings.  My girl Stacey and I - it's really eerie how similar our moms (and consequently, our childhood stories) are.  Whenever the two of us are out and there's a child having a meltdown, being destructive, wreaking havoc in public, screaming their head off, running around in a restaurant instead of sitting at the table eating, swearing at their parents, being rude to strangers, and so on, we automatically look at each other with our brows raised just so and we know that the other is thinking the exact same thing - 'If that were me X years ago, I could've just bent over.'

You know you have a Chinese Mama when:
-you've had good manners beaten into you since childhood, likely with an object*, likely the handle of a feather duster or other DIB (designated instrument for beatings), and maybe even publicly, perhaps even on multiple occasions.

*Author's Note: To be fair to my own mother, I was never beaten with anything but her open palms.  Her rationale is that if she's inflicting pain upon me, she deserves to feel it too.  Her own brand of weird parental logic!