Parenting, Anthon Style

It is rare that you get good honest insight into your parenting skills. On an almost daily basis, Anthon parents his stuffed animals with many striking similarities to how we parent Anthon. This poor little stuffed kitten, pictured on the left, has been given a time-out for apparently hitting Shelley. This isn't the first time it's happened and it's hardly the kitty's fault. Anthon normally takes the kitty and bumps him against either me or Shelley. After the offense, Anthon took the kitty and put him on the piano bench, giving him a timeout. Anthon normally gets a timeout by having to sit on small red chair underneath a picture of Jesus...not on purpose, mind you. Jesus was just there coincidentally!

When Anthon deemed the kitty ready to be done with his timeout, he went up to him, put his hand on the kitty's face and made the kitty look at Anthon. We do this to Anthon to make sure he looks us in the eye when we tell him what he did to deserve the timeout. Finally, Anthon says to the kitty, "no, no, kitty, flick cheek" and Anthon gave the kitty a tiny flick on the cheek - as seen in the picture to the right. While we hate doing it, we sometimes will give Anthon a light flick on the cheek as a means to punish him when timeouts don't work. To show the stuffed kitty that there were no hard feelings, he walked him into the kitchen and declared to Shelley that the kitty was going to have a cupcake now. I think this was Anthon's sly attempt at getting a cupcake for himself, however. The best part about the timeouts is the reconciliation afterwards. It's never fun to punish your kids and I feel much better when I get a chance to tell Anthon that I love him. And no, we don't give him a cupcake after every timeout. Anthon would be much heavier if there the case.

Anthon certainly revels in being the parent to his stuffed animals. And it doesn't stop at discipline. Anthon has wanted to put his animals in the tub, tuck them in at night, put a diaper on them, hush their cries, put a binky in their mouths and brush their teeth.