Raising Varmints and Children

I “raise” my dogs differently than I did my children. My poor kids had to listen to me saying things like, “I am not turning savages loose upon society” and “When you leave this home you will have OPTIONS” and “You don’t have to like me but you will respect [fear?] me!” and “I am not going to follow you around and think for you and you don’t want me to – USE YOUR BRAIN” as well as the traditional comments about peer pressure in the context of friends jumping off bridges. They usually did not hear these comments once at a setting. I could keep it up for hours and at loud levels.

In my declining years I have decided that being loud or repetitive is counter productive – imagine that. The little maniacs MAY have missed what is said the first time. After the second time, they hear you but are pretending you’ll just go away or lose your voice. The absolute best you can hope for is that you'll only end up with a sore throat and kids with calloused ear drums. I admire those people who say something once and after that, all they have to do is raise an eyebrow. I am not sure how they do that in the absence of holding a large frying pan at the ready, but I have seen it done and know it is possible.

A couple of my kids have the ability to raise an eyebrow and I assume they will be excellent parents on the basis of that, alone. The third one may be more likely to take after her mother but she is smarter than me and will no doubt figure it out a lot sooner. My two kids-in-law should both be able to bring good things into the mix so I’m feeling pretty good about the prospects of having happy, non delinquent grandkids.

My dogs get a lot of excuses and I am not nearly as demanding with them as I was with the kids (“Isn’t that horrible screeching bark just so cute?”). If they were humans, I’d be raising delinquents and they’d be encouraging their friends to jump off bridges.

I treat them the way I expect I would treat grandchildren.

photo - Jezebel - not sure if she should be considered a varmit or a child... She looks like a varmit in this picture.