Tough Love is Tough

Lion always tells me he wants punishment swats. He may not want them at the time they happen, but he wants them. He doesn’t want diapers, but he wants me to tell him to wear diapers. He says it’s good for him to do these things. I guess it’s like me and vegetables. I know I should eat them. They’re good for me. But do I really want to go out of my way to eat them? You establish rules for your kids because the world has rules and they need to get in the habit of following them. They may say it’s not fair and you’ll likely tell them that life isn’t fair. Some people call this tough love. Kids certainly don’t want your rules. Lion wants my rules.

I’ve never been much of a rule maker. As Lion says, the rules I made him at first were silly made up rules. Nothing of any consequence. So what if he dropped ice cubes. Really? That’s a rule? Not so much anymore. He suggested being naked because before we moved in together he thought it was important that he was ready for me when I arrived. That morphed into always being naked. The other rules we have are mostly out of necessity. Lion is a messy eater. To try to clean him up a bit I made the rule about dropping food on himself. Waiting to eat until I have eaten just seems like good manners. And the interrupting thing came out of a pet peeve. He would constantly interrupt me, usually saying the exact thing I was just about to say. And, of course, I can punish him if he annoys me.

I think the hardest part about punishing Lion is when he complains about it. Not that I don’t expect him to complain. I’m not saying that. A certain amount is to be expected. I don’t think he should be happy that I’m about to make his butt burn. But I still get hung up on the fact that I’m about to hurt him. 1.0 is definitely still out there trying to be nice to him. Once 2.0 shows up, there’s no problem. She can laugh at him. Really? Don’t want your butt whomped? Then why did you do X? Really? Does your butt still sting? Huh. I guess you shouldn’t have done Y.

The good thing (bad for Lion) is that 2.0 seems to be showing up more often. I think she’s here to stay. Until she morphs into 3.0. Who knows what she’ll be like.

3 Comments

  1. Author

    I asked Lion about this. I wonder what your take is on it.

    In his earlier posts about DD, he seems to advocate very harsh spankings for the most trivial of offenses. For example, he said this: “disciplinary spanking has one purpose: to inflict as much pain as possible without injuring the person being spanked.”

    He also said: “The spanker is relentless. There are no safewords, no response to any plea to stop.” “Disciplinary spanking is about inflicting pain; a lot of it. The more pain you inflict, the more effective you are as his disciplinarian.”

    He describes an early spanking you gave him: “I was told to lie on my stomach and Mrs. Lion used a very vicious paddle at full force. ”

    Yet, the infractions that you both have used to trigger this treatment have included forgetting napkins when bringing you breakfast in bed (yet quickly remedying it):

    “For example, I serve breakfast in bed every weekend. Mrs. Lion does it the rest of the week. Last weekend I forgot to put napkins on the tray. No big deal. When I realized it, I went back to the kitchen and got them. I simply forgot something. When I realized it, I went back to the kitchen and got them. I simply forgot something. But I shouldn’t have forgotten. So, Mrs. Lion told me that this is an offense that requires correction.”

    Another one was forgetting a pie server:

    “This past weekend I made some refrigerator dough cinnamon buns. I forgot to include the pie server we use to get buns out of the pan. That’s an infraction. If I forget to do something Mrs. Lion has asked, that gets me punished as well.”

    Why do you guys use such harsh punishments for unintentional acts, mistakes, and accidents. Surely, these “infractions” are not so important that the require such harshness. Does he just want harsh punishment (despite saying he does not), and create trivial rules to trigger it? If so, why do you think that is the case?

  2. Author

    I think the point of finding these miniscule infractions is consistency. It doesn’t matter what he did so much as my seeing it. I am inconsistent. Lion needs consistency. To encourage me to get in the habit of watching and punishing, we sometimes go overboard. The bottom line is that Lion wants to feel my power. Whomping his butt definitely does the trick.

  3. Author

    Thanks. Nice job on the podcast, by the way.

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