Hello, I blog!
I share all my sporadic and toilet thoughts in here, because I am random like that.
How to stop a kid from crying
Just imagine you’re in a public place. Doesn’t matter if the place is quiet or noisy to begin with. Nearby, you spot a couple with a really young child no more than three years old. For some reason or another, the kid suddenly starts bawling at the top of his/her little lungs while the parents struggle to control the kid (but in vain).
Grarrr, when will the kid just shut the fuck up already? Most of us would think.
Well, one of my best friends has this theory of how to get kids to quieten down. Kids often yell, scream and cry for attention. Positive attention, she says. They want to be mollycoddled by the parents, and basically have the parents fall to their knees coaxing the life out of them just to get them to stop crying.
And when the parents actually give in, they are reinforcing the behaviour. In future, the kids will resort to making one hell of a noise to get what they want because … well, it worked before, didn’t it?
So, she says, what if we gave them attention that is contrary to what they want instead?
She continues. The next time you see a kid crying, look in their generation, point and laugh. She assured me that so far, this has had a 100% success rate for her.
This evening, I decided to put her theory to the test.
While queuing at a restaurant, this kiddo standing nearby suddenly began bawling loudly. The mayhem lasted for a good two minutes and showed no signs of slowing down. The younger cousin and I were trying our darnedest best to hold a decent conversation but it was hard when every sentence was punctuated with an even louder wail.
In a mixture of exasperation and bemusement, I decided to share my friend’s theory to the younger cousin.
“So you see, my friend has this theory. Next time, when you see some kid crying somewhere and the parents can’t seem to calm them down, you should just start laughing at the kid.”
That was when I did a live demonstration – on that kid.
Imagine me looking straight into the kiddo’s eyes and laughing. Not a loud, MUAHAHA kind of laugh – but a slightly muted version of that. Well, I was trying this for the first time, so I wasn’t quite sure about err … how the parents will take to it.
And damn, it worked.
The kid clammed up instantly and looked straight at me. Big wide, innocent eyes. As if wondering “waiiiiiiii is this girl laughing at me?”
And it was back to blissful silence.
Awesome. My friend is such a genius.
Caveat: I doubt the parents were very pleased, though – because the kid’s dad was constantly shooting me disapproving looks after that. In response, I returned him a look that was meant to say well, it seems like I can control your kid better than you. (;
Corruption of the little minds
Here’s me recounting one of them’ hilarious scenarios (or rather, an example of how us older’ folk are comparatively um … less innocent than the little kiddos) from last week’s trip with the extended family.
It was me and two teenage cousins lazing around on the bed watching Youtube videos on my laptop, when we chanced upon a parody of Black Eyed Peas’ “I gotta’ feeling” (which also happens to be my favourite parody of all time) retitled “I’m a Korean”.
You can take a sneak peek at the video here. It’s utterly hilarious, I kid you not.
(Disclaimer: I highly doubt the video creator meant any offense against Koreans, neither do I. The video was made by its rightly creator for the sake of humour, not to stir shit or whatsoever.)
Apparently, in that video, there were several lines that sparked peals of laughter among the cousins and myself.
Quote 1:
I have a missile
It’s very small
It’s in my pants
I can’t get it up!
Honestly, I’ve watched the video many times before and never made the connection between the above and the male organ. Until one of my teenage cousins began laughing at that point which was when I finally made the connection (and was astounded at how much the 14-year old girl cousin knew).
Quote 2:
I think Michael Jackson’s a good guy
I don’t mind if he sleeps with young guys
Because in my country
we can touch young guys on their p***s.
This was the part that led to loud eruptions of laughter, along with repetitions of the very last line, along with that censored p-word.
It was only seconds later when we suddenly fell silent because we had completely forgotten that 7-year old Nicole, along with 3-year old Rachel were sitting just right beside us. (And the video, if subjected to the stringent checks movies undergo, will quite possibly be rated at least M18.)
There was an uncomfortable silence for a while, before the dreaded question came.
Nicole blinked once, twice, looked at us with a completely innocent, blur expression and asked, “Gor gor (Mandarin for ‘big brother’), jie jies (Mandarin for ‘big sisters’), what is a penis?”
We remained silent, and simply exchanged helpless glances. We really did not know how to answer her.
The youngest of my teenage cousins eventually responded sheepishly, “well, you’re too young to know!”
Later that night, all of us were blasted (albeit, jokingly) by the oldest cousin, who happened to be the father of both Nicole and Rachel.
“WHAT HAVE YOU ALL BEEN TEACHING MY DAUGHTERS?” the oldest cousin demanded. The two teenage cousins concerned and myself simply gave him a dazed look, trying our darnest best to look as innocent as possible.
“What have you been telling them, man?” he questioned again. “Why did my two daughters suddenly come up to me just now and asked me what is a penis?”
That was when we erupted into peals of laughter again for the second time that day.
Little Nicole at that moment, decided to show of her newly acquired knowledge.
“I know! I know what a penis is!”
We looked at her.
“CUCKOO BIRD!”
Ohmygoodnessgolly.
Oh, and earlier that afternoon, the same couple of teenage cousins were rattling on and on about um … erections and stuff. And they are only … what? Fourteen? And the other is twelve.
Gee, they do start sexuality education reeeeeeally early these days.
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