[The children] fought over them, so he took them away. Trying to explain that they are only silly gadgets, he smashed one in front of them.
“It was supposed to make them happy but it didn’t,†said Tompert. “I wanted to show them it was a just a thing. They were stunned. The whole house was silent that day.â€
Emphasis mine. I sure don’t want to see what this guy does when he wants to make his kids sad.
h/t: Uncle.
Actually, I think he made an inadvertent point that if you fight over something it will be removed permanently. That’s GOOD parenting… even if he did it for a silly reason.
Nothing I hate more than seeing pushover parents being bossed around by their grade-school age children. If you can’t raise them don’t MAKE them.
Well said, Mollbot.
Of course a better way would have been to stop the fight as soon as it became apparent that one of the kids tried to take away the gadget from the other, and punish the responsible kid.
If they were like my nephews, one of them is constantly trying to force his way to posession of whichever toy the other is playing with, then looses interest in it a few seconds after he gets it and the victim picks up a new toy. And yes, it’s always the same (the older) who’s the victim and he’s usually the one who gets punished when he lashes out when after hours of this his patience is worn out.
What a self-promoter! Siblings will argue about anything! Instead of ignoring his kids’ squabbling, he destroyed an expensive gadget. Then he made applesauce out of the rotten apples.