One of the things I’ve never seen advertised about parenting is how hard it is to discipline a child when what he’s doing is basically funny. My daughter exasperatedly screamed, “OH, FUNKIN HELL!” He went through a long period in which he declared: when faced with the slightest inconvenience. Even though I was afraid of the stares I might get in public and the awkward conversations I might have to have with daycare sitters, I didn’t try to stop him from his abusive path because his bouts of swearing brought so much joy to my life that I didn’t dare dull them. Now, having two children, I find myself at the crossroads between Good and Funny when it comes to incidents of little sibling violence at the hands of my son. After spending her entire life being pushed aside, having her toys ripped from her, and being dragged across the floor against her will, she finally exploded and opened her hand and slapped my daughter across the face. This was extremely out of character for him due to his normally Zen demeanor and was therefore quite funny. The way he did this was with sensei’s razor precision. Karate Kid He catches flies with chopsticks. He was generally a quiet child, staying in character other than letting out a guttural bark, beating him up, and then getting on with his baby business. Apparently he had reached the limit of capsizing for sport and wanted to show my daughter what would happen if he didn’t leave her alone with the duplo blocks. When my daughter came to report the incident to me, I was understanding, of course, but then I immediately ran over and told my husband about the incident, reenacting the entire cast as if I had slapped Will Smith’s Oscar. My son doesn’t seem to have developed any serious bloodlust since the initial incident, although my daughter will occasionally react with cat reflexes if it goes too far. When she does this, I scold her for my daughter’s sake, but I do it knowing she doesn’t understand very many words and I’ll probably get a few more chubby hand slaps before she’s older and I’ll have to really get going. intervention.