She had not even put her stuff into her room and then started checking her kids' homework. There was when she flared up. What followed was again the daily episode of lecturing the kids at the top of her voice, but today this was accompanied by caning and the cries of the kids.
I was of course in my room when all these were going on in the living room. When she beat the kids, I was thinking to myself, "finally!"
Everytime when her kids misbehaved, she would get very angry and scold them loudly. She would threaten to beat them by saying, "where's the rattan cane? I'm gonna cane you today!" But she never did, until today.
Not that i'm a psycho who enjoy seeing or listening to kids being whipped. In fact, i felt sad listening to all the commotion in the living room. It's just that i believe in carrot-and-stick. Kids must be disciplined when they are young, otherwise it would get more difficult when they enter adolescence.
It is not unlike training your dog. You know, you gotta mould their behaviours through rewards and punishments when it is still a puppy. Give it a biscuit when it does the trick correctly, and talk to it harshly or even slap it lightly if it chews up your shoe. Otherwise, it would be very difficult to change its behaviours when it becomes an adult dog.
Seriously, my landlady's kids are getting worse as they get older. She has no idea what they do at home when she's at work. She can only depend on the maid to look after the kids, including making sure they do homework and study hard.
But then, how could this task possibly be done by a maid, who strictly speaking, has no authority over the kids of her employer at all? When they are disobedient, what is the maid to do?
In fact, the kids yell at the maid all the time. There have been several times when i was working from "home" and witness for myself how anarchic it was. The kids would just switch on the TV and watch it all day long. They simply ignored the maid even though she tried very hard to ask them to do their homework. She knew very well that if the kids do not finish their homework by the time my landlady gets home in the evening, she would get a scolding as well.
If i were to blog about the events that happen in this household, i would never run out of stories to write, some even with me in the story line. Well, perhaps i will indeed do that one day.
For now, i just feel sorry for this dysfunctional family.
Labels: life
