The Kid and President Aquino

Most of us look at kids two ways. Our own are darlings. Those belonging to others are loud, unruly pests.

My latest (I have three daughters in the U.S. dealing with that place) is three years old. He is a conniver, a manipulator, a person with motives of his own, and he is not afraid to use them.

He takes his guidance from four adults, mainly. His father (age old), his mother (age young), our housekeeper (age 19) and his lola (age indeterminate), who lives in the small house on the other side of our lot.

His lola and the housekeeper don't have a lot of clout with him. They assume this three year old is an extension of the "boss", the man with the money. So they mostly just protect him (the kid, not the father) from disaster as he roams about slamming doors or throwing toys or insisting on playing when he is supposed to be eating.

My wife is Filipina, so she interacts with the youngster on the standard superior/inferior model, one that is reactive to the kid's shenanigans. She is superior when she shouts and he is superior when he ignores her. The kid understands that he is in power until his mother hits the volcanic stage, at which point he deploys one of his two defensive weapons, grovelling or crying. They work in superior fashion, and in a few minutes, he is back in control again.

Now for myself, I believe that a kid needs consistency of message. You listen and obey, good things happen. You choose to disobey, you pay the price. The most severe price is a flick on the wrist with my thumb and index finger which the kid learned very young he does not like. In between bad behavior and "the flick" is a warning. I start counting in my most authoritative voice: "One . . . Two . . . Three!"

He moves on one.

Now, my wife counts and he doesn't move. Not at one. Not at three.

That's because she is a softy and doesn't like to cause him pain.  She has not fully understood or bought into the intellectual concept of constancy of punishment/reward.

When she is reactive and makes like Pinatubo, there is hell to pay for anyone in her path. I lay low even if it was not me misbehaving.

But until she gets to eruption, the kid plays her like a piano. Or air guitar, which he is quite skilled at.

It is interesting how the kid has sorted out that his mother and father behave differently. I attribute it to all the Gain powdered milk that my wife has force-fed him over the years. The manufacturers, who I am sure are not cows, load that milk up with all kinds of cranial steroids and healthy chemicals (although I suspect they are just vitamins with snazzy names).

Side note:  I don't believe any of the advertising here, as there is no requirement that advertisers certify that what they are saying is anywhere near the truth. Why, I can get teas that will keep me virile until I am 98, some product with an X in it that will cure everything from high blood to rabies, and juices certified by Manny Pacquiao to allow me to beat to a pulp anyone with a Mexican surname.

Concepts are important.

Filipinos do not grasp them easily, I think. Filipinos are good with the trees but not the forest.

Therein lies the problem in the Palace. It is reactive, playing the small-time win/lose game, rather than doing the difficult, big-picture things necessary to achieve planned goals. The HR bill is looked at as a tactical matter: the Church opposes it, so this objection must be dealt with. The bill is not looked at as an essential way to raise the Philippines up to modern standing in the world, or a way to work on poverty. If the President focused on what he is trying to do - modernize the Philippines and get the place respectable and wealthy - he wouldn't hitch the nation's economic wagon to a 12th century mule driven by monks in robes.

That's a concept.

If my kid can grasp it, how come President Aquino cannot?